Current technologies cannot replace humans in executing critical aspects of analytics; when it comes to managing ambiguity and complexity, human intelligence is indispensable. For instance, it is difficult for any software to define the problem, interpret results in the context of the problem, filter the relevant information from large chunks of data and derive actionable insights to mitigate business risks or take corrective action.

As compared to consumer goods, monitoring and analyzing social media information in healthcare and pharmaceutical industry is far more complex due to various reasons such as regulatory constraints, privacy and confidentiality issues, non-standard patient experiences, complexity in understanding symptoms, side effects, reaction to drugs, reasons for patients switching brands etc.

Broadly, social media analytics process involves converting information into intelligence, intelligence into insights and identifying initiatives based on these insights. As we traverse through the 4-I continuum of information-intelligence-insights-initiatives, it is critically important to understand the roles of human analysis.

The art lies in understanding what can be achieved using software and what should be done by humans. Here’s my take on that.

Before we start, I would like to mention that it is critically important to define the business problem and set the direction of research; needless to say, both have to be done by humans.

Information stage: Although low as compared to the advanced stages, the human involvement is needed in defining the objectives of the research, creating keyword taxonomy and feeding it correctly in the system using Boolean search logic. Several listening-software products claim to provide real time social media data analytics, automatically and conveniently. In my experience, automated listening software do a fair job at discovering data, are good at extracting data but not so good at giving out meaningful analytics. They certainly do the counting part well. What the software gives you depends on what you ask. It is important that the right instructions are received by the software. Importance of defining the taxonomy that covers all aspects of the problem cannot be overemphasized.

Intelligence stage: Use of the term “intelligence” should be sufficiently indicative of the strong human involvement is required at this stage. The extracted data includes important information, some irrelevant data and some junk. Various methods are used to filter out the junk as well as separate the irrelevant material. Let me elaborate on “relevance” here; information may be relevant to the keywords, but not necessarily relevant to the objectives. For instance, if “skin cancer” is a keyword, then information around skin disorders (not necessarily cancer), is relevant to the keyword “skin” but not relevant to skin-cancer. Further, data around skin care products or animal-skin products would qualify as junk. Such distinctions can only be humanly made. Boolean search will allow data filtering based on such criteria, but high accuracy is rare.

Insights stage: Insight generation is interpreting the information in the context of the defined problem. At this advanced stage of analytics, human involvement becomes even stronger. At this stage, the relevant information is categorized, tagged, analyzed and consolidated. Combining insights helps solve the problem. At this stage, technology can play a diminished but nevertheless significant role by offering insights at one place. For example, a consolidated mash-up of charts in a dashboard can show sales trends in one chart, social media sentiment trend in another, a tag-cloud of side effects in a third and switch-over patterns in a fourth. All these put together may help in understanding the cause of the problem.

Initiative stage: This is a purely human activity since it involves taking decisions around the “now what” part i.e. action. The information has been extracted, intelligence gathered, insights derived, problems identified and now it is time for initiatives i.e. finding and implementing a solution to the problem.

For instance, if there is substantial noise by a social advocate around side effects of a particular drug on Twitter, the brand team can implement digital initiatives and engage the advocate for spreading information around managing side effects using (hypothetical example) a vegan diet.

In summary, for efficiently implementing social media analytics programs to solve business problems, managers have to optimize the use of technological and human resources in the process, as they traverse the continuum of information-intelligence-insights-initiatives.

