How to Measure Success in Social Media, Medical Affairs, Marketing, Disease Education, and More
In today’s fast-paced and data-driven world, understanding how to effectively measure success is crucial across various fields—from social media and marketing to medical affairs and disease education. Whether you’re a social media manager aiming to enhance engagement, a medical affairs professional measuring the impact of healthcare initiatives, or a marketer refining campaign effectiveness, it is important to understand how to create the best possible outcome for your campaigns and programs. PM360 reached out to ten specialists who shared their knowledge of how they measure success in the industry. We asked:
• How are you going beyond likes and shares metrics to measure the true impact of your campaigns across social media, disease education, and marketing initiatives?
• In a world with siloed departments, how are you creating a unified system to measure success across social media, medical affairs, and disease education efforts?
• Which data points provide the most actionable insights to inform future social media, marketing, and patient education efforts?
• What do you see as the ROI of audience engagement in social media, medical education programs, and disease awareness campaigns?
Ari Wexler Group Senior Vice President, Engagement Strategy CMI Media Group awexler@cmimediagroup.com
Historically, the pharmaceutical marketing industry has relied on leading performance KPIs, such as likes, shares, and clicks to measure a campaign’s success against brand goals. However, these top of funnel indicators can no longer replace the need to substantiate branded or unbranded channel investments tied directly to a campaign’s impact on actual business outcomes, such as Rx conversion and lift. By leveraging 3P measurement platforms, such as Crossix and Symphony, social and other paid channels continue to evolve their brand lift measurement capabilities using randomized, test and control algorithms, and targeted audience polling. These measurement tools allow marketers to evaluate audience behavioral changes to see if campaign creative, message, and influence-oriented actions were achieved. Nonendemic platforms like TikTok are rapidly evolving their Rx impact studies by utilizing new recognition and survey technology to evaluate more precise ad exposure and recall tied to lift and when feasible, brand conversion. Although endemic and non-endemic publishers will at times include studies as added value dependent on spend, these will typically require an incremental cost ranging from 30-125k per study. Therefore, it’s critical to ensure your audience scale is sizeable (Consumer: >2-3m patients & >HCPs: 10k), channel spend thresholds are sufficient, and clear business use cases have been established to measure outcomes. Lastly, with the pending cookie deprecation, marketers must have identity solutions ready to deploy in lieu of 1P matched HCP or patient data. HCP Identity solution providers such as IQVIA AIM and PulsePoint HCP365, offer data quality and digital channel engagement behavior analysis to give brands more effectiveness and transparency within their campaigns. Brands can also leverage Conversions API (CAPI) on nearly every social platform to better measure conversions and prepare for a cookieless future.
Rebecca A Rozich, PhD, CMPP Director, Client Engagement & Medical Strategy ICON Global Medical Communications rebecca.rozich@iconplc.com
When determining how to measure the true impact of campaigns across social media, disease education, and marketing initiatives, we must first identify the primary objective of the campaign and ultimately the desired behaviour shift we hope to achieve. In our experience, going beyond likes and shares metrics provides a much more robust assessment of impact and value. We focus on gathering both quantitative and qualitative insights to broadly measure message influence. When developing disease education or marketing initiatives, it is important to apply an omnichannel approach, building in techniques for data capture through tactics such as gamification, interactive booth touchscreens and presentations, webinars, or simple polling and surveys. Additionally, when measuring effect, one should also consider the valuable information captured through direct engagement and scientific exchange with key stakeholders including KOLs, DOLs, HCPs and even patients and caregivers at meetings, scientific pavilions, or coffee talks. These interactive elements not only help with engagement and message retention, but they enable us to gather key metrics that show understanding of a specific topic or campaign, critical knowledge gaps, areas of alignment and, most importantly, areas of misalignment. These assessments provide quantitative analyses that show patterns and percentages of campaign impact and allow one to determine key variations by specific subgroups such as target audience, social determinants of health, or geographic region. Moreover, qualitative assessments can show how or why a campaign may not be as impactful and provide essential information that enables one to modify and strengthen a campaign to ensure it resonates with key target audiences and maximizes impact. By gathering more in-depth metrics and information, we can obtain meaningful data on the effectiveness of a campaign on desired behaviour shifts and ultimately improvements in patient care.
