Online DTC Blog Entry Two: A Framework, Good Web Sites and Good Reading

In our continuing discussion about direct to consumer (DTC) marketing within the medical device industry, there are a number of areas in which we will focus. Among them is getting a better understanding about the health seekers—or consumers—who frequently search the Internet for medical information. Appreciating the search habits and preferences of these individuals is useful information for device manufacturers who are attempting to create an effective web presence targeting the consumer audience.

Unlike health professionals—whose spiking web usage we will discuss in a later blog-- online health seekers, according to a recent Pew Internet project, were very satisfied with informative, fast, interactive sites that conveyed a ‘seal of approval’ image and offered helpful links to educate them more on the disorder they were researching.  Adversely, health seekers turned away from sites that were too commercial, and that lacked the endorsement of a trusted independent organization. Likewise if they appeared unprofessional, or if you could not determine the source of information or tell when the information was last updated, these features proved equally discouraging to consumers.  In short, when health seekers felt the sites were not trustworthy, they abandoned these sources.  Some interesting recent statistics have revealed that 55% of these health seekers conduct their own online medical research before visiting their physicians, and, upon diagnosis, 41% say they will be involved in treatment. 

One aspect of an effective online DTC campaign that device companies must consider as part of its overall Internet marketing effort is how to establish an educational, ‘trustworthy’ and ‘approved’ presence. There are a number of steps marketers must take, among them creating compelling graphics for pre-launch non-branded, or ‘condition’, web sites as well as forging partnerships with consumer health sites and insurance providers.

And while we plan to go into much more detail about these topics and the myriad other components to a comprehensive DTC campaign on the Internet, for now, read on for suggestions of a framework for your online DTC campaign.

The starting point of a well-integrated online DTC marketing campaign involves planning in three general areas: positioning, educational content and outreach. At this point, your marketing team also has to decide on the best web-based tools and software required to drive the online program, ideally a software package that establishes a unified theme that gets pushed out to the consumer.

The positioning phase is the earliest phase of activity. Positioning is viewed as a creative undertaking, in which all collateral is also made available in a web environment. It is the integration of traditional work products, such as messaging, design, and logo, within the web campaign.  Marketers and interactive technicians need to generate messaging, choose key words that they will promote for search engine optimization, design and produce banner ads, and basically put a fair amount of image-related, online media in place for use throughout the life of the campaign.

Perhaps the most extensive phase is the development of educational content, or the point at which the marketing team is actually building the patient education components, such as product and condition web sites; virtual product catalogs; medical animations; syndicated content (which usually includes animations), clinical outcomes, demonstrations, information sheets and talk-to-your-doctor guides, as well as a range of web-based physician tools. 

Again, the level of sophistication of the web-based software is critical, and it is vitally important to research the people and programs that can provide the best service and support for developing robust graphic illustrations and animations; integrating themes and data; and for measuring progress.

The outreach phase of the program includes a variety of tasks more like traditional public relations activity. This involves a checklist of items such as determining the electronic commercial ad buys on a consumer health sites, search engine optimization—which is a means of associating key search words with links to your disease management or product site-- and posting electronic news and media materials to the product web site.

It also includes utilizing web-based tools in place for program measurement and metrics. It is important to have built an online program with software components that allow the marketing team to measure its success. While the metrics may not be a reflection of how many devices are sold—that is, the traditional ROI model-- they can reveal how many consumers are printing out product data (presumably for their doctor), the number of web tools being used and how many informational resources are being completed.

As for affiliations with top shelf consumer health web sites, which, in essence, afford device companies the important ‘seal of approval’ they seek, following are a number of excellent web sites worth researching. 

Centers for Disease control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov)
Health finder (www.healthfinder.gov)
Health Web www.healthweb.org)
HIV InSite (www.hivinsite.ucsf.edu)
MayoClinic (www.mayoclinic.com)
Medem (www.medem.com)
MEDLINEplus (www.medlineplus.gov)
National Women’s Health Information Center (www.4women.gov)
NOAH: New York Online Access to Health (www.noah-helath.org)
Oncolink®: a University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center Resource (www.oncolink.upenn.edu)

For more interesting health seeker data, following are two superior reports worth reviewing:

Susannah Fox and Lee Rainie, “Vital Decisions: How Internet users Decide What Information to Trust When They or Their Loved Ones Are Sick.” Pew Internet American Life Project, May 22, 2002

Joseph Turow, “Discussions of Health Web Sites in Medical and Popular Media.” Annenberg School for communications, University of Pennsylvania. A Report to Consumer Web Watch, May 2003.

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