1. Machines rarely deal well with human emotions. Natural  language processing  software or textual analysis software may be good at recognizing  patterns of how certain keywords appear in certain sequence and how that can be interpreted, but when it comes to understanding opinions of patients or reasons for switching drugs or therapies, they rarely do a good job. That is why you need human analysts or medical experts  in the team who exactly understand the content and tell the truth.
2. The problem isn’t always “big data”. Most approaches to social media analytics start with the assumption that data volume is very high and users are increasingly conversing, thus compounding the problem. This may be true of certain consumer goods, but when it comes to healthcare and prescription drugs, big data is not always the issue. In fact, for prescription drugs, data volume doesn’t become “big data” during pre-launch, launch and post launch phases; it takes years before the drug is adopted by a mass of people and data becomes big. By then, there is not much left to change.
3. Statistical sampling doesn’t work in qualitative analytics. It is always safer to look at the entire quantum of data for drawing conclusions; a sample section of the data rarely gives an accurate big picture. This is possible to be done during the decision making phase, since the data is not yet big. If you want to be confident about the accuracy and quality of analysis, there is substitute to manual analysis of large part of the data. Afterall, we are talking healthcare here; the analysis may have serious consequences.
4. Standard syndicated reports are limited in their value. Syndicated brand reputation report covering entire competitive landscape are good to have, but they rarely offer insights. They don’t solve problems or provide competitive advantage. Deeper dives are needed to reveal brand specific insights and most clients are often willing to pay for custom investigations.
5. Influence of patient generated content extend beyond geographic limits. Clients seem to believe that social influence is local. So most affiliate (country level) offices aren’t interested in what is being said internationally, although the brand is global. The reality is, patients read everything that appears in searches and don’t necessarily spend time in selecting comments only from their geography. In order to understand what influences patients in a certain geography or country, it is better to focus on the content being consumed there, instead of focusing on the content being produced there.
6. Social media analytics is not an event; it is a process. Short term analysis of patient comments done within a time window, may reveal insights. But that may be only a section of truth. In order to understand long term trends, changing opinions, shifts in brand perception and conversation triggers that caused them, continuous monitoring is needed.
7. Adverse events reporting using social media is rare. Patients rarely use social media for actively reporting adverse events. Even if we assume that they inadvertently do so, most of the times, social media content doesn’t qualify as reportable adverse event.
8. Even if there are some AEs, reporting can be easily managed. Some may not buy point 5 and may believe that there may be some patients who report AEs using social media. There is so much to be gained from listening to consumers that there’s no point in sacrificing it all for concerns around AE reporting. Social media AEs are easy to manage. Define a process. Create protocols. Delegate responsibilities and put a team together. Treat social media as another channel for reporting AEs, just like other channels such as a reporting form on the website, or a call center number or through physicians.
9. It is critical to think from the consumer’s perspective. Social media is not about large corporations and drug manufacturers; it is about people and their lives. Patients talk more about their own condition and their experience with your brand. Social media is deeply integrated into the patient’s treatment journey. Patients use social media as soon as symptoms start appearing and continue right through, until they are cured or come to manage a lifelong condition . This way of thinking should lead to social media initiatives targeted at patients at each stage of the treatment journey.
10. Integrated marketing is the right approach. To build a sustainable competitive advantage using social media, we have to think holistically. Social media is a part of the digital marketing strategy, which in turn is a part of the larger brand marketing strategy. You don’t have to do all the marketing in-house. Partner with an agency which can work with you across the digital/social media marketing continuum i.e. social media monitoring and analysis, integrating insights into the marketing mix, social media marketing and engagement and dollar impact measurement.

(Views are personal.)

Quantitative analytics products: These are based on the approach of automating the analytics process. Typically the assumptions here are: the data is too big to analyze, the data discovery, extraction and indexing process is tedious, generating an output will take time etc. These are all realistic challenges which companies solve using automated tools and technologies. The analytics products here may include counting software (those which count keywords and phrases, links to your blogs, web traffics, no of clicks, click-through rates, conversions, likes, dislikes, views, etc.).

Although there can be advance levels of counting such as establishing funnels, understanding responses to various web-page designs, comparing campaigns on various platforms and what not, counting in itself is not analytics. These software usually do insufficient justice to the qualitative aspect of data or user behavior. Advance textual analytics software or natural language process systems also address those issues based on pre-developed taxonomies and ontologies but their accuracy is a significant obstacle and however advanced they claim to be, these rarely match human intuition.

Qualitative analytics services: What machines cannot do, human beings have to do. No machine can understand and interpret data better than a trained human mind. Such an offering can be based on number of hours billed, number of resources employed, their skill set, location of work etc. Human analysts read through the data, qualitatively interpret and analyze it, categorize it, tag it and consolidate findings. Such approach is best to determine qualitative analytics such as conversation themes, product preferences, reasons for liking and disliking, trends, opinions, recommendations, views on features and comparative analytics etc. The biggest issue here is scalability. Although highly accurate and of a high quality, such analytics output cannot be scaled.

Hence the blended approach: quantitative and qualitative analytics together to produce a coherent meaningful analytics output.

