Here are five helpful hints when creating a listening strategy for your brand:

1. Assign the task to someone. Have this person accountable to your team to report back findings. Talking about having a strategy and actually implementing are two different things – by assigning someone the task to monitor, you have the set the wheels in motion.
2. Leverage tools. This is especially important when resources are slim. There are a number of different paid and free conversation monitoring tools available. See which one(s) best suit the needs of your team and move forward.
3. Be specific on what exactly you are listening for – this will cut down on unnecessary time wasted scouring the Internet. Define key words, competitors, trends, products, executives, whatever it may be that you want to listen for conversations around.
4. Empower your social media team to respond. It’s important to not only listen, but engage in conversations online, as a human, not a robotic brand.
5. Design a feedback mechanism. Make sure the results of the listening can actually be reported back and incorporated into your new and improved marketing efforts – else why spend the time?

People are spending money and they are spending a lot of it on healthcare. There is a massive market in healthcare, but do you know just how big it is? Check out these numbers.

Your brand, having just achieved phenomenal results, now is at risk of becoming stale or obsolete if it doesn’t consistently innovate and try new things. Competitors can encroach on your customers or territory while you are busy in your “routine” on this precarious plateau. So, how do you keep your marketing fresh and innovative?

The answer: before you hit the proverbial plateau, take a step back, re-prioritize, re-strategize, and re-energize. Here are a few tips to keep in mind during this exercise:

1. Don’t be afraid of disruptive innovation. It’s a new way of doing things, that maybe even your customers don’t know they want yet – but it’s worth a try, and has been proven to be one of the top catalysts for innovation in the market.
2. Measure, and measure often. It’s one thing to get the marketing campaign up and running, but it’s important to keep an eye on metrics so you know you have reached your goals, so you can adjust and evolve your marketing to achieve bigger and better things.
3. Change your environment. Creativity isn’t always harnessed in your cubical. Hold team meetings outside in the fresh air, in a new place – somewhere different where you can get out of your normal routine and open your mind to new ideas.
4. Scrap old habits in favor of new ones. How will you know what you can achieve if you don’t try.
5. It’s ok start over. If something doesn’t work, move on, and try something else.

• 844,000+ people like StandUptoCancer on Facebook
• 48,000+ like Gluten FreeVille
• Rheumatoid Arthritis Warrior has 14,000+ likes

Marketing to consumers today is about reaching out to their online spaces with meaningful information they can incorporate into their everyday lives. In the highly-regulated, social space-restrictive environment created by the FDA and FTC, engaging patients and caregivers through social media to help solve your marketing problems may sound adventurous, or even downright scary to your med/legal team.

That’s where crowdsourcing comes in.

Crowdsourcing is a way to quickly obtain feedback and direction from relevant online audiences about your campaign/communications challenge—think of crowdsourcing as a cross between a focus group and a quantitative survey. It’s a very effective tool for listening to the needs of female audiences.  To better determine the role crowdsourcing could play in pharma, we decided to conduct a social experiment.

THE SOCIAL EXPERIMENT
We kept the exercise simple and designed a crowdsourcing experiment that enlisted caregivers of cancer patients.  According to estimates by the Family Caregiver Alliance, 66% of caregivers are female. One-third (34%), takes care of two or more people, and the average age of a female caregiver is 48. We asked caregivers to better define their needs and perceived duties around the task of caregiving.  Then we asked them what they needed from a support program. What we learned opened our eyes to the power and passion of individuals.

ENGAGING THE CROWD
A short survey consisting of just three questions was designed and pushed out to 37 different online groups across several social media channels, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and forums—all  cancer-related social networks. I used my real name, my actual Gmail account (or forum-specific identity for transparency), and clearly stated that I was interested in creating better caregiver/patient support programs.

EYE-OPENING RESULTS
Twenty-five responses were received within 24 hours of the program launch, representing half of the 50 total completes received during the seven-day experiment. While we can’t fit all of the findings from the crowd in this post, two key findings came across loud and clear.

