One of the most effective ways to reach patients is through a disease awareness campaign. For a Life Sciences & Health organization, such a campaign often aims to indirectly create awareness about a (new) treatment or medicine. There are numerous options for setting up an online campaign for a disease. In most cases, as we know from experience, a platform is central. This is the source where all the information is, and which is linked to by other online channels. Social media is often the main source of traffic to such a platform.
In this whitepaper we explain how to use social media within a disease awareness campaign. Just to be clear: there are more options to reach patients. This manual specifically helps with the use of social media channels for the target group “patients”.
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When we set up a disease awareness campaign with our client, we usually work on the basis of three phases: awareness, consideration and conversion. In the awareness phase, the intention is to create a first contact moment with the target group. Social advertising is an excellent tool for this. By advertising via social media, you can appear very targeted in the news overviews (or other places within a social platform) of your target group. In addition to creating the first point of contact, social advertising lends itself well to a continuous growth strategy. It is very effective to continue advertising via social media during a campaign in order to continue to appeal to new people from the target group.
When you start a community for patients, you open a channel on which side effects (AEs) can be reported. This seems scary, but a clear and watertight protocol prevents unclear and undesirable situations. Such a protocol describes what should be done when an adverse reaction is mentioned, and who is responsible for which step. Furthermore, the protocol describes examples of what is an adverse reaction and what is not, and many more relevant matters.
Another important part of a community for patients is social listening. By using a tool to investigate how your target group behaves online, you can adjust your content accordingly. It is a useful tool before a campaign (if you want to discover what your community should look like), but also during the campaign. For example, you can discover whether there is more talk about the relevant clinical picture after the start of your community.
Would you like to know more about the AE protocol? Feel free to contact us.