Even with this there is no guarantee that actionable insights will be evident from the analytics. For effective problem solving and providing meaningful actionable insights, far more is needed; correct diagnosis of the problem, domain expertise, learning from historic examples, experience in solution design, understanding of the macro environment and ability to mobilize resources and implement solutions. In short, consulting skills are needed. Those, only human being can do.

If you want to solve business problems based on analytics, don’t just buy software or hire or rent people. Find a vendor that does it all; provides analytics software, provides human analytics services and provides actionable solutions.

More often than not, digital marketers or social media marketing managers tend to chase their next successful campaign. There is ample advice on the web around campaign management. Typically, such content address tactical issues such as how to initiate a digital or social media campaign, how to optimize it, how to improve click-through rates, how to perform better on conversions, which analytics tools to use, how to integrate multiple campaigns into one platform etc. If you find often find yourselves consuming such advice, there is a good chance that you manage such digital initiatives for your employer or you work at an agency that manages them for clients.

This series of blog posts is for companies or managers how haven’t aren’t there yet. Which direction would you take if you are starting from scratch? Which factors would you consider if you are asked to set up digital marketing at a company? Below is a framework that direction to think about this.

In upcoming blog posts, I will elaborate on both strategic as well as tactical aspects of this framework. I will also present another framework aimed at providing direction towards establishing a self-sustaining unit that creates value.

The most significant value proposition of this model is that it envisions the measurable parameters right from the beginning. The problem I am trying to solve it simple; never lose the sight of the “measurable”. What gets measured gets done. What gets done gets rewarded.

Digital and Social Media Marketing Strategic Framework

Plain and simple, it is about people.

The purpose of the framework is to comprehensively capture the digital marketing strategy of a company, brand, product or service or a mere campaign and effectively align it towards the ultimate objective of generating a voluntary customer referral that leads to organic and unpaid customer acquisition, growth in revenue and profitability.

The framework

This framework has a simple and unique nature. It captures all the elements of a successful digital marketing enterprise and allows the strategist to understand the relationship between the elements. The purpose of this is to identify and eliminate any misalignment between the elements and make the process of generating a customer referral smooth and efficient. In a successfully executed digital marketing campaign or strategy, all the elements will complement each other and amplify the benefits of each other and at the same time, nullify the negative effects. The elements should work together to provide process enablement and product enablement that will result not only in customer engagement but also customer enchantment, the essential factor in generating the referral.

The word enchantment is relevant here since engagement is not enough anymore since the customers’ expectations from the brands are rising day by day. The result of customer enchantment is proactive customer evangelism or voluntary un-paid customer referral and brand advocacy. Of course, throughout the process, customer is made to pass through the natural cycle of Awareness, Adoption, Repeat Purchase, Retention and Loyalty and this journey is managed well within this framework.

Since this is a strategic framework, execution level details may not be covered in this note, but that doesn’t make them any less important. At this stage, it would be appropriate to take a brief look at each element and its role in the greater scheme of things, i.e. in the framework. As for detail explanation of each element, I will be posting material on each one shortly.

By no means should I claim that the framework is perfect or universally applicable but through a collective endeavour and the generosity of my readers, we may aspire to reach there.

So let’s take a look.

Ideal Customer

I am of the opinion and this has been agreed by several thought leaders in the digital marketing arena that the term “target audience” doesn’t accurately capture the personality of the customers to whom marketers want to sell their products and services to and obtain an organic referral.

Demographic information very broadly defines the customer at a superficial level and doesn’t take into account soft aspects such as likes and dislikes, experience with the brand or personal preference, opinion or behaviour. It is rather difficult to quantify the soft aspects. Better methods of audience segmentation include socialgraphics, behaviourgraphics etc.

A more effective way to capture the personality of the customer is to use the concept of ideal customer. Here marketers can build a persona based on how their customer should go about his business. For instance, where is he/she likely to be found, which website are visited, what is the online behaviour of the customer, what competitor’s brands is he exposed to, what need is he trying to fulfil, what might be his expectations etc.

Other customers resembling this ideal customer persona can be captured in the fold of target audience.

Differentiation

Product marketing should focus on solving a specific problem that a customer has. Whether the customer is B2C consumer or a B2B client, there is always a higher chance of purchase when the customer is looking to solve a certain problem and product or a service satisfies the need.

In this era of limited available customer attention, it is a solemn duty of the marketer to clearly articulate the solution the product or a service offers, the need it satisfies or in more general terms, the differentiation it offers.

