Sometimes on a Friday night, you just want to curl up with a bowl of popcorn and a movie about….disease state management? Well, maybe that’s not the case, but online video is becoming an important channel for healthcare marketers. Manhattan Research’s ePharma Consumer® v9.0 found that nearly one-half of consumers online for pharmaceutical information watch online health video while they search for health information online. Beyond just attracting more eyeballs, online health video has proven to drive consumer action - nearly three quarters of consumers went on to do additional health-related activities after watching one.
 
Though your brand video may not bring home a gold statuette, this channel holds much promise for pharma. Here are a few points to consider when exploring video strategies –
 
Make it Useful and Worthwhile: Survey results show that consumers have considerable interest in watching health videos that educate them about their condition or prescription drug treatments. Additionally, consumers also want to cut to relevant content in video as efficiently as they can when skimming a text article. If brands want to take advantage of this interest in health video and use it to connect with consumers, it’s important that they avoid overly promotional content and instead offer useful, valuable content that’s going beyond what consumers usually find in text.

It’s Not All about YouTube: Consumers tend to watch relevant health videos while they are already looking for health information online – they’re rarely starting off at YouTube or other search engines to specifically find health content in this media format. Survey results suggest that news and general health sites, and even pharmaceutical sites to an extent, are driving health video adoption. This is not to say that YouTube is irrelevant to healthcare marketing, as search engines blend results from a variety of media formats, including YouTube videos. But brands shouldn’t view YouTube as the end-all be-all of online video marketing, as people are consuming most of their health videos in other areas.
 
Help Consumers Find Video Content: As consumers aren’t specifically going online to watch health video, marketers need to strongly promote their video assets in various ways. Surrounding videos with keyword-rich text and marketing these assets with paid search ads helps them to be visible in search engines. Brands who engage in social media can promote videos in that realm, or can also embed sharing components in the video itself. PR teams can also use video in their media/blogger outreach.
 
Incorporate a Call-to-Action: Health video is a strong driver of action, but most often consumers go on to look up additional treatment or condition information – an activity of which it’s challenging to gauge the impact. Brands can harness this post-activity behavior and direct viewers to complete actions that are more measurable than general research. Depending on the desired brand goal, call-to-actions can include directions and links to manufacturer websites, physician discussion guides or quizzes, games and applications, independent websites, or other content that leads patients down the path of including brands in their treatment discussions with doctors.

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