Needing precise targeting and the ability to reach niche audiences, healthcare marketers are latching on to social advertising. Once relegated to traditional media channels with messages designed for a mass audience, healthcare marketers are finding new ways to reach their target audiences in all the places the audiences consume media. From Twitter and Facebook to Pandora and LinkedIn, social media is front and center. It’s a highly effective way to get in front of the right people at the right time.
But it’s more than simply boosting posts on Facebook and using hashtags on Twitter.
Capstrat’s Angela Connor, SVP, Group Director and author of “18 Rules of Community Engagement: A Guide for Building Relationships and Connecting with Customers Online,” shares what’s working for some healthcare marketers and their plans for finding even greater success.
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From organic to paid: how healthcare marketers are embracing social advertising
1. From Organic to Paid: How
Healthcare Marketers are
Embracing Social Advertising
Angela Connor, SVP; Group Director - Media
May 19, 2015
AMA Leadership Summit
From organic to paid: How healthcare marketers are embracing social advertising
With its precise targeting and ability to reach audiences in all the places they consume media, healthcare marketers are latching on to social advertising and finding new ways to reach their target audiences. It’s much more than simply boosting posts on Facebook and using hashtags on Twitter, but leveraging data to truly understand what resonates most with the people you’re trying to reach. In this webinar, Capstrat will share what’s working and what’s on the horizon in this growing space.
This has been the one constant, when it comes to social media. Things are always changing. From algorithms, to platforms to engagement strategies that actually work.
We’re going to focus not so much on the change – but about the present, and future. Now let’s keep in mind that the future can be tomorrow.
From organic to paid: How healthcare marketers are embracing social advertising
With its precise targeting and ability to reach audiences in all the places they consume media, healthcare marketers are latching on to social advertising and finding new ways to reach their target audiences. It’s much more than simply boosting posts on Facebook and using hashtags on Twitter, but leveraging data to truly understand what resonates most with the people you’re trying to reach. In this webinar, Capstrat will share what’s working and what’s on the horizon in this growing space.
You can’t be as effective with simple organic reach. You need to incorporate paid media to if nothing else have more control over who you are reaching. You don’t have to sit back and wait for the right people anymore because you can actively seek them out. Go out there and get them.
And if you don’t believe me – here it is from emarketer.
This is an updated chart from eMarketer demonstrating the growth in social ad spending.
I think we all know this. There is substantial budget being allocated and some even reallocated specifically to social. As I mentioned in the abstract of the webinar – this is happening across all industries and a major driver is targeting capabilities.
I’m going to focus heavily on social ad targeting because we believe that it is the primary driver of all of this growth and one of the main reasons for investing in paid social media. I’m also going to focus heavily on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin because that is where we are seeing the dollars being spent in the industry.
Brands can target Facebook users based on the information shared in personal profiles. You can choose the location, gender, age, interests, behaviors, workplace and education of your target audience. You can also target ads to Facebook users who are or are not already connected to your brand's Facebook page.
Custom audience targeting allows you to target ads to a specific set of people with whom you have already established a relationship with on or off Facebook. Audiences can be defined by either email address, Facebook UIDs, phone numbers, app user IDs, Apple's Advertising Identifier (IDFA) or Android's advertising ID.
This data can then be used to create a lookalike audience of Facebook users who are highly similar to users in a custom audience.
Website custom audiences allow you to target Facebook ads to users who have previously visited your website. By placing a website pixel on specific pages of your site, you can retarget users who have already demonstrated an interest in your content. Advertisers can also retarget users based on a rule such as time spent on site or number of pages viewed in order to reach the individuals most likely to interact with the brand.
Similar to custom email audience targeting, this data can be used to create lookalike audience of Facebook users who are highly similar to users in a custom website audience.
Followers: This includes targeting ads to your current followers and users with similar interests to your current followers.
Interests: Target Twitter users based on 25 broad interest categories, which drill down further into more than 350 sub-topics. To reach more niche audiences, you can also utilize @username targeting to find users with interests similar to the followers of that account.
Device: Target users based on the device they’re using to access Twitter, whether that’s a desktop or laptop, or by specific mobile operating systems like Android or iOS. Brands can also target specific mobile devices like Samsung Galaxy S3 or the iPad 4, across a range of manufacturers.
Keywords: With keywords in search, you are able to pin your promoted tweets to the top of search results for specific keywords or hashtags, and connect with users proactively searching for those terms. This is particularly effective during live events or product launches when you want to own key terms. Keyword targeting in timelines delivers messages to users based on what they’ve recently tweeted or if they’ve engaged with tweets that include specific keywords.
Location / Language: Target Twitter users in a specific country, region, DMA or zip code or who tweet in a specific language.
TV Targeting: There are two types of TV targeting on Twitter: TV ad targeting and TV conversation targeting. TV ad targeting allows you to target tweets to appear where and when your commercials are running and target users who have engaged with the program during which the ad aired. With TV conversation targeting, you can deliver tweets to users talking about a specific TV show.
Email addresses & Twitter User IDs: Target users in an email database if they use the same email address to log into Twitter. This method can also be used to target a list of Twitter user IDs. The email database or list of usernames must be uploaded to Twitter and a lookalike audience can be used to target people similar to the users in the database.