Failure to articulate the product or service differentiation clearly in a very limited amount of time, which may practically be seconds as far as the online or digital world is concerned, is sure to cause distraction and dilution the marketing communication. In a nutshell, the online marketing communication should articulate differentiation as quickly and clearly as possible.

Content/Media

The marketing communication or content will have to be the most attractive part. Relevant compelling content, clearly articulated differentiation and appropriate formats go a long way in enticing the customers.

Whether it is a blog post, or a whitepaper or a viral YouTube video or a banner advertisement or a text ad, or social media message or tweet or an update on Facebook brand page, the choice of media and its content should be well aligned with the above two factors i.e. ideal customer and differentiation.

For instance, a whitepaper is better suited to demonstrating thought leadership to a corporate client as regards an evolving technology, but to entice the same customer into purchasing software, a limited time discount promoting email may be more effective. Similarly promoting a consumer product on social media website may be more engaging that running display campaign offering discount on it. Choice of content and media depend on the objectives of the campaign, the nature of product or service, nature and requirement of the customer and various other factors.

Platforms

Once the ideal customer, differentiation and content/media are concretely established in alignment with the business objectives or marketing objectives, the choice of platform becomes easier.

Although multiple platforms may be used for single objectives (for instance, to solve customer problems, a toll free number and a call centre set up may be as useful as a twitter account or a website chat window) or one platform may be used to serve various objectives (for instance a blog may be used to promote products, offer discounts, engagement of customers with thought leadership material, land people on transactional or lead capture pages or address customer issues), the challenge lies in selecting the most effective and efficient platform that is best suited to a specific objective and optimising the process.

Digital Citizens

The composition of the team that runs the social marketing enterprise of a company is very different from the one that runs say accounting or costing or manufacturing operations or shipping for that matter.

In these times when almost everyone is online, it can be challenging to hire people with the right digital mind set. People are a crucial piece of the puzzle and there is rarely a margin for error here. Besides the fact that some level of technical expertise is needed, the team should have a service mentality. Customer is the reason for our being. Digital domain needs people who live online, understand technology and its evolution, adaptable, smart content creators, people who are experts in generating idea and ready to put them into action immediately.

Hubspot calls them digital citizens.

Building a social media team is as interesting as it is challenging.

Ecosystem/Value Co-creators

As far a digital marketing concerned, it is difficult to find one agency or company that offers everything and yet is best in the business, perhaps cheapest as well.

As my fellow digital marketers would know, even isolated marketing campaign needs collaboration between client, agency, supplier, infrastructure provider etc. Usually it is the configuration of the ecosystem and how well it collaborates that defines success than one company with one great idea, however brilliant it may be. Hence, choosing who participates in the enterprise activity is crucial.

For instance, an IT service provider expert in building intranets isn’t the same as a search marketing company, expert in keyword research, although it may have search marketing services in its portfolio. I didn’t use the word “partner” here because the participating agency or provider should not only partner but also create value help in co-creating value to say the least.

ROI Model

This is arguably the most important part. Every marketer these days seems to be obsessed with the ROI and spends half of his time in figuring out how to measure ROI.

Usually ROI would stand for Return on Investment, but I would go a step further and call it Return on Involvement.

Investment connotes emotionless expenditure and a shareholder mentality whereas involvement encapsulates passion and ownership. Merely throwing money at the problem and expecting a percentage above the breakeven level is a parochial approach. Intangible benefits derived by a passionately advocating the brand has a longer lasting monetary value.

Having said that, it is also essential to establish how we define success in financial terms. It is essential to establish revenue drivers and cost driver and hence profit drives. Some may also want to establish contribution drivers. It is important to look at campaigns a series of steps to make the customer loyal and invest accordingly instead of thinking of short term revenues generated by one campaign.

Customer’s life time value is more important than cost of one click or impression or lead. Same is true with the cost of product or service.

Technology / Analytics

What gets measured gets done. The beauty of digital marketing precisely lies in the fact that it is measurable.

Having established all the above elements, it is now time to create marketing metrics. What will be measured in marketing depends on the objectives. Digital marketers usually measure website traffic, ad impressions, searches performed, clicks, conversions, leads, opened emails, click through rates, fans, friends, blog views, comments, brand mentions and a whole gamut of things.

