By Varsha Eluri, Analyst

Trying to understand the current landscape of social media can be an overwhelming task, let alone coming up with innovative strategies that help you make full use of the potential of the social media space to elevate your own brands. But as social media becomes a bigger and bigger part of our lives, it is important that Healthcare marketers think about what that means for their audience, and ultimately their brands.  Not engaging with the current trends can mean not engaging with your audience and significantly decreasing visibility, interest, and loyalty for your brand.

Making healthcare marketing Pinteresting

One of the latest trends is Pinterest. For those of us who may have been living under a rock (J), Pinterest is a visually driven social network that allows its users to create virtual ‘boards’ where they can ‘pin’ original ideas and content in the form of pictures and videos that pique their interest. The company’s use of the adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” has steadily taken it from 418,000 unique visitors in May 2011 to 11.7 million unique visitors in Jan 2012, making it the fastest site in history to cross the 10 million mark (comScore). Pinterest can now proudly claim to be the third most popular media platform after Facebook and Twitter.

With the rapidly decreasing attention spans and wavering loyalties of the current population, the Healthcare industry needs to embrace new mediums to engage their audience. It has been found that nearly 60% of American adults look for their health information online.

And recently, a study from Health Research Institute (HRI) at PwC US entitled, “Social media likes healthcare: From marketing to social business,” found that one-third of consumers now use social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and online forums for health-related matters, including seeking medical information, tracking and sharing symptoms, and broadcasting how they feel about doctors, drugs, treatments, medical devices and health plans.

Additionally we know that women make approximately 80% of Healthcare decisions for their families (U.S. Department of Labor). Given this, Pinterest has just the right demographic (see below) to be a great resource for Healthcare marketers.

Pinterest By The Numbers

Brands on Pinterest

We are already seeing some Healthcare companies embrace Pinterest and its users in really unique ways.  A very apt example is Kotex, which created a really successful campaign through Pinterest.  Kotex found 50 influential women and analyzed them based on what they were pinning on Pinterest.  They then sent the women a virtual Kotex gift box.  If the recipient pinned the virtual gift, they would receive a real version of it in the mail.  According to the agency, Smoyz, almost 100% of the women posted about the gift on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – creating 2,200 interactions from the 50 virtual gifts sent out.  (5 Interesting Pinterest Marketing Campaigns, Mashable.com).

Kotex recognized the value of the Pinterest audience and engaged their social nature to create interest in the Kotex brand.  Healthcare brands need to similarly embrace their audience’s behavior and come up with ways to create campaigns that better resonate with them.  There are a variety of ways in which Healthcare marketers can embrace Pinterest, for example by creating content on Pinterest or by adding the “Pin it” functionality to the information on your website to allow users to add your content to the topics that are interesting to them.

The fact that Pinterest relies on imagery and video is a great way to allow your audience to connect with your brand on an emotional level.  Pinterest also takes advantage of the social nature of women/mothers and allows them to promote your brand through their own boards, as well as demonstrate relationships between your brand and other resources that you might not even have been aware of.

Healthcare marketers are embracing social media more and more, and now they have another network to add to the list: Pinterest.

By Kelli Diveley, Senior Search Manager

Facebook recently put on a big show to announce its new pages and media placements for brands. Brands now have more opportunities to connect with customers on the social network. But how can brand websites, owned social media properties and search work together to engage consumers?

Having the ability to drive consumers to a website and a social presence, such as a Facebook page, can ultimately enhance your search marketing campaign. Giving consumers the ability to choose where they access brand content leads to the best user experience and ultimately ensures all efforts are contributing to the brand’s business objectives.

Social vs. Search in brand relationships

While Google still ranks as the most visited site in the United States, Facebook is second in terms of frequency but first when it comes to time spent on site. According to Nielsen, in November 2011 Americans spent almost 7 hours a month on Facebook, more than three times higher than the amount of time spent on Google or YouTube.

Google, Yahoo and other search engines are the first place people turn to when looking for more information. Facebook on the other hand is a true destination, whose success has been driven by its ability to build a digital community where people go to share links, pictures, and connections with brands for which they have an affinity.

