Dabrian Marketing Group

The Heartbleed Vulnerability Aftermath

May 21, 2014 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Recently, a huge security scare plagued the internet. This security vulnerability was coined The Heartbleed Bug, named for its relationship to the heartbeat on a server. The internet was in shock, emails were flying to reset passwords, and experts warned of an ominous outcome.

But what happened?

Before we can understand what exactly happened, we need to understand what The Heartbleed Bug is all about.

What is The Heartbleed Bug?

OpenSSL is an open source library of sorts. It allows for encryption of a connection on the internet. SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer, and is most easily recognized by the green bar or symbol in the left hand side of your browser’s address bar. It also is identified by the use of https:// a secure form of http://.

What is this vulnerability?

In a vulnerable version, an attacker can use the internet to access memory of a server via an exploited heartbeat. This memory may hold sensitive information. Since a large.

Has it been resolved?

In short, yes. A patch was released. However, in order to no longer be vulnerable, it is imperative that the patch is installed.
At this point in time, most important internet vendors have completed the patch. In addition, hosting providers rolled out their patches for servers.

I do not have a server, is there still something I should do?

Absolutely! Even if you are not in charge of a server, there are several things you can do:

Change all of your passwords, everywhere
Check with vendors to ensure that the patch has been made on their servers
Monitor sensitive information for signs of theft
Monitor accounts for signs of theft
Watch for vulnerabilities in the future

With a little precaution and some password updates, your internet assets can continue to stay safe.

Have more questions about this bug? Let us know in the comments!

Codenomicon. (2014, May 21). The Heartbleed Bug. [Web Log Post]. Retrieved from http://heartbleed.com/

Social Media Survey: The Results Are In

May 7, 2014 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Why So Optical?

The ever-changing realm of social media develops new processes, norms, and expectations on a seemingly daily basis. So much so, in fact, that the only way to keep tabs on how the industry is changing is to get the information straight from the source behind the changes: the platforms themselves and the marketers who use them.

That’s why our friends at Software Advice, a social CRM research company, have released the preliminary results of their Social Media Content Optimization Survey – a survey of organizations’ content optimization processes on social media – specifically, what tactics are most effective.

According to the results – and not surprisingly to us – using photos and visuals in social media posts is the number one way to optimize engagement – with nearly 85% of respondents labeling visual content as “very important” or “important”. Social media marketing is all about grabbing attention (and ideally maintaining it) so as social media continues to integrate more closely with our brands’ visibility, the content we share needs to reflect that visibility in more than black and white.

Why We Should Follow Suit

The effective implementation of visual content into your social media strategy can prove beneficial to more than just how many “likes” you’re receiving. More importantly, visual content gives your brand a personality capable of building meaningful relationships that go beyond the electronic equivalent of an awkward hug – the Tweet “favorite.”

How Platforms Are Responding

Recently, Twitter’s transition to making images in line with text so that users no longer have to click a separate link to view an image has streamlined the user experience. More notably, it’s brought visual content to the forefront of Twitter campaigns.

Facebook has traditionally been the industry precedent for visual content, and continued without exception with the integration of larger images on link posts. If you share a URL on Facebook, a preview of the article with an image now over twice as large as in early 2013 will appear – which has been increasing engagement across the board.

We all know that the casual social media user is resistant to change. One could’ve thought the Mayan Apocalypse was more than a rumor when Facebook made its 2013 layout and chat functionality change. So, when a platform decides that change is worth the blowback, marketers best revise their strategy accordingly. The computer age and the visual movement are now one in the same.

Has visual content enhanced your social media experience? Send us a tweet or share your story below!