Website Visitors: By placing a piece of code on a specific page of a website, brands can retarget website visitors and create lookalike audiences based on the retargeted users.
LinkedIn targeting allows you to define an audience based on the following targeting parameters indicated in users’ profiles: company, company size, job function, title, seniority, industry, geography, school history, skills, group membership, gender and age.
Similar to Twitter and Facebook’s lookalike audiences, LinkedIn’s audience expansion tool can be used to expand the scale of a campaign by also reaching members similar to the target audience.
One area we are finding success is with LinkedIn’s InMails. Sponsored InMails where we communicate directly to our client’s target audience through their inbox. This is an actual InMail that has been redacted – targeting
We are seeing a lot of attention being paid to actually planning a campaign from start to finish. It’s one thing to simply put some paid dollars behind it, but let’s go deeper. So, next I’d like to talk to you about that process. So how do you plan? Not just boosting posts.
To plan a social media campaign, you need five main components:
Goals and objectives of the campaign
Budget
Audience
Timing
Creative
With social advertising, these pieces become even more important.
Goals are the desired outcome of your campaign. (Reputation)
These are metrics and outcomes that you will optimize your media spend around. It’s important to establish goals early so you can select the best platform for your campaign and determine the best ways to measure success.
It’s important to work with your analytics team to determine how to measure goals. For campaigns that drive traffic to a website, you can use tracking codes or conversion pixels to measure conversions or views of key pages. Using multiple sources, such as a pixel and tracking codes simultaneously, allows you to cross-check data and optimize efficiently.
For goals that are broader, such as awareness or education, measuring impressions, interactions and interaction rates can give a picture of how well a campaign performed.
Work to establish the budget for the campaign early. This will help inform your tactics and length of promotion.
Sometimes, you may be asked to make a recommendation on the budget. Looking at other factors, such as timing, audience size and creative can help inform what an ideal budget might look like. A single promoted post limited to one city will need a smaller budget than a three-month education campaign for the entire state.
The total budget can also affect the way you are billed for social advertising. Each social network has different minimums for invoicing and may require the social media buy be placed on a credit card if those minimums aren’t met.
The audience is the people you are trying to reach with the campaign. This can be as broad as all North Carolinians with health insurance or as granular as HR directors and benefits administrators in a specific city. The audience for each campaign will be different. Take this into account as you begin planning new campaigns.
Gather as much detailed information on the audience as you can. Depending on the social network you’re advertising on, you can build a highly detailed audience profile. Here are some of the essential categories that can help inform your campaign:
Age
Gender
Job title
Social media usage
Usage of other media
Geography
Life stage
Interests
Education level
Timing is not only taking into account when the advertising needs to run, but also the other events and promotions happening during the campaign. Consider the other content that is being posted and promoted, as well as major business events that can impact people’s perceptions of the advertising.
Other factors that can affect timing include the amount of content to promote. If there is only one promoted post or promoted tweet, it may be difficult to sustain that over the course of two months. However, other ad types, such as display ads, do not wear out as quickly.
Creative and messaging will help to inform the types of advertising used. A website with multiple infographics and videos will work well for promoted posts, as well as direct link ads. However, if there is only a website, it may make more sense to only use promoted link ads.
Also consider the other tactics being used with social ads. If there is television advertising, you can target the TV shows that have commercial placements. If there is a corresponding email campaign, consider using email or email lookalike targeting.
Not a branded image about their own participation.
We are seeing a lot of attention being paid to actually planning a campaign from start to finish. It’s one thing to simply put some paid dollars behind it, but let‘s go deeper. So, next I’d like to talk to you about that process. So how do you plan?
Not just boosting posts.
Here’s an example of metrics associated with a campaign to show how we measure and optimize.
And that also means, performance by device. This is an example of Facebook – so we see how ads perform by device. Oo
This is a slide from an actual report where she showed our client how we tested two ad units and found out which performed better so they would understand why we would recommend a certain type of creative going forward and change the messaging.
Recently, a client enlisted Capstrat to promote the results of a new healthcare executive survey on Twitter. To start, we used Twitter website cards (a type of Twitter ad used specifically to drive traffic to content on an external website) to test two different website titles (this is where the user clicks through to the content on the card itself). One website title was simply the title of the survey – “Executive Survey: Financing The Era of Accountable Care” – which we tested against our own title with a “free download” incentive - “Free Download: Modern Healthcare Executive Survey.” We found that “Free Download” had a much lower cost per engagement and higher click through rate, so we allocated more budget to this ad to maximize the client’s spend.
The next step was to test different images in our ads. Originally, we were only using the cover of the Executive Survey for the ad image, so we decided to test it against a more colorful graphic from the survey with the optimized “Free Download” messaging. The ad performed 61% better than the original. Again, we allocated more budget to the ad to maximize the client’s spend.
The end result: In 30 days, we achieved 360,000 impressions, a 20% increase in new Twitter followers, and a 327% increase in website pageviews for the survey compared to the previous 30-day period.
The engagement rate for the survey was higher than the healthcare industry average, and the cost-per-engagement was lower than the industry average, all because we used a few simple A/B tests to optimize our ads.