Consumers’ expectations of a brand on Facebook are much different than expectations of a brand’s website. A study published in December 2011 by CMO Council found that 67% of consumers “like” a brand for exclusive offers, 60% are looking to share their experience, and 57% are looking to find other “unique” experiences. In contrast, consumers visit a brand’s website because they believe it is a reliable source for product and service information. A Nielsen and NM Incite study recently found that only 15% of consumers prefer getting product information from a brand’s Facebook page, while 50% prefer to get this information from the brand’s website.

Getting your plan together

Search marketing can play a role in the promotion of a brand’s social presence by promoting a Facebook initiative within the paid search landscape.  Before allocating a portion of a search marketing budget towards promoting a Facebook presence, it is recommended that two preliminary steps are taken.

First, a social listening program should be executed to understand what consumers are saying about the brand and the category to determine the type of content the target audience would be interested in on Facebook.

Secondly, to fully understand the value of a brand presence on Facebook a measurement plan should be put in place to define the value of interactions such as likes, shares and comments. According to a report released by eVoc found that 47% of consumers who have “liked” a brand say this action has had no influence on their intent to purchase.

How to make it work

With a measurement plan and consumer insights from the social listening campaign in place, a strong search strategy to support Facebook efforts can be put into motion. There are two recommended solutions that brands can use to bolster Facebook efforts through paid search.

The first option is to provide a site link directing searchers to “like” the brand on Facebook. Site links are shown on the majority of branded searches and on average between 10-40% of searches for non-branded terms. This is a great way to integrate Facebook alongside other calls to action and it can be funded from existing paid search budgets.

Another option is showing a completely separate ad for Facebook in search results. Below is a mocked up example for Neutrogena, which shows the main ad for Neutrogena.com and an additional ad promoting their Facebook page in the paid search results on the right. While this strategy would likely result in incremental cost, it would increase a brand’s ownership of the search results page.

Keep your customers’ needs top of mind

An approach that gives the consumers the ability to choose where they access a brand’s content is optimal.  Forgoing a website in favor of a Facebook-only approach may result in a less than optimal experience for a consumer, and an even poorer result for a brand.

This strategy assumes that a majority of a brand’s target audience utilizes Facebook for product or shopping research purposes. Additionally, Facebook does not provide brand marketers the ability to accurately track the effect of third party media, making it difficult to determine if efforts are successful, whereas all actions taken on a brand’s website can be tracked.

It is best to utilize Facebook to augment a consumer’s brand experience, not replace existing channels such as a brand website. While there is a lot of potential upside in executing a successful Facebook strategy, a strategic framework needs to be in place to help ensure all efforts are contributing to the brand’s business objectives. At the end of the day, search’s role within the digital ecosystem is to provide consumers with easy access to the right brand content, whenever and wherever they are looking for it.

iPhone user: “Siri you’re beautiful”

Siri: “You say that to all the virtual assistants”

iPhone user: “Where are you from?”

Siri: “Like it says on the box…I was designed by Apple in California”

iPhone user: “Guess what?”

Siri: “Don’t tell me…you were just elected President of the United States, right?

iPhone user: “What is the meaning of life?”

Siri: “I find it odd that you would ask this of an inanimate object”

As apparent in the above conversations from Sirifunny.com, the debut of Apple’s iPhone 4S left many iPhone owners speculating about the potential uses for the phone’s new Siri feature. Siri is an intelligent software assistant that allows users to speak with their phone. The software can answer questions, schedule appointments, and write messages. Health policy analyst John S. Wilson wrote about potential uses of Siri for making emergency calls to 911. This article leads to further questions about how Siri might impact healthcare.

Siri understands the meaning behind an iPhone user’s questions by using a natural language interface. In one review, I noticed that Siri appears to use logic to determine symptoms of an illness. In this article, a CNN reviewer jokingly told Siri “I’m going to kill myself,” to which Siri replied, “I found four mental health agencies. Three of them are fairly close to you.”

This playful conversation demonstrates Siri’s capacity to answer healthcare related queries and begs the question of what other health insight the software can offer. Siri must understand that suicidal thoughts are symptoms of a mental health illness and can be treated in a mental health institution. Could Siri be used to suggest or refer owners to other medical treatment centers?

According to eMarketer.com, 17% of US mobile users research health information on the phone and 9% track their health using apps. Consumers already use iPhone apps to test their vision, take yoga classes, track their calorie intake, and look up disease information. With Siri, accessing healthcare information and advice will be even easier. Will patients skip a visit to their primary care physicians and go directly to a specialist upon Siri’s recommendation in the future?

