Here’s one for ‘ya: Cyberchondriacs.

Just when you think you’ve heard it all by now… believe it or not, but millions are flocking to the Net to self-diagnose/medicate. Think about how easy it is to type in just about any symptom or ailment on any search engine and poof… a vast amount of health-related links pop up. Harris Interactive conducted a poll a while ago to see just how many people do this. They came up with a number of 100 million people. This is up from 97 million the year prior. Harris has cleverly dubbed this group as “Cyberchondriacs.”

Key finding include:

Cyberchondriacs include 82% of people aged 18 to 29, 84% of those with postgraduate education and 77% of people with household incomes of over $75,000.

53% of adults (or 80% who are online) search for health-related info.

This group seeks out eHealth-related information about 3 times per month.

Most find such sites via search engines and portals.

Only 12% of these adults go directly to the site itself.

As a result, I’m sure you could guess the pharmaceutical market is swimming where the fish are by advertising online. Such sites need to be easy accessible by users. Sites need to have robust content that is often updated to sustain users demands for current information.

Other studies indicate that users go to sites that they can trust. Many are from governmental and academic organizations in addition to large portals and search engines.

Tips to advertising to this audience:

Consider paid placement and keyword buys in addition to search engine optimization
Use terms that users are familiar with Keep in mind, users may type in symptoms, the disease name, or the drug name. They are very likely to misspell such words or phrases.

Pull data on large sites such as portals.

Determine the percentage of clutter on sites. Are there many competitors advertising where you’d like your brand to be?
Consider using ad networks that may represent a health channel. Some of these verticals within networks have niche content that may appeal to your target audience.

Test, test, test…creative, copy, ad unit sizes.

Implement a mix of units and watch how each fares. You may be surprised. I once ran a campaign where the highest interactivity rates came from tiny text links.

Determine the lifestyle of the user. They may have different surfing habits as a result. If so, choose additional keyword, phrases, and channels within sites that mirrors such behavior.

One of the most successful campaigns I worked on in the past was for a large pharma client. Unfortunately, I cannot say the advertiser’s name. However, I can share with you the strategy, tactics and results. First off, the client was skeptical of online advertising as a whole. We were told to, “prove our worth.” (Be careful what you wish for.) As a result, we were given a tiny budget. The planners hit the ground running only to find clutter everywhere. All the major competitors were smattered across large verticals, portals, and search engines.

Going back to the drawing board we had to take a good close look at what we had. We had already created a great website that had a substantial amount of traffic. Direct mail and print advertising were consistently running throughout the year. We were also about six months into a search engine optimization program that was showing strong rankings and results.

We decided o capitalize on offline by tagging direct and print with a specific URL that linked to a dedicated splash page. We came to the harsh realization that we did not have enough money to make an impact via online advertising for the remainder of the year. However, we needed to be online.

The drug we were advertising was for Diabetes. We realized we could piggyback on print around the holidays. Diabetes suffers had a particularly hard time making eating choices around this time of year. The holidays brought forth sugar. So we implemented a campaign that consisted of a mix of ad units among ad networks, portals, and search engines promoting a webcast of a dietitian. We sponsored the program that linked to healthy recipes for the holidays. The campaign was easy to implement, cost efficient in regards to production monies, engaged several hundred viewers per day, and captured a large number of email addresses looking for more information on the drug.

David Vaile, University of NSW’s executive director of the Baker and Mckenzie Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, said the Internet had also challenged the past model of medical infallibility.

“The use of the term cyberchondria seemed to suppress all the positive effects and turn it into a pathology, which the medical profession has a great habit of doing whenever they come across something they don’t really understand… In the worst case you end up with huge amounts of potentially misleading material,” he said.

I strongly believe this is not our industry’s problem to solve. We need to be aware of online habits and web usage. Treatment should be in the hands of doctors, not ours.

By Seana Mulcahy
Courtesy of http://www.MediaPost.com