Using Video to Engage the Life Science Market

Video-Production

Video has become a fundamental component of any results-oriented marketing strategy. It engages viewers through action and emotion to get results. With technological challenges like bandwidth and load time far behind us, there’s nothing stopping video from becoming the #1 marketing tool.

The numbers don’t lie. Every minute, over 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. Web pages with video now appear in 70% of the top 100 search result listings on Google. They are 50 times more likely to show up on the first page of a Google search index than text. One billion unique YouTube visitors per month are watching over 6 billion hours of video.

Here are 5 ways you can use video to increase audience engagement in the healthcare market.

1. Build trust

The best way to reach your audience is to tell the story of your brand through the viewpoint of someone who lives the disease every day. Physician and patient case studies rely on the credibility of the storyteller to build trust with the viewer. The storyteller inspires them to take action by building a connection through an emotional story. Video allows you to provide reliable, timely information that your customer couldn’t get through other static channels like WebMD or Wikipedia.

2. Videos grab and hold attention

Action attracts attention. Studies show that if a video is compelling enough, viewers can be hooked in as little as 15 seconds of footage. Visual and vocal activities are just as impactful. They connect with your audience on a sensory level, making them more likely to recall the information and to respond. A key benefit when you are producing a continuing medical education program or trying to motivate a consumer to ask their physician about your product.

3. Videos are personal

People identify with human emotion. This is especially true when it comes to patient education or pharmaceutical advertising. One person’s triumph inspires another’s success. And one person’s pain inspires empathy and personal relation. Emotion is contagious. No matter what the story is, people will always see some piece of themselves in the way another person tells it. Whether it’s the way the storyteller looks, their emotion, or the story itself.

4. Videos are easily sharable

With the click of a button, your video can be shared across various social media networks and websites. A few years ago, file size was the biggest barrier. In the healthcare industry, even the notion of emailing video meant hours of back and forth with IT groups and countless headaches for programming specialists. Posting a video to a site like YouTube would have resounded fear and shock across your regulatory and legal teams. But the surplus of secure hosting services available today, make bandwidth and security concerns a thing of the past.

5. Videos boost SEO

Not as poetic as the first 3, but the bottom line is that having a video on your webpage will increase your ranking and search traffic. People spend more time on a page with video vs. text. More time translates to a lower bounce rate, which in Google’s eyes means a higher quality web page. Videos also get links, which will yield a higher SEO ranking.

These key benefits are just as relevant to healthcare marketing as they are to the consumer sector. In fact, they reach a whole new level of importance when you consider that drug treatment is all about connecting people with stories. Personal stories inspire patients to get tested, seek treatment, or make more of an effort to adhere to their medication schedules. In addition, there’s the ever pressing time factor. Video lets you relay your message faster, easier, and more conveniently to your audience.

How are videos being used in the healthcare market?

  • Patient and physician case studies. Honest, real-life patient stories incite emotion and inspire viewers to react. Physician case studies rely on trusted KOLs to gain the audience’s trust.

  • Web-based CME and e-learning. Video presents content to the viewer in a format that they relate to and, therefore, are more likely to remember and recall.

  • Live advisory boards, KOL roundtables, sales meetings, etc. Important intellectual exchanges can occur without having to incur travel time or hospitality expenses.

Here are some things to think about when developing a video.

Video Best Practices

  • Keep your video short to maintain attention.

  • Make it compelling. Your viewer should be hooked in 15 seconds, or they’ll go elsewhere.

  • Include a call-to-action. Video incites viewers to react. Give them something to do!

How will your video be used?

You should be embedding your video in most – if not all – of your marketing channels. You’ve invested time and money to create it. Use it everywhere. The best method is to start at the beginning with the end in mind. If you are planning to use your video in an e-detail or mobile app, you may need an HTML5 video player. If you are using it in a print piece, a QR code may be added that links to the website where it’s hosted. Hosting the video on your own product site will increase traffic. Whatever strategy you implement, know what components you need and complete them ahead of time so everything goes live together.

How will you produce your video?

Video can be a large investment depending upon the extent of your goals. But your ROI is guaranteed to be 10 fold. To get premier results, choose your vendors based on their specific areas of expertise. There are three phases of video production: script writing, production, and post-production editing. To get the best product, you may be working with a different vendor for each phase.

A medical communications agency should be used to write the script to ensure accuracy and relevancy to current events in the disease state. You’ll want to use video production specialists to assist in choosing the location, hiring the right actors, and shooting the actual footage. The third phase –post-production editing –is more digital in nature. You may want to choose a multimedia agency that specializes in the suite of software used for color retouching, editing, audio, and animation.

Parting Thoughts

The most important component to the success of any video is to make it authentic. When patients or physicians search for video online, they aren’t looking for a commercial or a pitch. They are looking for information they couldn’t have gotten anywhere else; whether its information about a newly diagnosed disease, the latest drug data, or even just a fresh perspective from a fellow patient or physician. Give them something useful, or you’ll never make it to that 15-second hook!

Creative MediaWorks has decades of experience in multimedia web design, development, and video production. We specialize in healthcare and pharmaceutical marketing materials, including video production, pre-production planning, and post-production editing. If you have any questions about what you’ve just read or would like to learn more about our services, send us an email at info@creativemediaworks.com. Or give us a call at (800) 737-1123 to speak to our Multimedia Manager about your next project. Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter.