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Ride the Hype Cycle

November 11, 2012

Elevation of Social Media Insights into 6 Marketing Applications

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Social Media,What We Think — dreinhardt @ 11:00 pm

Sentiment AnalysisPoorly conceived and hastily executed social media monitoring endeavors are stifling the enormous potential of social media insights to inform marketing decision-making. Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Marketers should expect and demand more marketing application before green lighting funding for social media monitoring.

If you’re a Marketer, here are the 6 areas of insight you should expect to receive:

  1. Marketing Effectiveness – Was that big PR campaign a conversation catalyst among your key targets? What early observations can be derived prior to receiving the ROI study due to be delivered 6 months later?
  2. Disease and Brand Lexicon – What key terms and phrases do your targets use to describe their condition? Your Brand? Can you detect any patterns in the message hierarchy?
  3. Treatment Dynamics – Is that expensive treatment flow model proving out based on the tone and sentiment of online conversations? What are patients saying about the MD/patient dialogue that they likely would never reveal to you in market research, let alone to their physician?
  4. Advocacy – Which patient advocacy groups do patient gravitate to online? Is it the online group that behaves like a business or is it the grass roots version that challenges your company’s definition of an advocacy group?
  5. Thought Leadership – How well are your KOLs represented within the top social media channels? Institutions? Hospitals? Are you identifying ‘new’ KOLs whose influence extends at the very least within the Internet?
  6. Advertising/Sponsorship – Which communities are driving disease discussion? How does this compare to communities driving your brand’s discussion? What forms of advertising and sponsorships do they accept?

If you’re not receiving at least 4 out of the 6, you need to find a marketing company that understands technology . . . not the other way around.

I’m here if you need me.

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June 3, 2012

Marketing Applicability of Social Media ‘Listening’ Linked to Data Quality

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Patient Marketing,Social Media,What We Think — dreinhardt @ 7:50 pm

The marketing backlash to social media monitoring has officially begun. And surprisingly, the key gripe is NOT the fear of uncovering potential adverse events, but instead the actionability of the output!

For me, this shift in concerns all starts with the quality of the data used in the analysis. I have noticed a significant drop in the quality of social media data recently, and I believe it can be attributed to the proliferation of vendors who purport to do this type of analysis with the wide availability of low cost, crappy data. Think about it, which of your vendors isn’t trying to sell you a social media listening analysis.

If you’re struggling with the actionability of your social media data, here are the 7 criteria you need to look at to ensure you have the right data provider:

  1. Breadth of Coverage – data collected from a broad spectrum of data types and sources
  2. Data Collection & Cleaning – procedures set in place to avoid duplicate messages from entering the data system and to exclude unwanted content such as spam or inappropriate messages (e.g., financial/stock discussions)
  3. Data Specificity – existing healthcare-specific data universe as well as the ability to create disease-specific universes, particularly important for brands that are indicated for more than one disease state (e.g., Rituxan in NHL, CLL, and RA)
  4. Proactivity – data collection from existing sites, as well as new sites, is regularly assessed to ensure that all platforms or source types are continually incorporated
  5. Historical Coverage – historical data comparisons available to spot trends and evaluate seasonality in the discussion volume
  6. Data Recency – data lag time is minimized without compromising the data collection process
  7. Data Integrity – adherence to industry guidelines, such as the Word of Mouth Market Associations’ ethics code, to ensure ethical practices in data collection

We use the analogy of clay and the sculptor when illustrating the relationship between the data and the interpreter of the data. To truly elevate listening to marketing insights and application, you need the best clay . . . I mean data . . . from the outset!

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March 23, 2012

ROF Metric Series: Brand Social Media SOV

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Patient Marketing,Social Media,What We Think — Tags: — dreinhardt @ 11:31 pm

Having started analyzing healthcare social media discussion, particularly on discussion boards and blogs, in early 2003 for listening and learning purposes, share of voice (SOV) has always been an interesting metric to evaluate.