Safe not Sorry: A Guide to Project Problem Planning

April 23, 2014 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Come to Me with Solutions, Not Problems

I know, I know, I’ve mentioned proactively planning before. So why bother project problem planning when you can just tag an “I’ll deal with that if it happens,” or a “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” onto your risk assessments? While the answer might seem obvious, upper management will appreciate it when you present them with how you solved the problem instead of the problem itself. Check out some of the following examples and solutions of problems that may arise for your team:

Jane Doe Doesn’t Work Here Anymore

It’s never a fun situation, but it happens: Jane Doe missed one too many deadlines, decided to move to Wisconsin, or married her lifelong Antarctic-dwelling scientist boyfriend and now her desk is empty—now what? Step one-make sure everyone on your team (including part-timers and interns) knows. There’s nothing quite as frustrating as not finding out a co-worker has moved on until two weeks after the rest of the office. Step two-tell your clients. Neither your team nor your clients need specific details—just let them know that Jane Doe is no longer with Company X and that all communication can be directed to John Smith until otherwise instructed. When the time is right, the third and final step is introducing Jane’s replacement to the client. Don’t do this until her replacement is ready for the influx of communication that will surely fill their inbox.

Client X Still Hasn’t Gotten Back to Me

It’s quite possible that one of the reasons your client hired your agency is because they don’t have the time/resources to do the work internally, so is it much of a surprise when they don’t have the time to respond to you every waking moment? Nope. Don’t be discouraged—chances are high they have an email open 24/7 that they’re consistently responding to you in and that perhaps someday they’ll send. In the interim, create a process (as exemplified in the flowchart below) for following up:

If your main form of client communication (your PM system in this example) doesn’t receive a response, follow up with a weekly email (either via the PM system or standard email) and a bi-weekly phone call until you get a response (it’ll happen eventually, I promise!). If you get a response, carry on!

This Project is Already Over-Budget

It’s Friday afternoon and everyone is caught up logging their hours to the appropriate project when, dun dun dun—you see the budget turn from green to red. What’s next? Unfortunately, there are really only two options (both of which require you to pull up the statement of work): let the client know you’re over budget and will begin billing for all incremental work, or let the client know you’re over budget and eat the cost for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Planning is Important

The long and short of it–expecting the best but planning for the worst is a great way to maintain your team’s sanity (and upper management’s happiness) and uphold the tenets of Project Management: on-task, on time, and on budget.

Do you plan for problems? Have you experienced a problem you hadn’t planned for? Tell us your story in the comments!

Hospitality Marketing That’s Actually “Hospitable”

April 16, 2014 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Digital channels sometimes get a bad rap when it comes to the hospitality industry (i.e. local restaurants, hotels, travel, and the like). It doesn’t take too much effort to search for an article criticizing companies that participate in what is deemed “empty” social media engagement or “stale” brand messaging.

It’s high-time to rise up from the sea of bandwagoners and gun-jumpers and use digital to both differentiate and stand out in the eyes of your customers. It’s not as hard as you might think, and this week, we’re gonna show you how.

Construct a Policy for Managing Online Reviews

First off, let’s revisit those brands that completely miss the boat when it comes to their more (ahem) vocal customers on the web. Whether you’re at the helm of a locally-lauded restaurant or a national hotel chain, you should never ignore your clientele (online or off). Review websites like Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Google Reviews have eliminated the gap between a single user’s opinion and every brand serving him.

The great part about setting up review profiles is that it’s relatively easy. The downside is that few businesses take the time to reply and/or respond when the digital flood gates are opened. With dedicated resources and a feedback management/issue resolution policy, you can assure one isolated incident doesn’t spin out of control. Here are a few high-level tips to get you started:

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst: You never know how your customers will react to the equivalent of an open forum
The ol’ strategic stand-by’s: test, measure, optimize: Make plans to re-evaluate your process and define your success in plain, measurable terms
Use the feedback you’ll inevitably receive: Address your customers’ major concerns in your next budget meeting or planning session and develop action items

Tap into the Digital Community

Don’t you worry. With your customers’ newfound agency, they’ll definitely be in touch. But these conversations shouldn’t be reduced to one-way streets. One of the best ways hospitality marketers can make the most of digital channels is to play an active role in the community they’ve just entered. The best part? Gauging your customers’ opinions online can yield far better results than a printed survey on their receipt.

On a local level, a restaurant may post its daily specials to an official Twitter account. With a single hashtag, a hotel chain can collect honest, concise reviews from its visitors. A theme park debuting a new ride can have fans and followers vote on its name, logo, or color scheme. In short, a business can participate in existing digital communities while, at the same time, work to create one of its own.

