Becoming a Web Potato
As I sit around after Thanksgiving dinner thoroughly stuffed, I am reminded of an article I recently read in Fortune entitled the “Dawn of the Web Potato.” The premise of the article was that Americans are moving off the couch and becoming Web potatoes. In fact, we’ve moved so far already that we no longer just “surf the Web,” but we go online to do a wide variety of other things like reading the news, shopping, emailing, watching videos, Googling and the such.
I think about how true that statement has become – just in my own life. As I sit here contemplating whether I want to get up at 5A.M. on the morning after Thanksgiving to go shopping for the “best” deals, I think, “why bother?” I can sit in the warmth and comfort of my recliner, wearing my bedroom slippers, and do much, if not all, of my Christmas shopping from my laptop. What’s more, I don’t have to worry about being home at a particular time to watch Grey’s Anatomy or Desperate Housewives because I can log onto www.abc.com and watch full episodes online whenever I want … oh how the world has changed in a few short years.
Recent studies from both Cisco and the Online Publishing Association (OPA) suggest that consumer usage of the Internet is about to surpass business- and government-related traffic. The OPA Internet activity index states that a typical Internet user spends 47% of his time online looking at content, 33% communicating, 15% shopping and 5% using a search engine.
Why is this important to us in healthcare marketing? Well, mainly because the more time people spend online, the more attractive the Internet is to advertisers and the more attractive it should be to us as healthcare marketers. Online advertising is currently the fastest growing segment of the advertising industry and spending on online advertising is predicted to reach $61 billion (yes, billion with a “b”) annually by 2012.
What are we, in healthcare, doing to reach Web potatoes? Are we using online advertising on our Web sites? Are we advertising on other Web sites, blogs, social media sites to bring people to our sites? Are we moving budget dollars from traditional marketing channels to interactive channels? Are we using search marketing to its fullest advantage? Have we figured out the impact social media will have on our marketing messages? As consumers’ trust in traditional media declines (and social media’s impact grows), how will we regain influence on our customers? How will we get them to engage?
It is obvious that “old school” marketing no longer is enough … especially if we want to reach emerging Web potatoes. Are you ready?
We debate this issue all the time. And we asked our usability study participants about it, as well. On the one hand, I spend a lot of time doing certain things on the web, much of which I didn’t do a year ago. My wife is still a “get on, get it done, and get off” type. My kids, on the other hand, spend hours more online than I do.
But what’s unclear is how much time any of us spend on health care sites. Our usability subjects told us that they don’t spend time on such issues. They are considered nuisances that they want to get done, and then move on.
So is our audience the same online audience as the avid users of Facebook or YouTube? Probably not.
But that means we should be on sites like Facebook and YouTube if we want to reach people who don’t have an immediate health need!
I agree entirely with your thought process. As usual, healthcare is slow to adopt new marketing technologies, typically a step behind and always marketing with a little different twist than other industries.
That said, my real point of the post was to move healthcare marketers out of their comfort zone. We need to move away from depending on one more brochure or one more TV ad … and start thinking about how we reach new audiences in new ways. Very few healthcare marketers are strategically thinking trhough that evolutionary process.
How do we fully integrate old and new marketing techniques? How do we push our content and our messages off our Web sites and into other online medias? How do we attract different and younger audiences? (After all, they will be our future patients and employees). How do we stretch our shrinking marketing dollars? How do we maximize our exposure? How do we repurpose existing content in new and breakthrough ways? How do we deeply and specifically target populations with offers and messages that resonate with them?
There will always be a place for brochures and ads, but I believe the real future of healthcare marketing is figuring out how to capitalize on that ever-growing segment of the population that is spending more and more time online — embracing a Web lifestyle. Every day that group grows … so we have to grow with it too.
Regarding the issue of how frequently web users, use health care sites is a great question. I would suggest that we are seeing growing number of “Sandwich Generation” users of healthcare related sites. The adult child of an older adult parent who has multiple chronic conditions, that he or she is the designated manager of. That individual is trolling web content about the parent’s medications, living arrangements, physicial therapy and uses the web as a personal support mechanism.
As we know this population is growing dramatically. I believe that hosptials and healthcare systems will have an ever growing opportunity to market to and provide a support service to this group of individuals. This may be via an online passport or electronic personal assistant web modality. The 35-55 yr old age group will continue to see “their time” as their most precious possession and the web will increasing become a time management tool for them.
No doubt that over time more people will use the web for health-related concerns. Maybe even a big bubble. What I wonder about is whether we’ll ever reach a stage where people engage on their health at the level that they engage with friends, movies, video games, etc. People would rather avoid the health care system and would love to never have to see a doctor or visit one of our sites. They come because they have to, which is a different model that, for example, what the Washington Post shows. There you go because you want to. Big different, IMHO.
I think you are right — not sure people will ever “want” to come to a hospital Web site but without a doubt, they will always “have” to seek healthcare at some point … if not for themselves, for someone near and dear to them. So the question is, how do we engage them? I’m not sure we have to get to the Rob Curley stage — or frankly, that we ever could, but we have to go beyond what the typical hospital does now today … so our job is to help our healthcare systems figure out what the next level is … what’s the next big idea for healthcare and how do we get there?