conversation is an engine

Who are you talking with?

Launch plans have always been about sharpening one-way messages and sending them out through as many channels as may get noticed (and as many as you can afford). But what if your next product launch changed up the usual one-way messaging mix of brochures, ads, comparison sheets, case studies and article reprints with a few simple tools that help you get traction where it counts—in engaged discussion? 

In the next few blogs I’ll offer suggestions about how regulated industries can begin to build communities using social media. One thought to start: Who are you talking with?

As a medical copywriter and communication consultant, I’ve spent years working with marketing colleagues to stay focused on target audiences. You see, we had these sharp and polished messages we wanted to shoot—and we needed to know who to shoot them at. Getting these messages ready for communication battle was tough work because each message had to zip through all the natural barriers every human erects around their will. It surprises me now that some messages actually did get through.

But there’s this new thing going on: technology plus market proactivity plus searchability are turning the tables so that the person with the moneybag to spend on communication no longer owns the medium. Of course, it was mere mirage that such a person actually did own it—since the brand conversation has always been in the hands of customers.

One first penetrating question as you develop launch plans: Who are we talking with? It is right and proper to continue to develop and hone benefit messages for new products. New devices must be born with clear benefit statements and positioning otherwise they never even get seen in the market. But the exercise of teams crafting marketing messages usually results in one-way messages toward target audiences.

“Who am I talking with?” is a different question than “Who are you aiming at?” Aim is one-way focused, so the message gets there. Or not. Talking is a two-way conversation. But conversation is not a delivery vehicle for one-way messages. Talking to a person who delivers only one-way messages is like listening to a monologue: at best it is only mildly interesting. Usually we do our best to politely hang on. But conversation is a give and take where both parties remain interested, both parties have a stake in continuing, both parties get something from the conversation.

Going beyond the question of aim to the question of conversation brings another level of discussion to your marketing meetings. Questions like, what would a genuine conversation look like? And who would we be talking with? Physician? Clinicians? Patients. Possibly yes to all three. And what could a conversation accomplish? Just to ask this question is to begin to see things differently. And it is also to begin to prepare for a future where one-way messages have an even more limited power and where conversation is a vital element of any launch.

 So: are you conversing with interested partners or are you delivering a monologue alone in the middle of the room?

 Next-up: Building Community among Frenemies

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