By embracing the digital environment, you’ve empowered your customers to reach out when they have a positive (or not-so-positive) experience. In short, you’ve given them a voice. Just make sure you’re always listening.

Is there a business that absolutely sets the bar high online? Share it with us in the comments!

A Prognosis for Healthcare Digital Advertising

April 10, 2014 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Some Background

More often than not, our team members‘ inboxes are flooded with newsletters and other subscriptions as a way to remain in the proverbial industry loop. This information gives us the ability to spot trends and generally provide more informed recommendations for the businesses with which we work. Some of the DMG crew subscribes to information about the pharmaceutical and life science industry (which is convenient, considering we have custom solutions specifically for those folks). Chief among these resources is PM360, which recently featured these articles in its publication:

This week, we’re going to offer our input among these articles, one by one. Feel free to click the links above, read each article, and come back for our thoughts.

Ready? Let’s get started!

Getting and Analyzing Big Data: How Pharma and Med Device Marketers Benefit

If you’re fully subscribed to the hot topic of big data, that means you’re talking about information from online advertising, traditional marketing, patients, electronic medical records (EMR), caregivers, medical devices, vendors, and healthcare professionals (HCP). Certainly there’s no question that pharma marketers can benefit from big data or any “real” data. But let’s be realistic. In most cases, “big data” is subject to interpretation. Everyone seems to be talking about “crunching” this information to make it usable, but no one’s talking about how it’s acquired or, more importantly, how to analyze it and derive action from it. Getting valid data and analyzing it within a specific context (such as among certain target audience segments) is a missed opportunity and a neglected part of the larger analytical picture.

Can We Define Digital That Delivers?

We talk about design and creation, placement and targeting, and measuring for success, but so rarely do we discuss this success in the context of a high-level business goal. It seems we’re more concerned with “delivering success,” but we miss opportunities to test, optimize, and determine why a digital tactic delivered a desired result. I think all of the comments in this piece are valid, but to continue delivering in this manner, we need to examine not only the “why,” but what individual tactics or channels contributed to the goal behavior (via a measurement tactic like attribution modeling, for example).

Social Media Gone Bad: How Lack of Engagement Can Ruin Your Business

The purpose of social media is to share, communicate, and engage with people. And that includes patients, caregivers, and HCPs. In our experience, people with medical conditions have a strong sense of community among themselves and want to protect each other. They’re going to talk and share their experiences, but the question is: “Are you listening and engaging in the conversation?” Pharmaceutical companies have ad agencies, compliance, the FDA, and other regulatory issues to contend with. You would think companies would have guidelines and internal procedures to address issues when they arise (notice we didn’t say “if” there). If you’re not engaging, you’re not communicating with the same people for which you spent millions to develop your products and services. Without that communication, you’re at a disadvantage to make you products and services better to the people that matter most.

And Now, To Sum Everything Up

A dissatisfied patient can certainly ruin your business, but only if you let their concerns go unanswered by not listening or communicating with them. Gaining valid data and analyzing it will help to a degree, but the data needs to be tied to action to have the greatest impact. And finally, you can only give your brand(s) a true prognosis when you listen to your patients, analyze the available information, optimize digital tactics to yield favorable behaviors, and understand why it all worked to inform future initiatives.

What’s your take on the current state of pharma marketing? Let us know in the comments!

Traditional vs Cloud: Small Business Environments

March 26, 2014 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

‘The cloud’ is a scary phrase to just about everyone in an organization. When the idea of the cloud was released, industries went haywire. Some people feared data security, while others were simply unsure of what the idea of the cloud was.

Today’s idea of the cloud has changed drastically, with more and more services being offered in this platform. Various companies, such as Google, have improved security of data centers to quell users’ fears of security.

“Traditional” Office

The traditional office is a setting that any office worker is probably used to. The setup is simple. Usually there is some sort of server. This server may manage email, file backups, the primary domain, network policies, or any number of services. The server can be in house, remote, or in house with a remote backup. The combinations are endless, but the unifying factor is that there is a secure network for all computers, and that they are unified by a server environment.

