By Katie Kennedy 
Social media monitoring in your market research mix – social media seen as the world’s biggest focus group
I recently attended a conference on social media in the pharmaceutical industry and heard one of the speakers describe social media as the world’s biggest focus group. This really struck me as something that I think pharma are beginning to realise.
Being able to listen to what healthcare professionals or patients are saying about your brand/therapy area online allows you to access the real opinions of your customers. These are not conversations that you have constructed in a market research environment. These are natural organic conversations taking place online and by engaging in social media monitoring you can see what patients and doctors perceive to be the real issues they want to discuss.
Piotr Wrzosinski from Roche spoke at “Social Media in the Pharmaceutical Industry” conference back in January. He mentioned how and why he decided to look at social media monitoring as part of his market research mix. He understands the importance of using social media listening to reallyunderstand the needs and wants of patients and HCPs. This type of ‘social intelligence’ can really provide useful strategic insights and inform your brand strategy.
The insights you can get from listening to the voice of the HCP online are real, tangible and valuable. As pharma comes to realise this we will see social media listening as an integral part of the market research mix.