But how about measuring visibility, reputation, influence, and sentiment? How should we measure them? Here is where a range of software systems come in. Some of better known system include: Google Analytics, Omniture or Adobe Online Business Optimization Suite, Webtrends, Meltwater, Radian6, Alterian, Visible Technologies, Neilsen-BuzzMetrics, StatsCounter, HootSuite etc. All of these are used for measuring specific metrics and which one to be used depends on the activity pursued.

Process Enablement

The way all the elements interact with each other to create process that runs the routine business operation successfully is critical. The process entails the entire gamut of activities that are directly or indirectly responsible for creating a customer experience. The configuration of the set of activities that create a customer experience extends well beyond a mere consideration of multiple touch points. It operates at a cross channel level. Whether the customer purchases the product at a retail store or pays for it online;  complains using a toll free call center number or rates and reviews in social media; recommends it over twitter or compares prices using smart phone, the process is designed in way that enables or facilitates a pleasant customer experience. To design the experience, it is essential to establish the ideal customer profile and day-in-the-life-of-ideal-customer scenarios. Establishing multiple such scenarios and aligning the element that creates the process which engages the customer meaningfully either online or offline, in a meaningful and engaging way, is the objective of this framework.

Product Enablement

The importance of the product itself, its features, functionality, price, availability, quality, its perceived value and ability to fulfill a customer need cannot be overemphasized. This is the most important aspect. The art of marketing is not so much about selling what you make but knowing what to make. All the elements align to create a process that engages the customers meaningfully over multiple online and offline touch points, to solve a problem that the customer is trying to find a solution for. A product fulfils a need or solves a problem. Hence product enablement is about satisfying customer’s need and all the factors working collaboratively will ensure successful product enablement.

Customer Engagement

At this stage, there is not much left to be done by the company and it is more about how the customer feels about the brand, what he experiences, how does he react and what impression is left on him. All the previous steps must be aligned towards this step. The right questions to ask before the start of the process are: What is the desired response from the customer after he experiences our product or service complete? Is the customer engaged? What indicates his engagement?

Defining the engagement metrics may be useful at this stage. These may be different for different products or services. For instance, engagement may be indicated by:

1)      Customer visiting the website, spending time on it, learning about the products

2)      Watching product videos, demo videos, clicking on links that lead to detail product information

3)      Reading reviews, comments by other users on review sites, company websites, social forums, etc.

4)      Comparing prices, comparing features, comparing value against price

5)       Asking questions, calling up customer care, participating in online chats and asking meaningful questions

6)      Submitting email address, filling out forms, transacting, downloading whitepapers

7)      Reading blogs, commenting and participating in discussions etc.

8)      Making a purchase or showing a strong purchase intention

Customer Enchantment

For details on enchantment, I strongly recommend reading Guy Kawasaki’s blog post on “How to enchant your customers”, but for the sake of this framework, let’s just say that enchantment goes well beyond a mere engagement. With the onslaught of marketing and advertising, with dwindling customer attention span, the digital world extending into infinity and content being produced in volumes every millisecond on the web, it wouldn’t be unfair if the customer to expects something more than just exposure. The customer wants to be enchanted. If he is to pay you money for what you have to offer, he expects to be intrigued into believing that you are really the best, the most value for money and easiest option available to him.

Enchantment results into the formation of a strong intangible bond that isn’t really captured by management terms such as “Customer Loyalty” or “Customer Retention”. They are all a part of customer enchantment. Enchantment, being so subjective, is hard to define. Enchantment encompasses customer’s trust, belief in the quality, affordability, friendliness of customer service, functional value, loyalty, social acceptance, interest, need, etc.

Customer Referral

All the above done well will result in customer enchantment, which forms the basis for customer evangelism. Once a customer becomes an evangelist for your product or service, he offers a voluntary referral. This applies to the whole range of products and services ranging from FMCG products to complex B2B softwares. The referral can be offered either online or offline thorough various channels.

But the work has not finished yet. Giving a reason to the customer to make a referral is not the same as facilitating his giving a referral. Companies that depend on customer referrals to generate new business should also make it very easy for them to create referrals. Creating technological capabilities that make the referral process easy goes a long way in increasing volume and frequency of the referrals. Simple things such as submit review section, recommendation and rating, commenting on blogs, linking to review sites, social networking sites, social bookmarking and content sharing site etc. will make the referral generating process quick and easy.

In summary, to create a successful digital marketing plan that generates customer referrals,

1)      Ensure that all the elements are well defined and clearly established

2)      Configure the enterprise that all the elements complement each other, work in tandem, amplify benefits and nullify deficiencies

3)      All the elements work together to create a digital sales and marketing machine that delivers the benefits of product and experience of the process

4)      All the above comes together to not only meaningfully engage the customer but also enchant him so that he is compelled to offer a voluntary organic referral and the company realizes his lifetime value

Note – The structure of this framework is based on the Service Star Framework developed by Dr. Stefan Michel, presently at IMD Switzerland. To a limited extent, some ideas have also been used as “inspiration” from John Janstsch’s famous book, The Referral Engine.

In my following post, I will focus on the role digital medium in general and digital marketing in particular, will play in influencing the healthcare industry. Please note that the following are my views and not a commentary on the above mentioned post.

Digital medium will strongly influence various aspects of the healthcare sector, not just in India but globally. Although US / Europe uses the digital world for creating, consuming, sharing and enhancing health care related content extensively and this phenomenon is being increasingly adopted in India as well. More and more healthcare professionals including doctors, general physicians, healthcare service providers, surgeons, pharmaceutical distributors etc. are spending time online and with smart devices. So are patients and that is a good news for digital marketers. This holds a special significance for the healthcare industry.

Let’s take a look at why and how digital activities around medicine and healthcare will growth and shape the healthcare industry in a significant way in future.

Trust and social media – A big part of consumer behavior revolves around the “recommendation” game in social media. As much as social media is considered powerful by modern marketers, it’s been a difficult challenge for marketers to generate authentic referrals in social media. And it is not a function of amount of money spent on social media promotions, but far more dependent on how good the product is. Good products will get good recommendations. If one’s health is concerned, trust is single most important factor. A strong recommendation from a close friend about a certain treatment or medicine will surely push it in the consideration set of the customer, if not drive its adoption. Social media makes it quick and easy.  People are more likely to trust recommendations from their close friends on a social network, more so when it comes to healthcare.

Behavioral targeting – The nature of the health care industry is such that behaviorism targeting is difficult to achieve using mass media marketing. Every person has a different problem, a different medical condition, a different patient history and a different requirement. Almost all treatments start with a personal consultation and a customized plan. The beauty of the digital medium is that it allows total personalization. Sending relevant messaging to an individual based on his medical problem and healthcare needs is easier through the digital medium than traditional medium.

Data based decision making – We have come a long way from the times of printed heath records, transcription records and patient history reports. Modern software, such as Amalga and HealthVault by Microsoft, allow for online data storage of medical records and health care information, not only at an enterprise level but also at an individual level. Imagine a team of doctors, getting access to a patient’s medical history before he is admitted or arrives for consultation. Decisions based on digital data of medical records, patient history, previous prescription details will make the process far more quick, accurate and efficient. That will make everyone’s life easy.

Smart devices, integration and sharing – The instruments such as Heart Rate Monitors, Blood Pressure Monitors, are becoming more and more nimble and compatible with other devices. These can be plugged into computers and their data can be captured and stored into online accounts. Smartphones are becoming compatible with such devices. In future, a wide range of healthcare devices will be smarter and will have inbuilt digital sharing capabilities, and they will also be able to integrate with mobile computing devices such as tablets, netbooks, notebooks, and smart phones. This will makes access to critical data fast and convenient. Doctors can surely make use of these data sharing capabilities during critical situations in ICU and emergency rooms and literally save lives.

Marketing and promotions – The digital medium has proven very effective in generation buzz and running promotions. By promotions, I mean sales, discount schemes, seasonal promotions, online offers, e-commerce deals etc. The beauty of the digital medium is that it gives marketers an opportunity measure what they have spent on and optimize campaigns. Healthcare providers and related businesses such as diagnostic centers will have to make efforts to get attention of online consumers. The opportunity is large and so are challenges. Social commerce websites such as Groupon, SnapDeals, will prove to be useful in generating bulk business for healthcare service providers. Pharmaceuticals companies, hospital chains, diagnostic center will implement digital engagement programs and these will consume significant marketing dollars.