1. Caregivers of cancer patients need help with the basics of everyday life. 80% of the crowd felt keeping their patient in good spirits and making sure their patient took their medication were top of the list. Following close behind were providing transportation, performing chores/shopping, and attending doctor appointments with the patient for whom they provide care. And, the caregivers stated they needed more than a great patient-support program. They needed support in taking care of themselves, getting a break to avoid burnout, and keeping their own attitudes positive.
2. Providing day-to-day medical management is the job of the healthcare team.
   Only 35% of the crowd felt they should be monitoring their patient’s progress or taking vital signs. Similarly, just 35% of the crowd felt they should be advising their patients about treatment options. Simply put, the majority of the crowd doesn’t feel they need support here and rely on the doctors and treatment teams to provide this level of support.

While not a representative sample of the entire caregiver universe, the findings from our experiment are invaluable. We were able to successfully intercept caregivers in their online spaces, while they go about their daily lives, and engage them in helping us refine our support programs to meet their individual needs.

The final gem from the experiment?

Several caregivers proactively reached out to me asking if they could do more—even participate in a patient advisory board.

Interested in learning more about how to leverage crowdsourcing to help shape your pharma marketing programs? Download a full copy of Roska Healthcare’s whitepaper.

Kurt Mueller
Chief Digital & Science Officer
Roska Healthcare
@RoskaDigital

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Kurt Mueller has 20+ years experience creating winning strategies in the digital space — working with clients breaking new ground in the pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device industries. As an integrated digital strategist and pharmaceutical marketing thought leader, he lives to break down physical and electronic boundaries to drive acceptance, engagement and action facilitating doctor-to-patient dialogues and improving clinical outcomes.

Tip No. 1 - If you’re not happy with your doctor, fire him or her. Ask your girlfriends, family and other doctors for recommendations because “good” doctors know the other “good” doctors. They are your best resource. Don’t forget to check the doctor’s credentials and research possible violations.

Tip No. 2 - Stop lying. Did you know that studies suggest 70 percent of patients lie to their doctors? For example, we do not mention that we take aspirin, that we are not taking our medication consistently or at all. We take health supplements and vitamins but don’t consider them medications. It is important to mention because some vitamins and supplements can interfere with medications or make hormone replacement therapy less effective. Make a list of all the things you take and bring it with you to all your medical appointments.

Tip No. 3 - Be prepared. First, women need to do their own research. For example, understand treatments and alternatives for a potential diagnosis. Second, send a list of questions to your doctor ahead of your visit. It is estimated that patients are interrupted 18 seconds into their appointments. Few patients can say everything they want to in that time, so be prepared.

Tip No. 4 - Take charge of you. The World Health Organization says 40 percent of women are currently battling one of the Big 6 health conditions: cancer, heart disease, hormone disorders, diabetes, bone and joint conditions, and mental health issues. Remember, if you don’t take care of you, you can’t take care of anyone else.

Tip No. 5 - Find a health advocate. Identify a trusted friend or patient advocate, not a family member, that can go with you to appointments. This person needs to listen well, speak up and not be afraid to ask questions of specialists. The last thing you are able to do when you are sick is advocate on your behalf. Put your advocate in your Living Will and Medical Power of Attorney and let them know ahead of time that they are in charge.

Michelle King Robson
Founder, Chairperson, CEO
EmpowHER
@mkingrobson

Originally published in NAFE’s (National Association of Female Executives) newsletter.

1. Women are on the Web and They’re Looking for Health Information.

• 9 out of 10 women seek health information on the web.
• 64% of women online research information regarding prescription drugs.
• 72% of women use the Internet for gathering health information.

2. Ladies Love to Share.

• 33% of women with a health condition go online to find other women like them for advice.
• 64% of moms ask other mothers for advice before they purchase a new product and 63% of all mothers surveyed consider other moms the most credible experts when they have questions.
• 92% of women pass along information about deals or finds to others.

3. Women Take Action.

• Women are responsible for 90% of health care decisions.
• 75% of women identified themselves as the primary shoppers for their households.
• Women control 85% of all purchasing decisions, and purchase over 50% of traditional male products, including cars, home improvement products and electronics.

4. Now Let’s Talk Money – Women are the Buyers in Today’s Market.

• Women control $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States.
• 51% of U.S. private wealth is controlled by women.
• Women account for 58% of all total online spending.
• Over the next decade women will control two-thirds of consumer wealth.
• Women account for over 50% of all stock ownership in the United States.
• 22% of women shop online at least once a day.

Learn more ways to reach HER.

