The pharmaceutical brand had invited a patient to the meeting. Because this individual has the condition that the brand treats, they were able to provide us with tremendously valuable insights that we could incorporate into our efforts.

This was an amazing experience for me because despite having attended many ePatient conferences over the years, this was the first time I had a seat at the table to not only hear the patient story, but also ask questions about their journey and day to day life.

This experience reminded me of just how important it is for patients, care givers, HCPs, and the pharmaceutical industry in general, to have an unbranded website.

It is an opportunity to get around all the limitations of what you can and cannot include on your brand site, and get back to basics. In short, it allows you to provide patients and caregivers with the kind of information they are truly looking for.

3 Tips To Make An Unbranded Site Work

What are some ways to ensure you give yourself the best opportunity to provide good information to patients and caregivers?

1. Leverage search to get to know your audience segments

It’s no secret that people – patients, caregivers and even health care providers — are using search engines to find health related information. In fact, a 2008 study by Jupiter Research indicates that 72% of users are turning to search engines to find this type of information.

That represents a huge opportunity for pharmaceutical marketers to leverage search engines to get to know their target audience. Using search engines as a jump-off point for your market research will not only tell you what your audience segments are looking for, but also how they’re looking for it. Leverage this information to develop your content strategy so you can become a resource for them.

2. About that content … get committed and dedicate resources to act on it

It’s one thing to identify the opportunity and know it exists, but it’s another thing to act on it. Creating the content you need for an unbranded site requires dedicating real resources – both the budget kind and the human kind. Because this type of initiative is resource intensive, you also need to be committed to it.

With the large number of health information websites out there, along with the Wikipedia’s of the world, it’s hard to compete with them no matter what. However,  a half-hearted effort that produces a five page brochure site won’t give you a fighting chance either.

3. Don’t just develop the content, optimize it!

Given that the vast majority of people search for health information via a search engine, marketers must work to ensure that their efforts are found in the search results. In other words, if you’ve committed to creating the content, be sure that you’re giving yourself an opportunity to be found when someone is looking for the information you have generated.

This means ensuring that your content is technically accessible to search engines. To accomplish this, use Flash in moderate doses but have an HTML back up, incorporate keyword phrases in your content that people are using to find information, and create useful resources that people will want to link to and share within their social circle.

Overall, unbranded websites represent an opportunity for pharmaceutical brands to get back to basics, and deliver the information their audiences are looking for.

Stock image from Shutterstock, used under license.

Develop your vision. Get creative and develop a vision of what your brand looks like in social media. For example, will your brand be personified, or will it have a catchy tagline? Will the user get special deals or coupons if they connect with you in this space? What is the message you wish to have transcend the brand? During this process, be sure to think through the different sites you are interested in using, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and define how you envision your brand acting within these sites. Give thought to what you might tweet about, the discussions you might create, how to best use Facebook notes, or what to include on your YouTube channel. When the sky’s the limit—as it is in social media—it is essential to take the time to first create this vision.

Understand your goals. Outline what you are trying to achieve with social media and be specific about your goals. And note that jumping into the fray just because your competitors are doing so is not a valid reason. Instead, perhaps you want to leverage social media to interact with your customers, or drive sales, or simply to reinforce your branding efforts in alternative channels. Whatever the case, you first need to have clarity on what you are hoping to achieve so you can put together an effective strategy to get the job done.

Identify your success metrics. Decide how you will gauge the success of your social media efforts and the specific metrics you will use. For example, if the goal of your campaign is to create awareness for a contest that you are running, it’s important to measure contest and brand impressions, numbers of fans or followers, video views and interaction with the site. In addition to identifying your success metrics, be sure to have analytics in place so that you can track on-the-page site interactions and monetary value.

Define how you will communicate value. Identify the value you are offering your audience and how you will communicate it. In doing so, be sure to make the connection between cool and valuable. Why? Because while creative content generates initial interest, the communication of value will keep the discussion with your audience going longer. Regardless of the means you choose—maybe it’s a contest, or an exclusive coupon for fans or followers—be sure to give your audience a reason to stay connected. Not only will it facilitate engagement, but it will also boost the longevity of your social media effort.

Integrate your efforts. From the outset, you should plan to integrate your social media efforts with the rest of your marketing initiatives as it can produce a symbiotic effect. For example, by integrating social media with your offline programs, you can create “buzz” for the launch of a new commercial, or solicit feedback about your latest magazine feature. Likewise, by integrating social media with search, you can leverage SEO tactics to help your social content rank in the search engines, build a PPC campaign to capture the demand created by you or your competitors and leverage optimized press releases to promote your efforts.

Identify sufficient resources. Give thought to the effort and resources necessary to launch your social media initiatives and keep them going. Remember, just showing up in social media won’t suffice. Instead, you need to continually update your presence on a daily basis. For example, you can’t just create a Facebook fan page and walk away from it. You need to invest the time necessary to leverage it as a creative means to interact with your audience and expand the conversation. As you develop your social media plan, make it a priority to identify who will be responsible to update and outline communications with your constituents. Otherwise, your social media vision will get stonewalled.

Social media is a growing channel that offers brand marketers creative ways to interact with their audience and keep the conversation going, but getting started requires more than a cool idea. To derive the most value from it, you first need a plan, and these tips should help you get started.