Widget and applications – Here comes the fun and exciting part. Technology companies can design and develop diverse range of applications and widgets for diagnosis and knowledge sharing. The capabilities of these widgets will extend well beyond the simple BMI calculators available today. These apps will be designed around symptoms and treatments, disease classification and diagnosis, drugs and remedies, alternative and therapeutic healthcare remedies etc. Although the widgets will not be replacement for personal physician consultation, they will surely help in deciding the direction of the treatment. These will be hosted on the web, on smart phones, on smart medical devices, and will be sharable on blogs and social networks.

Online presence of related industry – There are various industries associated with the healthcare industry which increasingly rely on the online medium for growth and survival at times. For instance, life and health insurance companies spend large chunks of marketing budgets on display advertising, online lead generation and online customer engagement. Life and health insurance industry, closely related to the health care industry, present ample opportunities for online collaboration for active customer acquisition and engagement. Another such industry is medical tourism. In future, health tourism packages will be sold online and travel industry will also have a share of it. In future, western hospitals will tie up with their eastern counterparts, work with a certain insurance provider and healthcare services providers to sell medical tourism packages and a ton of these will be researched and sold online.

Clinical research and development – Needless to say, the digital world provides ample opportunities for breakthrough innovations in developing cures for hitherto unconquered diseases. The Human Genome Project, is a live example of how people around the globe made use of the digital medium for mapping the genome. A single platform used by experts around the globe to share, analysis and interpret clinical data, design and test solutions to healthcare problems and invent new theories for complex disease is only possible through the online medium.

All the above points make a strong case for the healthcare industry to think of new ways to leverage the internet and other smart platforms, for reaching customer with solutions that they need. Digital marketing is a simple, effective, cheap and measurable way to reach healthcare customers. Once this catches momentum, the health care delivery process will change forever.

Please share your views on the above.

Companies and businesses have made a shift in their thinking about the role of social media over the years. Companies now recognize that social media no longer plays a supplementary role in building their brand; it rather plays a strategic role. Anything companies do, they should chart out the implications of their action in social media sphere. A great example of this can be found from this video by David Meerman Scott about Dave Carroll’s experience with United Airlines. 

Businesses are now leveraging the power of the social media to engage customers. But what is the real aim of engaging customers through social media? The best marketing strategy for any business is marketing through customers. When customers talk about products or services and bring in more customers, all marketers have to do is to find more such customers. There is a subtle line between word of mouth marketing and customer evangelism. The only ROI worth chasing from social media is the ROI from customer evangelism. Ironically, it is the most difficult to measure. Or is it? 

The most obvious inference to derive from this is that the aim of all social media efforts of a company should be to produce or create customer evangelism i.e. passionate advocacy of products and services by customers. This is illustrated by the following diagram (Yes, © Copyright here, I developed this!) 

 

When a company relies on web content for establishing its brand, I call it content evangelism. Read more on Content Evangelism, Tribes and Future of Internet Marketing, here. 

Sound pretty simple, isn’t it? What is more difficult to achieve is making this as a single goal of all customer service activities, spread across departments and at all levels of the organization. 

The idea is to align the entire social media enterprise of the company to a single idea, i.e. engaging customers in ways that lead to customer evangelism. 

The question then is how to go about engagement and evangelism? I will address that in my next post. Keep watching! 

The people with higher nodal influence may be called “central individuals” who tend to adopt ideas earlier than the mass. Such social structures can be used to predict epidemics by tracking these central individuals. The concept is surely agreeable and useful, but more importantly, this technique is efficient and low cost.  

So what does it mean for a digital marketer? Or a social media marketer for that matter?

Let us think in terms of the target audience. It means that when a social media campaign or a promotion starts, these central individuals are the once who will adopt it first. Shouldn’t we design the campaign to impress them initially? The target audience now changes to a few number of such nodal influencers from the traditional mass.  

Social media marketers ought to focus not on the mass but on those who influence the mass. Pareto principle will apply here also. 20 % of people will hold 80% of the influence. So, while starting the campaign, the audience is that 20% and later it becomes 80%. The influence is non linear. Hence marketing should also be non linear. Thus, as a marketer, I would spend 80% of my marketing budget to influence these 20% of the central individuals.

This is much greater efficiency with a fixed budget constraint as far as social media marketing is concerned and marketers may be able to reduce the overall marketing budget as well.

The question is how will you map the social network to identify these high influence nodes? How will you understand the structure of the networks?