Apple, as well as third party app developers, will play a greater role in the type of healthcare mobile users seek. It is interesting that Siri recommended a mental health agency instead of a private-practice psychologist in the CNN review. Recent controversy arose because Siri will not provide iPhone users with a list of abortion clinic locations. However Siri will direct an owner to the nearest pharmacy.

The ability for Siri to selectively offer healthcare information has important implications for healthcare marketers. One blogger noted that Siri does not always recommend a healthcare facility based on closest proximity. Healthcare businesses must ensure that their services are recommended highly through Siri so they are represented in the mobile space. If a pharmacy is not ranked highly on Siri’s “recommended” list, customers will be referred to their competitors. Siri’s search results come from a combination of the Wolfram Alpha answer-engine and the phone’s default search engine. Some strategies that have been suggested to potentially improve a Siri result ranking include:

• Optimizing mobile content for search engines
• Ensuring a complete and accurate Google Places Page
• Ensuring a complete and accurate Yelp profile
• Getting positive customer reviews and develop multimedia content

Businesses will also need to create apps that utilize Siri to better communicate with their audience once the software is opened to third party developers. Although Siri is a new tool, it is already demonstrating influence in the healthcare decisions of iPhone owners.

How many times have you attended a presentation and suddenly a cryptic, undecipherable slide appears on the screen and the presenter says: “You probably can’t read this but…”?   This is like holding up a blue and a green sweater in front of someone who is color blind and asking: “Which one do you like better?”  It leaves your audience baffled.  And your sweater won’t match your pants.

When presenting to any audience, we should always be mindful of who is part of that audience, what their needs are, and what their level of comprehension of the material presented may be.  And this is especially important when presenting data because graphs and charts are difficult to process when projected on a slide for most audience members.

The first question when presenting data-heavy content should really be whether or not a slide presentation is the best medium to communicate the information.  Remember, slides are like billboards on the highway: Ideally you should be able to get the main message in less than 5 seconds.  Would an Excel report be better, sent ahead of time for review, followed by a discussion?  Possibly.  But there are many cases when it is necessary and appropriate to present data on slides.

There are 3 basic design principles which will help make data slides appropriate for presentations: Simplicity, clarity and meaning.  In order to demonstrate these principles, I will start with a double-axis graph often found on data slides.

Simplicity

Get rid of anything that’s not needed. A good rule of thumb is that there should only be one takeaway per slide so don’t try to cram 5 things into one slide.  In our example, if we get rid of grid lines, line markers and simplify the vertical axis scales, the graph is already easier to read.

Clarity

If there is any possible way the audience can get confused by the slide, address the issue.  For example on our slide, I added labels to the 2 vertical axes and used colors to clearly indicate which line shows sales and which shows marketing spend.

Meaning

The last point is crucial: Focus on the meaning of the slide. Why is this slide here? What’s the takeaway?  In our example slide, I added a meaningful title and emphasized which data points are relevant.

Since this may still be a lot to absorb in 5 seconds for your audience, you can quickly build to this slide this way:

Once you’ve presented these slimmed down data slides and gotten your message across, you can always provide more complete graphs to your audience in the form of a handout.

If you need to present a lot of data, keep these simple principles in mind and your audience will thank you for it by shifting their focus from their smartphones to your presentation (and by remaining awake!).  As an agency dedicated to measuring the success of our clients’ online initiatives, this is something we understand very well and strive to bring to every client presentation.

Always keep in mind presentation design guru Nany Duarte’s golden rule: “Never deliver a presentation you wouldn’t want to sit through.”

It all begins with the user in mind;

Qual, quant, and 3^rd party data in hand,

key insights, through research, we always find

to connect a customer and a brand.

It is all about the user and how

they think and they behave and what they need

to be happier and healthier now.

When they succeed we, as IA’s, succeed.

When users are successful at their task

and engage with a product or a brand

the IA cheers; what more could you ask

then to have a happy user in hand?!

And that is why each IA always strives

to make experiences that change lives.

