A new research published on World of DTC Marketing listed all the reasons people wouldn’t follow a pharma brand on a social media platform. The results were surprising to me: 92 percent of 168 respondents said they are not interested in connecting with pharma companies online. While this number seemed very high to me, their reasoning caught my eye even more.
According to their answers, the respondents were mainly concerned about their privacy and they would rather connect with patients than a pharma brand. They also stated that they don’t necessarily trust the information published on social media sites. Plus when following a brand without a representative “face” patients don’t know who they are talking to. All these factors contribute to the fact that patients are not likely to follow a pharma brand on social media.
The truth is tho: these results could be really helpful starting points as well. Rather than accepting the fact that pharma brands are not popular on social platforms, companies should use these arguments as consumer feedback and work towards a more user-friendly social profile. How? Starting with strict rules to protect patient information, creating informative and accurate content, engage similar patients in online conversation and make their profile personal with making it clear who’s in charge of their site.
The numbers on the chart above don’t mean that people are not interested in following pharma brands on social media, they only mean that there are certain requirements that a brand has to meet. This shouldn’t be discouraging! On the contrary it should be welcomed as a challenge.
(Source: World of DTC Marketing)
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