There are some super awesome things about having a traditional kind of setup. The most obvious positive trait of a traditional office is the comfort factor. New people who are coming in are more likely to have used the software, understand the infrastructure, and know how to use office software. If there is software that is specific to your organization, a new user may require training on it. Otherwise, they will probably be good to go.

Another great thing about the traditional office is that it is managed locally. If you need to get something off of the server, it might be in the next room. That same server can define rules for the entire network, and keep users from looking at pictures of cats all day. The server itself can run local services, and can be easily protected within the network.

One definite downside to a traditional environment is its cost. Large organizations can foot the big bill of operating systems, office software, and server software. However, a small business or a small business that is growing quickly might find that this sort of environment is not feasible to stay in the black.

In addition to base cost, the cost of managing and maintaining such an environment can be very costly, and it is imperative that maintenance is continually performed. IT firms can charge over $100/hr, while hiring an internal IT worker could cost up to $30/hr depending on their specialties. Experienced IT professionals always come at an increased cost. Large companies may be able to afford an entire team of IT people, while a small firm looks at outsourcing that expertise at over three times the cost.

A final difficulty of a traditional environment is the disaster recovery. IT professionals are trained closely on disaster recovery. A DR plan is not only important for planning purposes. You may have to use that plan some day. If the backup of the server is local, and the building is irreparably damaged or unusable, all the files will be lost. Having a remote backup is an option, but depending on the level of security and redundancies, this can be extraordinarily costly.

The Cloud Office

The cloud is another way to look at office productivity. Cloud opportunities such as Google Drive, or any other software that is not hosted locally, can provide a higher level of freedom from the burden of high costs and being tied to a server.

The easiest way to describe a cloud environment is to think about it just like a traditional setup. There are still servers, there are still local computers, and there is still a network. However, instead of a local server, applications are both hosted and stored on a remote server. In the case of Google Drive, the documents and the office software are both accessed through a browser. The functionality is the same, or very similar, to a traditionally installed local piece of software, but it can be easily accessed from anywhere you have internet access.

This brings me to the biggest positive point of the cloud: flexibility and connectivity. If you are in Brussels, and your office is in New York, it doesn’t matter! Just hop on the internet and get to work. If your small business has a catastrophic event, you’ll only have to worry about the structure and finances, which are the things you should be worrying about. Your important files will be in the cloud and your employees can continue work from anywhere.

A major concern about the cloud is security. Services like Google not only encrypt data (and are even HIPPA compliant!); they also store it on multiple servers to ensure that disaster recovery planning is easy, or even nonexistent.

IT people? You might not need them. Cloud services are often managed already, or use an admin panel that anyone within the organization would easily be able to use.

Unfortunately, as with any technology, there are definitely downsides. Cloud services and cloud based infrastructures are still relatively new, and therefore many people may not be comfortable with using the software. Someone who is used to a Microsoft Office environment may have some difficulty getting used to Google Docs.

In addition to familiarity, cloud services for large organizations can be just as costly, if not more costly than a traditional environment. Users may need training on the new environment, and may not take to it easily.

Finally, some software may not yet (or ever) be available in the cloud. Do you have users of very specific programs (like, Adobe Software)? Are your programs hardware intensive? If yes, then the cloud might not suffice for all of your needs.

Other Cloud Products

Cloud usage is not limited to ‘all or none’, and is definitely not only limited to office software. Project management solutions such as Mavenlink (the one we use!) are completely in the cloud. At DMG, this allows us to be able to keep our tasks in check, and for our project manager to keep us moving forward. For more information on cloud project management, see Deb Wagner’s article on making the move to Mavenlink!

Cloud project management isn’t the only solution. Bitnami will host a development server for you (in pretty much any platform) which means no more local installs. Services like Gliffy even allow the creation of complex diagrams, something that only local software has done in the past.

Which Path is Right For My Organization?

There really isn’t an answer for this question, because there are so many possible combinations. You could use one solution or maybe the best of both. Some software may be unavailable in the cloud, and therefore you have to at least keep one traditional environment in your office.

The cloud opens up the freedom to move away from consistent operating systems or supplement an existing infrastructure with flexible, always available software, with no IT department required.

Is your organization considering a switch to a cloud platform? Were there any hurdles you had to jump to complete the transition? Tell us about them in the comments!