Going back to the beginning of the commercial web, agencies and consultancies were selling their proprietary content management solutions to clients. Before long commercial enterprise content management systems developed web capabilities while new web content management solutions also surfaced. It was more than a few years before corporations realized the merits of a commercial content management system rather than building their own. Commercial software (or open source) is cheaper, better quality, more feature rich and easier to maintain than home grown solutions. Throughout the last decade, hundreds of content management solutions have populated the marketplace in a dizzying array of prices and capabilities.

It is now 2011 and companies are once again forced to deal with servicing an entirely new class of devices – mobile phones and tablets. Mobile devices and tablets have unique form factors and a wide array of capabilities that open up enormous possibilities in healthcare marketing and in helping patients and healthcare professionals deal with the complex healthcare information they are presented with. Corporate IT departments are scrambling to deal with marketing demands in the mobile and tablet space.

How should mobile and tablet content and capabilities be delivered? That is a complicated question and the answer depends on each individual company, however, there are some best practices that should be followed. First, don’t reinvent the wheel. Leverage existing content management systems where they exist. It is relatively simple to define a new set of templates with most web content management systems that enable the organization to leverage existing content management structures (content types, workflow structures, etc.). The second option is to leverage a mobile specific platform. There are several in the market, such as Augme, however, it is unclear who is going to emerge as the leader in that space. Ultimately, the commercial content management systems will offer mobile specific capabilities in their systems, however, like 15 years ago when the need for web content emerged, the commercial vendors will lag customer needs while they figure out the best way to deliver new capabilities with their individual products. In the meantime, Razorfish Health will continue to help healthcare companies navigate the complex nature of delivering mobile and tablet experiences to their customers.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Razorfish Health is committed to the development of the future digital marketing talent of tomorrow.  Over the course of the last year, we’ve invited over 20 students from universities in the Philadelphia area to become part of our team for up to 6 months.  Our interns learn the ropes of our business and contribute their ideas directly to client projects – and more often than not, we even learn from them.  Read on to hear what recent intern Joshua Robbins has learned from his time with us this year.

As I finish up my six month stretch interning in the project management department at Razorfish Health, I wanted to take the time to reflect upon what I have seen while I was here. I have had a short but varied professional background so far – working as a process engineer on the manufacturing floor of Neutrogena, researching word choice of different types of leaders in the US army, and organizing volunteers for a soup kitchen in West Philadelphia. Even though the fields I have worked in are varied, I have come to find a bit of a pattern that emerges whenever I start a new job.

Step 1: Become dizzy from the new language of acronyms in the industry.

Step 2: Figure out the acronyms and realize how simple everything really is.

Step 3: Realize that it actually isn’t that simple and watch as my list of topics to learn grows really, really large.

Razorfish Health has followed this pattern – and our work here has proven to be anything but simple – but as I reflect on my time here, I’ve learned a few new things that I’ll take with me as my career continues forward.

1. The client comes first.

Coming directly from a manufacturing background, this idea was not as prevalent. In manufacturing we aimed to do things in a way that let us produce the most product at the highest quality at the cheapest price. This seemed logical enough to me and so I didn’t question it. At Razorfish Health there is an added element. Even if something may be the easiest and best for us, it is not necessarily the easiest and best for our client. If we have a system that works well but our client would like to use another system, we will make recommendations, but at the end of the day, our objective is to make it as easy as possible for the client to meet their objectives. We are a high end agency because we do good work and we value the clients’ needs above what we may be used to doing.  We tailor solutions for our clients – and our clients appreciate us all the more for it.

2. Our organization is built like a piece from a board game.

When I think of the structure of Razorfish Health, I think of a piece from the board game, ‘Sorry!’. Razorfish Health is small (the slim vertical side of the game piece), but it is part of a much larger organization (the flat side of the game piece). There tend to be benefits and drawbacks to both small and large companies and one great feature of Razorfish Health is that it has some of both. Benefits from the small side – I have had one-on-one lunches with three of the VPs here and I also feel like I can walk into anyone’s office and ask a question whenever I need (as long as it is not 9pm on the night before a new business pitch). On the large side – when I asked our HR director for international contacts within our agency network to reach out to for my next internship, she gave 16 email addresses about 15 minutes later. I feel like the culture here allows me to spread my arms out both wide and high.

This comes as a big asset to our clients as well because when they are working with one person in the company, that person has wide reach to everyone else here. On the flat side – we are small enough that most of us probably know most people here by name. At the same time we can reach out to our greater network for skilled people who bring specialty experience to our clients.