Leslie Rotz Vice President Digital Strategy MedThink, A Fingerpaint Group Company lrotz@medthink.com
In our quest for understanding the effectiveness of our campaigns, we prioritize both quantitative and qualitative analyses. While conversation rate, amplification rate, and applause rate offer valuable insights into the reach and engagement of our content online, it’s essential to dive deeper into the qualitative analysis to truly grasp the impact on our audience.
Here are some ways that qualitative analysis adds value:
• Understanding sentiment: By examining the tone and language used in comments, posts, and feedback, we can gauge the overall sentiment towards our brand or campaigns. This allows us to adjust our messaging and approach based on how our audience perceives us.
• Identifying trends and themes: A thorough qualitative analysis reveals patterns in the topics and issues that resonate with our audience, enabling us to tailor future content to their interests and needs.
• Uncovering influencer insights: By studying who is sharing and amplifying our content, we can discover potential opinion leaders who can help us reach a wider audience.
We routinely use these same methods when benchmarking on behalf of our clients. Yes, we’ll cover things like follower growth over time, post volume and cadence, engagements per post type, and so on—but we find what is most helpful when building a channel strategy alongside our clients is to truly understand all relevant content categories, what messages seem to resonate with the audience, and when they do choose to share with their community, what are they saying? It’s these qualitative insights that allow us to measure true impact.
Christoph Bug Vice President of Global Medical Veeva christoph.bug@veeva.com
Functional silos can create tunnel vision and cause misalignment of strategy, objectives, and transparency of interactions with biopharmas and their customers like HCPs. Specialization can work together to secure positive customer experience, operational effectiveness, and improved outcomes.
To best align success measures and unify systems (and people) start with the end goal in mind. What is achievable as a collection of functions? This could be, for example, increasing testing rates for a specific genetic marker or establishing a new treatment sequence in clinical practice. Measure the ultimate objective as explicitly and as quantitatively as possible.
Then identify key enablers—or key hurdles—to achieve the objective. This may, for example, be a lack of testing option awareness among patients or misconceptions regarding the need for change at the HCP level. Plan your tactics to address any challenges accordingly.
A social media campaign to increase awareness of the genetic testing option or disease education to substantiate the need for a new treatment sequence. Measure the success and operational effectiveness, how many posts, likes, and re-posts you achieved with social media efforts, and quantify if the tactics address the hurdle. Does awareness increase? Does the sentiment change?
This leaves you with three levels of measurement: understanding the end goal, capturing specific metrics on key enablers, and taking an operational excellence view on tactics. One without the other does not suffice. All three are needed to align across silos and have data on which to base operational decisions.
Elizabeth Dignam Director, Search & Social Greater Than One edignam@greaterthanone.com
While many are used to soft metrics, diving deep into data can provide directional information that is extremely useful for a brand to determine where and how to reach patients and shift campaigns when necessary.
When creating and analyzing media plans, brands should look at the following key data points:
Engagement: Likes are a starting point, but comments, shares, saves, and clicks reveal true interest and a desire for further engagement. Tracking these metrics carefully helps inform the messaging that resonates most with the audience. Look for patterns in the types of content that generate discussions and encourage engagement whenever possible. This data is extremely informative in content strategy and can help tailor future content to the formats and topics the audience finds most valuable.
Content Performance: Analyze which content types and topics spark discussion and sharing. This data helps to tailor future content to what the audience finds valuable. Look beyond completion rates for videos or infographic views, and track how long viewers engage with content, where they drop off, and how often they re-engage. This deeper analysis can reveal areas for improvement and identify content that truly resonates with the audience.
Conversion Rate: This is the ultimate actionable data point. It identifies what works, guides strategy, and keeps the brand goal focused. Whether focusing on downloads, sign-ups, video views, or clicks, conversion rate allows brands to measure the direct success of their efforts and make informed, data-driven decisions to improve them.
