Americans have more options in healthcare today than at any point in history.
Competition is at an all-time high: major retailers like Walmart are opening healthcare supercenters across the U.S., Amazon and other tech companies have made healthcare innovation a key business priority, and both local and national virtual care competitors have flooded the marketplace with turnkey, transparent solutions. All while consumer attention is highly fragmented, making it more challenging than ever for healthcare brands to engage with consumers.
Show Me You Know Me
Studies find that more than 50% of consumers feel inclined to switch brands because they lack personalization. In fact, failing to implement personalization strategies can drive 20% of consumers to share their negative experiences with close family and friends. Authenticity is key to emotional engagement, and after a year like 2020 people are desperate for authentic human connection. The emotional connection people have to their personalized music on platforms like Pandora creates engagement opportunities for healthcare brands. When that kind of engagement is combined with over 15 years of Pandora first-party listener data and HIPAA-compliant targeting, every impression is a smart impression.
Choose Brand-Safe Environments
Brand safety is critical, especially in environments with user-generated content. Thousands of brands have run next to COVID vaccine misinformation. The ad environment your brand shows up in matters.
Music has been scientifically proven to positively impact people’s mood, emotion regulation, attention, and memory in ways that promote beneficial changes. One example is the way music is strategically used to reduce agitation and improve behavioral issues common with Alzheimer's patients. Music has been found to improve the body’s immune system function and reduce stress. Listening to music can be just as effective as drugs in reducing anxiety before surgery. Music has the power to alleviate pain, calm anxiety, lift mood and awaken our humanity. Yet healthcare marketers often ignore or underutilize digital audio in their marketing plans. Healthcare brands also need to be heard, and no environment is more appropriate than music.
Pandora’s audience exemplifies the inherent connection human beings have to music and sound. In fact, Pandora leveraged a panel of 75,000 listeners to gain real-time, first party insights from its users:
The data reveals that adults listening to Pandora are highly connected, owning an average of 9 tech devices. Parents with children under 18 are especially connected, owning on average 11 tech devices per parent. That’s 22 tech products in a household with two parents. From music, to podcasts, to talk-radio and sports, streaming audio has never been more ubiquitous.
Deliver Hard-to-Reach Audiences
Connectivity is at an all-time high and multiple connections have become the new normal. The average American household now has 10.34 connected devices and there are 500 million voice-activated devices in the U.S. 80% of adults use a second-screen device while watching TV, be it a smartphone (51%), laptop (44%), or desktop (29%).
55 million Americans will be TV cord-cutters by 2022, and 20% of adults over the age of 55 have cut the cord so far this year (compared to 8% in 2020), and there are ways to engage with these difficult-to-reach consumers who have gravitated away from linear TV. Pandora’s best-in-class data means that healthcare marketers can specifically target TV cord-cutters, cord nevers, and light TV viewers - nearly 80 million of them listen to Pandora.
Now part of the SXM Media family, Pandora provides a soundtrack to life for 150 million Americans. Pandora is inherently portable as Americans move from their mobile devices, to their laptops, to smart speakers, to AirPods and to connected cars, they take Pandora with them.
As the country reopens and consumer routines evolve, a dedicated digital audio strategy remains key for healthcare marketers. Healthcare brands continue to leverage Pandora to authentically resonate with millions of consumers throughout their daily lives. Pandemic or no pandemic, music connects us all.
Reach out to Pandora’s Director of Healthcare, @ aclement@pandora.com for more information.