3. Creativity can be planned.

Artwork and creativity seem to me like they cannot be planned. If you try to constrict the artistic process, you will crush it. What I learned here is that when you have seen enough art go down, you know about how long it will take, who will need to work on it, and how much it will cost. It was fascinating to me when I heard a project manager tell me that it would take 80 hours for the creative department to design the pages of a website, because I didn’t think it was possible to be able to accurately predict how long it would take someone to brainstorm and construct a creative concept. When I asked this project manager how they knew this, it seemed like a simple answer:  “Well, I have seen them do this kind of thing many times before, and that’s what it takes.”

Razorfish Health hires experienced people, and I think that works in their favor. I’m told that scoping out a creative process is challenging to some agencies, but with experienced people steering the ship, it seems that there is science to the art – and creativity can be planned.

4.  Do things the long way (the right way).

The largest cost in manufacturing in America is re-work; redoing product because you messed up the first time. In fact, the purpose of my last job was to prevent this. I tracked downtime on the production lines and methodically looked at problem areas and then decided how to fix them. We would frequently be doing rework at the plant. I don’t see much rework happening here, at least not rework that is caused by our own inefficiencies (sometimes our clients want rework, but see #1 for my thoughts on that!).

I love the style of the project management department here because they all operate in a way which emphasizes a very important element- detail, detail, detail. I don’t think they even try to be detailed – it just comes naturally. There is a process in the way that they all go about things whether it is naming a file a certain way every time or recording every single detail which comes their way about a project or conversation.

Reflecting, I think it was silly that I initially felt slowed by this because I think that this is certainly the best way to do things. Our brains can only hold so much, and when you are working on fifteen projects at one time, it only makes sense to leave the details on paper and leave your brain empty for actually thinking. The project management department here thrives because it values (useful) process and procedure – and pushes back and challenges when process gets in the way.

5. Leaders care about people first.

This is something I have seen everywhere I have worked. The people at Razorfish Health are smart and talented. Some of them are smart, talented, and memorably charismatic. These are the people who are looked to as leaders in the organization. It does not matter what discipline or level, but the people who I see who do their job the best are the ones who are caring, amiable, and professional at the same time. It is truly inspiring to observe, and I continue to learn from just watching these people.

At the end of the day, two things are apparent – 1) We are all human, and we work the best and enjoy our jobs the most with people who are personable and 2) Leaders who are personable are the ones who turn task-work into something more exciting, note-worthy, and memorable. I think that this is the most important and translatable lesson, and I will continue to place myself into environments where this is prevalent so that I can always have a model to try to base my own behavior off of.

Most of what I have learned here has become so ingrained in me that it’s even hard to see these as learnings at this point.  One thing is clear – Razorfish Health will not just be a memory, but an organizational model that I will keep in mind regardless of whatever path I follow.

Recently, at Eye for Pharma Customer-Centric Conference, I gave the keynote speech to set the stage for the two day event. Here is the gist of that presentation which was intended to frame the fact that customer-centricity is a moving target, not a single insight that drives your marketing for a year. The five “realities” are:

1. Change is the new reality. And it is accelerating.
2. For everyone the world has turned upside down.
3. You are no longer in charge of your brand.
4. Each day you become less relevant to your customers (to doctors and patients alike.)
5. It’s not Share of Voice. It’s now Share of Influence.

Change is the new reality. Change is the current running like a rapid river under all of our marketing work. Digital adoption is an accepted reality among the populace but not yet fully-embraced among Biopharma marketers. Take the pulse of change and breathtaking pace by audience: doctors are buying iPads (40%!); they are online for their practice (8+ hours a week) upwards of 50% of specialists have opted-out from seeing Sales Reps; and finally according to Datamonitor, “…most calls end up at the sample closet.” And no clear strategies or replacement for a decades-old sales model is in place; true there are lots of fits-and-starts, but I can count two major Pharma companies who tried non-personal promotion through HCP self-service portals, and then pulled them down after failure to engage.

For those brands that rely heavily on offline TV and print, consumption of those traditional media is down year over year, and – especially radio and magazines. Across the board, Pew Internet says 74% of all adults are online – and even the 65+ group is growing.  I heard two women the other night speaking, both in their 80’s and one said, “I meant to let you know but I could not find your email address.” Even those who favor offline materials – as in over 65+ — are still using email and Search for health information.