Patient Education Impact: Measure knowledge gain and retention through tactics such as surveys and brand lift studies. Brands can also track website traffic and resource downloads to analyze which ones are downloaded most frequently and how patients interact with them. This data can help identify areas where patients need more information or in different formats.
James Wright Senior Director Bioscript Group james.wright@bioscriptgroup.com
High social media engagement indicates that the content resonates with the audience, providing a roadmap for future content creation, however, sentiment analysis goes deeper, checking language to see how people feel—positive, neutral, or negative—about their condition, the content, or campaigns. For example, a recent social media analysis conducted by Bioscript Group on a rare disease uncovered the level of frustration and pain experienced by patients, which helped shape the patient support program.
Follower demographics provide details about the age, location, and interests of your followers and should be used to help tailor content to the audience’s needs and preferences, enhancing its effectiveness. Conversion rates provide the number of users who take a desired action (like clicking a link) after viewing a post or advert, offering a direct measure of its success. In the context of patient education, feedback from patients about the usefulness and clarity of the information provided is invaluable. This can guide improvements in future educational materials. Data on HCP engagement with pharma content—such as webinar attendance, whitepaper downloads, and digital tool use—along with message personalization can help develop strategies to better support HCPs in their roles as prescribers and educators.
By focusing on these data points, marketers and educators can gain a deeper understanding of their audience and the effectiveness of their efforts, informing future strategies for maximum impact. Assessing the return on investment for social media, marketing, and patient education effort is crucial. Remember, the most actionable data points are those that directly align with your goals and objectives.
Ethan MacDonald Social Media Product Lead IQVIA Digital Enablement ethan.macdonald@iqvia.com
In assessing the impact of social media campaigns for medical education and disease awareness, HCP behavioral change is a major indication of success. Life science and healthcare companies need to move past relying only on front-end metrics, such as likes and shares, and add additional insights into the mix, such as qualified HCP engagements on brand websites. With our IQVIA AIM XR (Audience Identity Manager® XR) technology, brands can track NPI level click-throughs from social platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc., to their web properties. AIM XR provides real-time 1-to-1 NPI-level digital behavioral insights from the largest ecosystem of medical websites, delivering first-party and authenticated identity data on 1.1 million opted-in HCPs across the U.S. These actionable insights can help measure the effectiveness of the call-to-action elements within a social post by tracking how many HCPs clicked on a link to access medical resources.
With this approach, brands can identify specific social channels and ads that are driving qualified HCP traffic to their sites, offering a deeper understanding of campaign efficacy and enabling them to tailor their strategies accordingly.
When it comes to disease awareness and medical education marketing, the most actionable data points come from behavior analysis. For example, by comparing HCPs who have clicked through social media ads with a control group match, we can observe and measure any changes in prescribing patterns. This comparison provides insights into the effectiveness of our campaigns in influencing HCP behavior.
The ROI of audience engagement on social media is multifaceted. While prescription lift is top of mind for many, brands can also drive physician awareness and impact behavioral change. Focusing on these metrics like educating HCPs about treatment indications, journeys, and options, can lead to improved patient outcomes and drive ROI for campaigns. Success is measured by the extent to which HCPs are informed and their practices evolve, rather than solely by immediate financial returns.
Iyiola Obayomi SVP, Managing Director, Analytics EVERSANA INTOUCH Iyiola.Obayomi@eversana.com
Audience engagement with medical and disease education programs tends to correspond to the beginning phases of the customer journey. Exposure and interactions with these programs provide the jump-off point for future audience behavior changes and desired business outcomes. Their ROI expectations should therefore reflect this reality.
The returns (or value derived) from these programs are better captured in campaign performance dashboards as audience-centric metrics that reflect the program goal(s) or objective(s). “For example, consider metrics such as the audience size that engages in further learning and progresses through subsequent customer journey phases, the proportion of HCPs whose perceptions shift due to the medical education program, or the number of target audiences exhibiting changed behavior based on these campaign messages.” These programs should not be evaluated in terms of Rx lift or Rx based ROI, because this is rarely their primary goal.
