PRIMARY CARE

A patient waiting in a cold, crowded doctor’s office might not feel particularly chatty. But she’s likely to feel a lot more friendly seated at her computer in the comfort of her home. Direct talked recently with Larry Mickelberg, executive vice president at Digitas Health in Philadelphia, to get his take on how social networking and search are shaping the online healthcare marketing landscape.

DIRECT: Are there any niches in healthcare direct marketing where you’re seeing particular growth?

MICKELBERG: Some really innovative and great ideas are happening in oncology and now that those products are coming to market, it follows that marketers are experimenting with interesting ways to help make them successful.

DIRECT: Is oncology services marketing directed more toward the professional or consumer side?

MICKELBERG: At the end of the day, in our space almost everything clients do marketing-wise is geared around doctor-patient consultations. It’s really a series of tightly integrated steps on both sides of the equation to get [patients] to the moment of truth. In oncology, on the consumer side, we’ve been seeing a lot of focused search activity and social media. Remember, here you don’t have large patient populations. You have very narrow niche audiences you’re trying to reach with any given product.

DIRECT: Are you seeing a lot of social networking activity in the healthcare space?

MICKELBERG: We’re seeing some, but in my opinion not enough. Earlier this year, we did a study of healthcare marketers with CBI Research. We asked if they used Web 2.0 channels in their personal lives. Then later in the interview, we asked the same people whether these tactics were part of their marketing plans. Across the board, by almost a 2-1 margin, the very same people who were using these tools personally were not using them professionally. It was pretty shocking