Influencer Mapping: Classifying Influencers In the Healthcare Communications Ecosystem

Remits seem to be flying in on an almost daily basis for influencer identification in the healthcare communications ecosystem. Whether those influencers are patients, professionals, academics or HCPs, the demand for influential social mavens is at an all-time high. Clients understand the value of social influencers and plan to use them for a number of different reasons including, content creation, activation programs, expert panels, blogger summits, mentorship programs, awareness campaigns, or simply because they want a smart looking data visualization. Below I am going to delve into the world of influencer mapping and explain some of the key elements that go into making this activity a success. This post, the first in a series of two or three, will cover classification of influencers.

The first thing I will point out is that an influencer is not a KOL. When you talk to a client about KOL mapping, the kind of work a Medcomms agency typically does, do NOT expect that from your influencer program. KOLs can also be digital influencers, particularly if they are HCPs or Academics, but digital influencers are rarely KOLs. An influencer can be converted into a KOL with training, exposure and a platform, but I will cover that process in a separate blog post.

Influencer programs should always start with social listening intelligence. The first step is to identify the main social platforms on which conversation is occurring. Interaction e.g. likes and retweets is not always the best indicator of when to source an influencer. It does help, but impactful influencers should also inspire conversation e.g. comments. Your social listening will often tell you that most of the conversation is occurring on Forums / FB Groups. Or on Blogs / Twitter. Many more recently popularized platforms like Instagram / Pinterest, two of the best platforms for visual content and preferred by Gen Z and Moms respectively, are good to keep an eye on, but for now lets focus on Blogs / Twitter and Forums / FB Groups.

Now I’ll explain why I am grouping these social platforms as such. Blogs & Twitter are frequented by a certain type of influencer. These are classified as individual influencers because they have amassed a following all by themselves and they exert influence over this following. They aren’t reliant upon anyone else to help build their following or grow their influence. Take for example, a diabetes patient influencer who has thousands of followers on Twitter or subscribers to her blog. This influencer has, of her own accord, set out to establish and maintain a meaningful social footprint. She is not piggybacking off of an existing group or network. She has built her own.

Forum / FB Groups have a different type of influencer. These are classified as sub-influencers because they haven’t built their own network of influence, instead they are reliant upon an existing one. These sub-influencers may be working just as hard as individual influencers to create content, answer questions or engage community, but it is impossible to determine just how influential they would be if extracted from the Forum / FB Group then setup on their own.

The last grouping of influencers are classified as cross-influencers. Where most influencers are active on multiple social platforms, cross-influencers are also influential on multiple platforms. A cross-influencer is invaluable not only because of their reach, but also because they exert influence over the many types of people that frequent the different platforms they are on.

For the second step, after I’ve identified where the conversation is occurring, I segment the influencers into each of the three classes mentioned above, to form what looks like a hierarchy of influence.

The exercise here is to determine, based on the desired communications goal, which influencers are the most valuable. You do this by assigning value to key social metrics and then weighting those metrics according to the type of influencer. A sub-influencer’s engagement metrics would be weighted at a lesser value because they are part of a much larger Forum / FB Group that helps to amplify their influence.

The two other main considerations in influencer mapping are Audience and Relevance (in addition to Influence). I will cover those in my next post along with the various types of social data points I use to effectively amass social influence scores across the three influencer classifications I mention above. I invite your questions or comments below.

3 Things That Need to Happen in Pharma for Customer-Centricity to Work

3 Things That Need to Happen in Pharma for Customer-Centricity to Work

Anyone who’s recently been to a conference, summit, pitch, health Meetup, or simply uses the internet, has surely heard of this thing we call customer-centricity. Essentially, it just means putting our customer at the center of the equation. For FMCG, Consumer Electronics and Retail this would seem like old hat, but for health, forever late to the party, it’s proved to be a bit of a revelation, one of which we are taking some serious ownership. You would have thought we’d invented it but alas… The catch-22 here is that, if our customer i.e. the patient or HCP is at the center of the equation, where does that leave the brand? See what I’m getting at? Brand-centricity has been a staple in health strategy for as long as there has been such a thing. To convince a brand that their customers are now at the epicenter is easier said than done. And therein lies the problem.

Many brand marketers are talking about customer-centricity like they really want to like it. It’s similar to America’s relationship with kale. In theory we love it, but in practice we just can’t quite figure out what to do with it. For brand marketers, maybe they don’t have the blueprint, maybe operationally their organizations make it difficult. Or maybe they just don’t understand it, although I’d really like to believe that they do. It’s just, for all this talk, there seems to be very little substantial action. But I’m still encouraged.

Social listening is now being utilized at the majority of top Pharma companies. Social insights are being used for planning, market research is pulling in data from social platforms, and health strategies are at least, taking into consideration what’s happening in the social sphere. It’s the execution that’s lacking. For a company to truly be customer-centric, then an actual customer needs to be able to connect with that company directly, authentically, and immediately.

1. Connect Directly: this is difficult and understandably so. In a regulated environment, to open up a direct and possibly public communication channel between brand and customer, could be a liability for all the reasons you already know, not the least of which is an AE. To address this, brands need to have insight into the platforms they are engaging on and they need to understand the technology that can plug into those platforms. This could mean a pre-moderation tool, an alert system, triage plan, etc. The point is that it can be done and it has been done already. But it isn’t easy. Customer-centricity presents a complete overhaul to the way we currently do business. It shouldn’t be easy. But it will be incredibly rewarding, not to mention inevitable. It’s up to you if you want to address this now proactively, or reactively in the future.

2. Connect Authentically: by this I mean making a real connection. I’m sure at this point you’ve tried everything under the sun to connect with your customers, making it seem authentic without rocking the regulatory boat. I’ve seen and participated in experiences that used canned responses, drop-down lists, quizzes, radio boxes, even connect the dots on an iPad. Although these are certainly steps in the right direction, as well as good ancillary engagement tools, they will never replace the desire that a customer has for making a direct connection. We could have another conversation about Millennials and their desire for automation and efficiency, but research still shows that if they have an issue, they want to connect with a real person. I didn’t say “talk”. They love the “click-here-to-chat-with-a-live-representative” button on say, a Verizon website, but the ability to actually make the connection isn’t going away any time soon.

3. Connect Immediately: The standard, multi week review times for MLR aren’t going to cut it here. If an environment is created that allows a customer to ask a question, only for the customer to then have to wait fourteen days for a response, then the entire interaction is nullified. Operationally there needs to be some level of internal restructuring that allows for the right regulatory bodies to review response content in a timely fashion. Even the few social Pharma experiences that have been created aren’t setup to facilitate a true ongoing dialogue. It’s fantastic that they’ve come as far as they have with a desire to push the boundaries, but they are still very “one and done”. We need to take it a step further in order to be at a point where we can say yes to customer-centricity…and mean it.

Customer-centricity is more than a fad, it’s a model that embraces the rapid changes in society and the emergence of the fickle, opinionated, hyper-connected, cord-cutting, over-sharing, tech-savvy, instant-gratification loving, Millennial generation. Just as other industries have adopted customer-centric models to appeal to this generation (not to mention Boomers who are also extremely relevant to the conversation), isn’t it high time Pharma followed suit, instead of just paying lip service?

For more information on customer-centricity and it’s role in regulated environments, please reach out to info@Hypertonic.com and we’d be more than happy to talk it out.