Across the spectrum, health is a major area of engagement in the digital space with 80% of online Americans being health information seekers. The means that brands are less relevant to customers whose habits and attitudes are changing rapidly – unless they keep pace with this change in consumer habits.  Right now Biopharma is being left behind in the Age of Engagement.

So, for consumers and those that market to them, the world has turned upside down. For brand Biopharma marketers, even the insurance companies, PBM’s and drug stores, this turns the old media and push-marketing model closer to the graveyard. But marketers are not alone, for everyone the world has been turned on its head. Just think about how we consume media – from growing up with a few TV’s to now potentially having one family in the same room each consuming different media  – Dad watching TV, mom doing email, daughter using Foursquare to become Mayor of her favorite store and the son checking the online real-time stats for the sports event dad is watching. (Oh, and dad is skipping the pharma DTC spots with his DVR fast-forward.) I guess it is worth throwing in that they all watch video online – over 70% of online users did so last year. Although ComScore says on average each member of the family is exposed to 247 ad messages a day that bombardment was once overwhelming, now it has trained the patient/consumer to sort and filter what is relevant or engaging. What may seem like a series of data points and family observations is that the new reality is everyone is all over the place in how they consume information, interacting when they want, how they want.

Now, what is a little shocking is that this is not shocking to most of us who read that scenario I just described. This new “norm” has crept in and taken over – and it is still changing – the next generation will have an even higher bar for what they want and how they want it. I saw a fascinating post at a social media photo site a tourist at Versailles took of a little girl reaching out to touch a flat screen in one of the side rooms; he commented that when she realized she could not play with the image or change it with her hands, she shrugged and ran off. Just think of a pediatric brand that could use that behavioral insight to create tools and differentiate their brand.

All this means clients no longer control their brands. The fact is that your patients and doctors do.  And that means that the traditional notion of push communication simply fails in this world.  Instead the job becomes to stop selling products and start offering a real service to your audience, and help them as they are making decisions about their health.  A full 20% of American adults say that information gleaned from social media impacts their healthcare decisions.  That’s a pretty staggering statistic particularly when you think that by and large biopharma isn’t in that space to impact those decisions.  By being absent you’re not stopping the decisions…you’re simply losing your ability to impact them.  Which takes me to my next point…

Each day you become less relevant to your patients and doctors.  Our Razorfish CRM group has discovered through research that people are constantly reevaluating their decisions and that the notion of a sales funnel with a nice linear progression is dead.  Instead it’s a constant sales decision loop in which how you experienced the product/brand, both as a product and as a service surrounding that product, impacted whether you purchased again. I’m here to say that biopharma still does not understand and embrace this notion.

The time is now passed when Biopharma needs to accept that they need to be less about manufacturers and more about service providers.  This is a big shift and one that the industry has been slow to embrace.  The Digital IQ Report put out by the Stern School of Business at Columbia University makes it clear that Biopharma barely “gets” that service, especially real-time digital service, is not only wanted but expected.

So forget about SOV.  Think instead about Share of Influence (SOI). In a world where brands are not in control, where industries are increasingly irrelevant to their audiences the way to impact an empowered person is to simply give them more power.  That means changing the traditional notion of what biopharma marketing means and instead leverage the trends towards digital consumption, and peer influences and different platforms and find ways to be present in a meaningful and helpful way throughout that sales loop I described earlier.  Not about advertising and push messages but about enablement through information, tools and service.  By doing so you gain a greater SOI and become a more relevant partner as patients and doctors alike seek the best health outcomes.

So that’s it.  Five simple realities that all marketers, and healthcare marketers in particular, need to embrace in order to have healthy businesses in the future.  Anyone game for transforming your product from a medicine to a relevant, breathing, helpful brand?

If you’re an online marketer, chances are you are aware of the growing usage of mobile devices within search.

As of June 2011, Mobile impressions account for 12% of total search impressions, up nearly 100% year over year, and roughly one-third of cell owners say their phone is a smartphone.  As a result of this exponential growth, these cellular devices have become the focus for marketers within the past year, but a new area of opportunity is on the rise: tablets.

