Maximizing Video as a Digital Strategy in Healthcare – Q&A with Global Digital Marketing at Alcon

Today we have a Q&A with Colleen Battle, Manager for Global Digital Marketing at Alcon. We sat down to talk innovation, video and navigating digital in the healthcare industry. Watch the clip below to learn more about how Alcon is a digital innovator in the healthcare space and how they are utilizing video to take them to that next level. 

Here is a bit more Q&A that was left on the cutting room floor:

Q. What is the Global Digital Marketing team responsible for at Alcon?

A. We interface across the entire organization for everything digital including web, mobile and video. While the majority of our work is focused on marketing, we really help various business groups across the organization to make strategic decisions around digital initiatives. One of the biggest advantages of digital channels is that they can be measured more accurately. When we sit down with a team to understand their initiatives we start with asking, “Does it drive the goal of helping patients? Does it drive revenue? How can we measure success?” At Alcon, our mission is to enhance and save sight. Ultimately everything we do is towards that end. For my team, we help determine how digital should be a part of the solution.

Q. How does your team view innovation?

A. We love new innovation. We want to be digital disruptors, creating new things in the space. I believe this is a big year for healthcare taking on a new avenue for digital solutions.

Q. How do you launch new innovative digital programs?

A. To quote Jules Taggart, our motto is “Launch, Learn, Pivot.” And to quote Sheryl Sandburg,“Done is better than perfect.” In addition, launching something in the digital public space is a bit like having a child. It must be nurtured and watched, you can’t just put it out there and walk away. We give birth to a new initiative, measure what is working and what is not, then adjust as needed.

Q. How has the Launch, Learn, Pivot applied to your video initiatives?

A. A year ago we were really challenged by this. Our entire video presence was managed on a series of YouTube channels. With the amount of video we were using plus the regulatory compliance issues in the healthcare space, we had real challenges. Now that we are using an enterprise video platform, we are better able to control the digital environment of our videos and have greater insight into how those videos are performing. Video analytics that show us the level of engagement of a particular piece really inform our video creation strategy. Before, it was sort of obvious to our team that shorter videos would have a higher engagement. But now that we are able to see the data and give hard numbers to the other teams we work with, we can make better informed decisions to “pivot” in the right direction.

Q. You mentioned regulatory compliance. How has that affected your video initiatives?

A. We need to be able to meet compliance standards.  That impacts our use of video in a number of ways.  One such way is, when Rx product claims change in some way, the messaging may change, and content needs to be replaced or revisited to ensure we are correctly stating the facts of the product in a fair and balanced way.  Being able to have a view into where the asset is published and control that publishing centrally relieves concerns about the ability to be agile with those change requirements.

Q. You have moved off of YouTube as your video repository. Why?

A. As a marketer, I didn’t have the ability to customize the viewing environment that I wanted. And being in a regulated industry we did not have the level of control we needed with YouTube. The workflow to manage our video assets was just too complicated and too prone to mistake. We continue to use YouTube as a channel but it is no longer the way we manage our video assets.

Q. What’s next?

A. We’d like to expand the use of video across channels.  Video is a more engaging method of communication, and many times people respond to a video more readily than to the printed page.