Health care marketers no longer have full control over their patient’s user journey. And as patients are increasingly conducting online research, it is imperative for health care brands to have a strong digital presence so that patients find them.
One way health care providers can control online engagement and endorsement is via social media influencers. This article explores the opportunities that health care brands have with influencers online and how, by building relationships with online influencers, brands can create brand advocates that other patients listen to and trust.
Why social media influencers?
The main purpose a health care brand would seek a social media influencer is because patients are increasingly researching their health online and medical communities online are active and engaged.
* Seventy to 75 per cent of users research treatments and side effects online;
* Forty-two per cent use social media to understand their health care issues.
Whether you are a local GP or a specialist provider, you need to have a presence online to gain control of this extended audience.
* Finding a brand advocate
The first step in any social media influencer strategy is to conduct a competitive analysis, then research and connect with potential brand advocates online.
The initial competitive analysis helps marketers to understand their competition and which influencers are already associated with other health care companies.
It should include information on impressions, reach, engagement rates and sentiment to help form benchmarks when it comes to setting specific goal metrics for the influencer programme.
Once you have a good understanding of the influencer landscape within your industry, it is time to start negotiating with your chosen influencers. For the most part, influencers know their worth and will negotiate money for their reach and influence. It is worth mentioning though that your influencers don’t have to have a huge network to make an impact.
Look for the bloggers and influencers with the most relevant content over the size of their following.
* Measure, listen and engage
Once you have set up a relationship with an influencer, and you have negotiated a package of engaging posts, blogs and mentions, it is time to start measuring the return on investment of the initiative.
For example, say you have a product that helps to test for rheumatoid arthritis and you offer this product for free to five influencers. You will want to ensure you have the following in place to effectively measure the campaign:
• Ensure each influencer uses unique UTM (urchin-tracking module) parameters on all the links they use so that you can track how many clicks they generate towards your website.
• Via these UTM parameters, monitor conversions from each influencer as well as the feedback and comments it generates from their community.
• With influencer strategies, you are looking at capturing the interest of top of funnel customers. For this type of brand awareness campaign, you will want to measure lift in brand interest by monitoring increase in engagement, in-app spend, or conversion frequency.
• Choose a social media sentiment measurement tool such as Social Mention to measure the positive and negative sentiment surrounding your brand as a result of the influencers posts.
The goals of any marketing initiative is to drive a positive return on investment (ROI). By measuring your influencer campaign, you can ensure you are getting just that and you can optimise based on performance. Perhaps one influencer outperforms the others and they become the main influencer for your brand. Only by measuring specific KPIs can you make educated decisions to drive results.
The writer is CEO of Prototype.