Tablet usage accounts for one-third of non-computer traffic worldwide. This behavior has greatly impacted the health and pharmaceutical industries. With tablet use, gone are the days of 2 AM doctor wake up calls to run to the hospital. With custom applications, doctors and physicians can review x-rays and patient records right from their tablet devices without ever leaving home. More and more doctors are carrying tablets around the hospital. Sharing patient charts and records has become more personal within the clinical setting with tablets. Physicians are not only utilizing patient record and x-ray applications, but utilizing search engines for conditions and treatments to recommend for their patients.

So, how do we effectively utilize tablets in our digital strategy?

Google AdWords offers a few campaign targeting options for tablet devices. Users can target all mobile tablet devices on Android, iOS and webOS platforms, or any combination of the three. Google also offers the option of targeting specific mobile carriers.  Landing pages, keyword mix, messaging and budgeting can then be controlled and crafted specifically to your audience and their viewing interface.

If your brand does not have a tablet optimized site, Google recommends targeting Desktops and Tablets in the same campaign, as user experience does not greatly differ from a desktop given most tablets’ screen sizes.  In fact, Google now automatically targets tablets within existing desktop campaigns. As with all things search, further segmenting campaigns can yield greater efficiencies.  Through segmentation, marketers can drill down to the most efficient device and carrier to allocate advertising dollars.

With growing consumer interest and usage, screen size and application offerings, tablet targeting is an asset to a brand’s digital strategy. Search trends continue to evolve rapidly each day and right now, tablets are the next big thing.

How can I prove the value of my marketing campaigns to the executive management? Who should I target to drive the most value for the business? How should I optimize my marketing campaigns to maximize returns? If any of these questions sound familiar to you, you are not alone. Most marketers face these problems which need to be addressed in order to make informed marketing decisions. The 2011 Unica Annual Survey of Marketers reveals that turning data into action and attributing success to marketing are the most important issues that marketers face today.  The good news is that in recent years, we have seen the ability to measure the value driven by your marketing campaigns grow stronger and stronger.  We see this trend persisting over a very long time, as businesses become more digitally focused and the ease of tracking behavior and success continues to increase.

As marketing programs continue to leverage the internet and other digital channels more and more, we see the field of analytics grow exponentially.  Low cost of implementation, ability to accurately track detailed user behavior, and the speed of execution are all driving forces behind this growth.

With all the advancements in analytics – viral tagging, eye-tracking, tying online behavior to offline behavior, etc. – we sometimes forget that these advanced solutions are trying to answer simple marketing questions.  Thinking back to your marketing 101 classes you probably remember the 4C’s:  Customer, Competition, Content, and Channel. Analytics, no matter how complicated the methodology, is looking to provide solutions to some of the most basic marketing questions:   who are your best customers, how are your competitors differentiating themselves , what content resonates best with your target market , and what are your most profitable digital channels.

Analytics can be leveraged in a variety of ways, but most importantly it helps marketers and brands to have a personalized conversation with their customers. In today’s digital world, personalization is what drives value for your business. Consider Netflix.

I suspect like many of you, I decided to test out Netflix about 2 years ago. As a self-proclaimed “data-geek” one of the features I love most about Netflix is seeing what movies they will recommend for me.  Recently I watched ‘The Departed’, ‘The Aviator’ and ‘Shutter Island’. The next movie I was recommended was ‘Taxi Driver’.  So, of course I tried to analyze how Netflix made this happen. When I signed up for Netflix they asked me about the types of movies I like to watch (I’m a drama guy). Here they make an attempt to better understand me, their customer. They then keep track of the movies I watch and leverage the historic profiling data they have about me with my ongoing behavior. Netflix solicits my feedback at the end of every movie to understand if I actually enjoyed the movie and thus continuously updated their recommendations for me after correlating this information with the data from other Netflix users. All this is possible because of the analytics platform that Netflix has built to understand me better and thus serve me relevant personalized content. This is analogous to a marketer who understands his target audience, develops relevant digital content and continuously improves his communications to his consumer.

We see a clear trend emerging in which marketers are adopting analytics to better understand their customers and optimize their online campaigns. However with the abundance of information across the internet, marketers are finding it difficult to make this data more actionable. Most marketers find it difficult to make a connection between the marketing goals and link this with the data they have.

Our next analytics blog will talk about how this can be achieved.

Sharagh Gokula is part of the Razorfish Consumer Insight Group, with expertise in advanced analytics, surveys, customer research, and measurement.