Leveraging KOL-Based, Paid Social Drivers to Connect HCPs with Promotional Medical Education Content

Paid social presents a growing opportunity to engage with HCPs beyond traditional channels such as print, email, and targeted display. Outside of purely endemic platforms, it is generally understood that HCPs are people too. Leveraging social media channels can build on their more “casual” media engagement behaviors to increase overall unique reach. Leveraging peers or key opinion leaders (KOLs) can further amplify the impact of social media as an engagement driver.

In Q4 2020, BioPharm recommended an unbranded, paid social program as part of an omnichannel, non-personal promotion strategy to increase digital reach and engagement with promotional medical education content. A key part of our business challenge was to identify new channels that would fit seamlessly into the existing media mix, leverage existing strategic and creative direction (for speed to market), and increase unique reach with HCP targets with the end goal of driving awareness and traffic to the microsite for additional content consumption.

Performance exceeded forecast, as 33% of total HCP engagements were driven to the microsite from paid social ads running on the Facebook and LinkedIn platforms. Though they were coming from two very different social environments, these users spent a longer time engaging with the content when compared to those coming from other channels like targeted display, supporting that social delivers higher quality traffic as well. Variables such as message type and placement were also assessed, quantifying the added impact of this peer-based approach.

The impact of messaging on HCP engagement was assessed across four creatives: 2 KOL-based and 2 Disease State-based.  Resulting CTR was consistent across messaging type while all messages surpassed the benchmark CTR. Placement of the ads affected CTR as well; with the highest performers being those within the news feed. Again, these metrics outperformed benchmark.

Program results validated the theory that HCPs remain highly engaged with traditional “white coat” content, such as KOL focused promotional medical education, in more casual media spaces (furthered by the fact that most program engagement occurred on mobile devices).  BioPharm plans to continue developing social media as an integral part of our omnichannel approach to HCP non-personal promotion.