Best Practices for 2024 Biopharma Campaign Success
Health audience segments are an essential part of cost-effective media campaigns. As you incorporate them into your 2024 plans, the following best practices can help you improve performance and execute more successfully, based on our experience activating thousands of campaigns.
Target what you measure, measure what you target
“In the early stages of planning, you need to think about measurement,” says Annie Kim, director of investment at Havas Media Group. Agreeing on what success looks like is critical to your campaign and starts with defining measurement. While this seems straightforward, it guarantees you measure what you target and target what you measure. For example, if you create a custom segment to reach patients “diagnosed and not yet treating in the category,” define your KPI as reaching an audience that matches this criteria. Use the same diagnosis codes, products, and time period to determine whether you’re actually reaching patients within this segment.
Building the measurement framework should include getting all teams – brand, media agency, and measurement analytics partner – together at the beginning to review strategy, goals, and any insights you want to glean. Having everyone on the same page will allow you to be more agile throughout your campaign.
Build audiences and activate one per goal
Most brands use different audience segments to achieve multiple media objectives within the same campaign. A brand might use a large-scale reach segment to increase brand awareness at the top of the funnel and a custom segment to target a smaller group of consumers further along the patient journey.
When using multiple audiences in a single campaign, create KPIs for each to get the best insights. For campaigns with numerous goals, create and activate one audience segment per goal. Mapping your audience segments to the different stages of the patient experience can help develop messaging that resonates at that particular point. “You want to have distinct messaging for patients at each stage of the journey,” says Kim.
In an effort to be more precise, it might be tempting to overlay other data elements like demographics or ethnicity on top of already created segments, but this can negatively impact performance. Health segments are generally custom-built, so a good rule of thumb is not to adjust or add to them once they are in use. You should account for these variables during the build.
Identify channels and prepare to scale
In addition to building your audience segments, you will also want to identify what channels and platforms work best for each and tweak content as needed. Established data partners can help you reach the same audience segment across channels, including advanced TV, connected TV, social, online video, and display. These steps make it easy to activate each segment as you launch your campaign.
When activating, start small, then scale as necessary to reach your goals. This approach will ensure that your audience quality and the media you’re using to reach that audience are as precise as possible.
Optimize early and often
Most media plans require ongoing optimizations to improve performance and media efficiency. However, waiting for net conversion data can significantly delay optimization decisions. Scheduling a doctor’s appointment, getting a prescription, and starting a new treatment all take time, sometimes up to six months.
A good measurement partner can deliver audience quality data – the percentage of the audience reached that meets your KPI definitions – within a few weeks of launch. This measure of audience quality, also known as targeting multiple, can help you compare performance across publishers and tactics to optimize early and increase conversions.
Ensure data privacy
As always, when using audience segments, data privacy should be a priority. To have confidence that the data you use in your campaigns is privacy-safe, choose a data partner with the following recommendations in mind.
Work with a large, reputable company that has longevity in delivering health audience segments. Look for a vendor that is both a member of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) and HIPAA compliant. The NAI incorporates important principles specific to health data targeting that go beyond HIPAA alone. And most importantly, make sure the segments you use are based on offline demographic data only. Never use audience segments based on actual health data.
Audience segments can help biopharma marketers create more cost-effective campaigns and reach patients throughout their treatment journey. Taking steps during the planning process can set you up to better optimize and gain insights from these segments when your campaign is in flight.
Watch our webinar with Havas Media Group to learn more about optimizing audience segments in your campaigns.