M|A|R|K|E|T
(ROI) from such initiatives is uncertain. Its still early days in India. Chindarkar says that social media campaigns in the Indian pharma industry are still in the nascent stage because the industry still believes in and follows the traditional methods of promotions through the MR. This traditional marketing strategy accounts for almost 17-20 per cent of sales revenue while he estimates that social media campaigns would not be more than two to three per cent as of now, even including digital media like websites for both doctors and patients, healthcare mobile applications, online information tools etc. Lifestyle brands, nutraceuticals and health foods are taking the lead here. Convincing managements to increase digital spend would require a clear picture of the exact ROI from such
spend. Chindarkar concedes that though ROI is difficult to measure in the short term, some indicators like number of likes, number of page hits etc are generally taken into consideration.
Going from numbers to insights If the current trend keeps up, social media evangelists should have no problem convincing pharma managements to up their digital spend. Sharing some interesting statistics from Indegene's digital initiatives in India, Gupta reveals that the average time spent by doctors on digital activities has gone up by 40 per cent in the last two years while the average numbers of doctor registrations has doubled in the last two years. A majority of doctors enrolled in Indegene's programmes are from Tier-2 cities and this too shows up some
important insights. But the numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. "The biggest challenge for pharma companies," feels Chindarkar, "is not just promoting their brands, but how to build goodwill among consumers and customers alike. How can they engage with doctors, how can they influence them? The first movers within pharma will have a definite advantage." Thus, Chindarkar stresses that laying out clear objectives while planning a social media campaign is very critical. Pharma companies looking at social media options should be very clear on these points: Why are they engaging? Whom are they engaging? And how are they going to track, analyse and optimise?
Taming the data demon Launching
a
social
media campaign is just the beginning of the company's engagement with its stakeholders. "The social media universe creates tremendous amount of data which can help decision sciences," says Gupta as "social media creates two unique platforms; the first creates a channel to engage stakeholders, most popularly through websites, and the second, via realtime market feedback." Transforming this data into insights will be crucial, because mere monitoring of social media campaigns is not going to be reason enough to continue to pump resources into the campaign. Chindarkar points out that while companies use various social media monitoring tools like Radian6, Sysomos, etc for measuring campaigns, one has to manage and filter (the data) carefully, as these tools generate only numbers. So it is
Metrics for analysing social media campaigns ndegene Lifesystems has metrics and key perfomance indicators (KPIs) defined at various stages of its clients’ campaigns, based on the objectives of the campaign and while these are confidential, these are some examples to indicate the scope of insights and learnings that can be gleaned from such social media campaigns
I
Example 1) Expert social networking webplatform enabled to capture analytics Indegene developed a social networking website as a virtual community involving patients with Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia (CML) and related stakeholders i.e. HCPs, patient groups, etc. using Indegene proprietary physician engagement tool. Pre-andpost analytics and reporting of outcomes was part of the campaign deliverables. The platform was programmed with all the necessarily regulatory restrictions and audit mechanisms to meet all regulatory requirements
breast cancer.
Social Analytics ● Impact map– Placement of prominent social media platforms into a grid of comment polarity and user interaction volume based on qualitative analysis ● Impact tracker- Reflection of real-world developments in social media ● Effectiveness analysis– Insights from social media events evaluated within timeframeand buzz generation- based analytical frameworks ● Case study preparation– Value-add; a casestudy on real world impact of social media centered petition initiative ● Effectiveness analysis– Insights from social media events evaluated within timeframeand buzz generation- based analytical frameworks ● Case study preparation– Value-add; a casestudy on real world impact of social media centered petition initiative.
Social analytics ● User Demographics– profession, HCP specialty, zip code ● Simple analytics: Number of visitors (new and returning), sections visited, time spent in each section, assets viewed, time for each asset, benchmarking data ● Polling– Polls, surveys and reports ● Complex analytics
Example 3) Social media based conference tracking
Example 2) Product X in breast cancer – social media sentiment analysis
● Discussion profile tracker– Segmentation of interaction by topic and complementation with sentiment analysis ● User analysis- Identification, profiling and analysis of opinion shapers across platforms ● Implication analysis– Insights into poten-
A global pharma company with key stakes in the oncology space requested public sentiment analysis pertaining to regulatory and payer decisions regarding product X in
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EXPRESS PHARMA
tial implications of the social media chatter about the studies
A global pharma with products in oncology requested a social media buzz analysis of two key studies presented at ASCO 2011. The objectives were two-fold: a comparative analysis as well as real world implications.
Example 4) Competitor activity analysis in social media A Top 10 pharma company requested identification and analysis of social media engagement of its competitors. The insights informed the development of the client’s social media engagement strategy.
Social analytics ●
Social media from strategic perspective– Insights into strategic employment of social media by competitors ● Level of success analysis– Analysis of success levels of competitors’ social media initiatives ● Case study preparation– Case studies on successes and failures of pharmaceutical companies in the social media space ● Social media strategy formulation– Identification of best practices and inputs into formulation of client’s social media engagement model
Example 5: Industry engagement with social media platform A leading pharma company requested an analysis of the level of engagement of premier pharma companies with Twitter and the relative effectiveness of such engagements.
Social analytics
www.expresspharmaonline.com
Social analytics ●
Twitter activity landscape– Overview of presence of the pharma industry on Twitter. ● Individual activity map– Research encompassing quantitative and qualitative analyses to map the Twitter presence of each company.
February 1-15, 2013