SOVClients tend to live in a brand-centric world and expect that conversations for any particular disease state revolve around pharmaceutical treatments. More often than not the volume of disease state discussion dwarfs actual treatment discussion, regardless of brand.

However, this is not a hard and fast rule. I recently completed a Sentiment Analysis for a Brand that had a tremendous SOV compared to the overall category discussion. The Brand Social Media SOV was 15%. This means that for every 100 messages within the disease state, the Brand was mentioned in 15 of those 100 messages.

To truly appreciate the magnitude of this statistic, you would need to know what the average is for this metric across a number of disease states. In addition, you’d have to then layer in the sentiment of the Brand SOV to start to complete the picture. If you want to know more about your Brand SOV, post back or drop me an email. What you find out just might surprise you.

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February 5, 2012

Marketing Application of Social Media Listening – ROF Engagement-Voyeurship Matrix

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Social Media,What We Think — dreinhardt @ 9:29 pm

The democratization of social media listening in healthcare has been accelerated by the availability of relatively cheap tools that allow pharmaceutical and biotechnology marketers the ability to garner more data . . . but that’s all it is – DATA!

Marketers need information that is by definition ‘interpreted data.’ At ROF our focus with our Sentiment Analysis service is consistent with our level of evidence philosophy and is designed to elevate social media listening to marketing application. The ROF Engagement-Voyeurship Matrix is just one illustration of how we elevate social media listening to marketing application.

ROF Engagment-Voyeurship MatrixThe matrix examines two core components. First, the Engagement Index looks at the volume of discussion relative to the prevalence of the condition. Second, the Voyeurship rate looks at the ratio of post views to the number of actual posters. By plotting these two indices on a grid, brand marketers are able to objectively examine the opportunity within their particular disease state.

This is just one of the ways that Return on Focus elevates social media monitoring to actual marketing application. If you’re a pharmaceutical or biotechnology marketer looking to get more than just data from your current monitoring work, let me show you how we can put the data to work for you, so that you have information to feed, support, and augment your marketing investments.

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January 16, 2012

Ride the Hype Cycle

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Patient Marketing,Social Media,Uncategorized,What We Think — amanning @ 10:21 am

You may have just recently sensitized your organization to the need to understand and analyze what patients are saying online about your brand prior to, during, and after launch. At Return on Focus, we’ve been helping to answer this question for brands by conducting social media monitoring or what we call Sentiment Analyses for almost six years now.

During this time, we have observed a distinctive pattern to consumer sentiment toward new product launches in biopharma, and it turns out that these patterns are similar, whether the product is the latest cutting-edge biotechnology product or the next evolution in primary care. This established pattern of new product sentiment can be easily explained and illustrated through the hype cycle.

The hype cycle is an established phenomenon that shows how consumer sentiment for a new product reaches its heights during the development and peri-launch phases prior to widespread consumer experience with the product. This is know as the ‘peak of inflated expectations.’ As consumers gain or hear of real world experiences with the new product, they invariably fail to live up to their initially unrealistic hopes and expectations. This causes consumer sentiment to drop significantly as consumers confront product realities (e.g. side effects, lack of efficacy, etc.). This second phase is aptly named the ‘trough of disillusionment.’

Eventually, sentiment rebounds and normalizes through the slope of enlightenment, as consumers accept that although your product may not match their initial hopes or hype, it is recognized as an improvement on what was previously available. This is known as the ‘real world product reality’ stage.

Hype Cycle
*Adapted from Jackie Fenn, “When to Leap on the Hype Cycle,” Gartner Group, January 1, 1995

After analyzing over sixty products a year in all stages of product launch, we have been able to apply the hype cycle consistently. It turns out that the hype cycle is such a natural part of human behavior that it affects new products in all industries from fitness to pharma. Understanding and making marketing decisions based on new product sentiment truly depends on where you brand is within the hype cycle.

So, now that you know what to expect with regard to sentiment for your new product, what do you do about it? Give us a call, and let us help you ride the hype cycle for your brand.

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