Shana O’Connor
Marketing Manager
EmpowHER
@shanaoconnor

• Pinterest hit 10 million unique monthly views faster than any site in U.S. history
• On average each time a person visits the site they spend 58.8 minutes “pinning” while Facebook has an average visit time of 12.1 minutes.
• Nearly 1/3 of of all Pinterest users have an annual household income of $100K+
• Almost 70% are female (keep in mind, females control 90% of all household healthcare decisions)
• The largest demographic on the site are between 25-34
• 50% of Pinterest users have children

Whether you’d like to simply have a Pinterest page for your brand like EmpowHER, or you are creating full-blown marketing campaigns like Kotex – the stats speak for themselves and warrant marketers to take a closer look at this visually captivating site.

Brand-building has traditionally been an exercise in pushing the most flattering, corporate-approved messaging possible. However, today, brand-building has evolved into so much more – now it’s about still being able to provide information, but also being able to engage and interact with customers in a real, non-corporate kind of way. So, how do you help your brand develop a strong pulse in the social media world? Here are 5 suggestions:

1. Enable your employees. Enabling doesn’t mean giving social media managers a book of “acceptable” responses or social media posts, it means trusting them enough to represent your brand honestly. Your employees are the front lines of any brand, and therefore should be enabled to represent your brand to customers in a way that portrays the “real” side of your brand. One in which customers can interact with.
2. Keep the marketing lingo at-bay. No one wants to read a press release boilerplate, or a portion of your latest marketing brochure about a product or service, and if they did, they would certainly seek out that information. When interacting in the social media world, try and limit the marketing speak and talk to your customers that way you would have a normal conversation.
3. Mobilize the troops. Put key, outspoken customers or stakeholders to work! Often times, they will be excited that you are entrusting them with your brand! They will be excited to help spread the word, and even better, other customers are more likely to trust the words of non-employees about your brand then actual employees. It’s a win-win!
4. Ditch the old “your way or the high way approach”. Your brand is no longer what YOU say it is, but rather what THEY (your customers) say it is. So don’t stand up there with a megaphone and dictate, be open to debate and LISTEN to your customers when they have opinion. After all, customers can help architect better messaging and marketing campaigns for your brand if you truly listen.
5. Simply being there is not enough. Just because you have a twitter account of Facebook page doesn’t mean you are interacting with customers. Be timely, relevant, and regularly engage with your stakeholders. The results will be surprisingly. You might just learn something.

Now you try!

What we didn’t anticipate was that brands who work with us would want this too. Health and wellness marketers, practitioners and providers who pay EmpowHER to either sponsor one of our 700+ health condition centers, or 40+ advertorial-like health and wellness Resource Centers, or create custom social-meets-digital publishing solutions to reach, influence and engage our large and growing female health consumer audience also wanted to see how their brands resonated with this audience.

They wanted to measure “impact” and they wanted to measure it beyond a ‘fill out this form and a representative will call you’ kind of way. They wanted to find a way to use our HER Health Meter to gauge whether and how their educational content, messaging and promotional activities were ‘connecting’ with the female health consumers they value.

Our HER Health Meter is a measurement solution for health and wellness marketers and brands that captures and reports the collective sentiment of female health consumers about health content and interactions these consumers have with credentialed experts and other women on the site. What does it measure? It measures the impact of content, community members, site experts and our advocacy tools and resources in terms of: health improved, lives changed and lives saved.

We call this “measuring beyond the click”. Brands who work with EmpowHER now have an opportunity to measure beyond display and contextual ad impressions, pre-and-post-roll video ad views, video starts, and click-throughs. Now a brand can see whether or not they’ve made a real impact on a life. We describe this as social ROI, where return on individual trumps return on investment. And it’s resonating with our users and the brands who want to connect with them in a meaningful way.

Since we started using the HER Health Meter, nearly 1,000 people have told us the impact we’ve had on them including nearly 180 folks who have said that something on EmpowHER.com actually saved their lives. Increasingly health brands are looking to EmpowHER to help them tap into the collective wisdom of the crowds of women who use our site regularly to engage with each other, with health and wellness experts, and with content provided by many of our brand partners.

If you want to measure the value of your online marketing and advertising spend differently, give us a shout.

See Measuring Beyond the Click Part I

Thom Brodeur
President &COO
EmpowHER
Twitter: @thombempowher