A simple, yet effective approach to evaluate the “ROI” for these programs is by comparing performance against a specific goal or benchmark (essentially your returns expectations). A good measurement plan will both specify the evaluative metric as well as a target to meet—e.g. a campaign aimed at increasing awareness about a new disease condition. Or a lift in new disease keyword searches of say 35% by campaign end. Or 3x increase in diagnosis. If the program meets or exceeds your defined goals or expectations, it has provided a positive return on your investment. Fairly simple and straightforward, what else do you want?
Alternatively, a more involved approach to estimating ROI for these programs could be applied. In this example, the value of a qualified registrant could be estimated using potential downstream life-time-value (LTV) analysis. The total value of registrants acquired relative to the cost of the program will give an ROI estimate that can be used to evaluate relative efficiency of components of a campaign.
The key is to establish clear success metrics and performance goals to guide evaluation of these programs, thereby minimizing the mismeasurement that tends to plague these unbranded awareness and educational programs.
Maria Cipicchio SVP Marketing and Communications OptimizeRx mcipicchio@optimizerx.com
The most successful pharmaceutical marketing campaigns will seamlessly align patient and physician brand messaging, leverage the latest technological innovations to deliver more targeted campaigns, and communicate across the preferred channels of consumers and physicians to drive action.
The foundational measurement metrics in pharmaceutical marketing remain consistent, such as engagement and conversion. However, the most meaningful metrics are those that facilitate next-best-action, enabling you to understand who is engaging with your marketing, and how, so you can determine future engagement strategies. Identifying actionable data means understanding what data can be used in what capacities. So, is all data created equal? No.
For example, if your marketing is consumer-focused, primarily leveraging social and programmatic channels, actionable data points are driven by ever-changing privacy laws across states. This means your organization’s approach to identity resolution really drives which data points are best for how a specific audience can be measured. Remember–physicians can be consumers too, so be mindful in understanding how you’re connecting personal and professional data to show impact and inform future engagement.
For physicians, education efforts are bolstered when consistent messaging can be deployed across traditional consumer channels and on professional channels. When engaging physicians on channels such as electronic health records or other care management platforms, leveraging data about the clinical attributes of the physician’s patient panel provides the context to ensure that pharmaceutical brand messaging reaches the physicians seeing the most brand-eligible patients. This, in turn, will drive positive engagement metrics.
As audience quality and measurement in pharmaceutical marketing continue to evolve, marketers who understand how data can be used across audiences, channels, and geographies will be the most successful.
Natasha Craig VP, Engagement Strategy Director Greater Than One ncraig@greaterthanone.com
The ROI in audience engagement through social media is profound and multifaceted, extending well beyond traditional metrics of financial gain. Social media platforms offer unparalleled opportunities for organizations to connect with their audience, build relationships, and drive meaningful outcomes.
Effective audience engagement on social media enhances brand visibility and recognition. By consistently sharing valuable content, responding to inquiries promptly, and fostering genuine interactions, organizations can expand their reach and influence. This heightened visibility not only attracts new followers but also strengthens brand loyalty among existing customers, leading to increased customer retention and advocacy.
Social media engagement facilitates direct communication and feedback loops with the audience. Through polls, surveys, and comment sections, organizations can gather valuable insights into customer preferences, perceptions, and needs. This real-time feedback informs strategic decision-making and improves overall customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Moreover, social media serves as a powerful platform for driving traffic to websites, generating leads, and ultimately converting followers into customers. Metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and return on ad spend provide tangible measures of how engagement efforts translate into business outcomes.
Beyond these tangible benefits, social media engagement contributes to building a community around the brands, fostering relationships based on trust and shared experiences, and common interests. It enables organizations to showcase their corporate social responsibility initiatives, support social causes, and amplify their impact on society, thereby enhancing brand reputation and influence.
