Nov
15
Written by:
Deborah Stewart
11/15/2011 9:41 AM
At KBM Group: Health Services, we have a stake in understanding how seniors navigate the confusing Medicare environment. Providing insights to our clients about Medicare-eligible consumers is critical to helping them improve their marketing results. To do this, we conducted research to learn what seniors are saying online about Medicare, and how they explore their options and seek advice.
Are enough seniors online to justify this exercise? They sure are! A recent survey by PEW research found that 74% of all adults use the Internet, and that 59% look for health information there. Contrary to popular opinion, social media participation by seniors 65 and older has grown 150 percent over the past two years according to a survey conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International.
We discovered that seniors’ online conversations about Medicare are dominated by the following topics – from both a negative and positive perspective – often with a political undertone
- Convenience/Service – Seniors want simple explanations and access to a real live human when they have questions or concerns
- Flexibility – Seniors worry about the lack of consistency across plans. Their biggest concerns are whether their doctors will take their plan and the limited choice of doctors in their areas.
- Price – They are frustrated by climbing premiums and worried about drug prices.
- Peace of Mind – In the final analysis, seniors want to feel secure that their plan meets their needs. They want freedom from the stress that plan cancellations and cost increases cause them.
By knowing what concerns Medicare consumers the most and what they value, you can do a better job of engaging them in meaningful ways. To help you understand the value of social media listening, we prepared a research report explaining the process and results, as well as a white paper that offers seven strategies for using listening insights to improve marketing performance:
1. Target the right seniors for your plan
2. Refine messaging and creative for your audience
3. Identify and enable champions
4. Create marketing and education strategies
5. Drive product design
6. Optimize contact center communications
7. Inspire program development
Online listening is not a simple process, but with the right partner, it offers tremendous benefits to Medicare marketers. Scraping content off the Internet is the easy part. The challenge is separating the background noise from the key messages and then making that knowledge actionable. To see how online listening can change how you market your Medicare services, read our listening
research report and
white paper here.