Healthcare professionals (HCPs) are an essential target audience for many companies in Life Sciences & Health. Therefore, it is important to understand how you can reach them. Research by Veeva shows that 70% of HCPs are digital natives and collect information online. For example, they use LinkedIn to present themselves, network and learn about recent developments in their field of work.
You can use your LinkedIn company page to organically share updates, from text and images to articles or videos. But if you want to reach a broader audience than your current follower base, you could consider advertising on LinkedIn for HCP digital engagement. This will enable you to reach a very specific group of HCPs, as you can target HCPs based on their job title, company, and location.
It is also essential to consider the business objective you want to achieve before setting up a campaign. Below we have described which objectives you can accomplish with LinkedIn.
Setting up a new ad campaign in LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager starts with selecting marketing objectives. Choosing the right objective is the basis of a successful campaign. The objectives are related to the steps of the marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, and conversions.
The first objective is to raise awareness of your brand, product, or service among healthcare professionals. This can be achieved by creating engaging & informative content and using targeted advertising to reach healthcare professionals on LinkedIn. The goal is to get healthcare professionals to notice your brand and content. So they become familiar with what you have to offer.
Once healthcare professionals are aware of your brand and what you offer, the next objective is to encourage them to consider using your product or service. This can be achieved by providing more in-depth information about your offering, such as case studies or testimonials from other healthcare professionals.
The final objective is to generate leads from healthcare professionals. This is where you want to make it as easy as possible for HCPs to take action. By providing a clear call to action with a compelling message and a simple way to sign up. This way, they can effortlessly provide you with their information, such as their first and last name, email address, and phone number. It is crucial to ask for as little information as possible, as the more questions you ask, the lower the conversion rate will be generated. This is because more questions increase the resistance involved in sharing their information.
What sets LinkedIn apart from other social networking platforms are the business targeting options. You can target HCPs by job title, education, school, or skills. In addition to individuals, it is possible to target companies by industry, company name or size. You can also use LinkedIn Matched Audiences. This functionality combines the robust data of LinkedIn with your data to reach the right target group. For example, you can retarget visitors to your website with Matched Audiences. In addition, you can securely integrate contact lists with companies or email addresses on LinkedIn. You can also create a lookalike audience. This means LinkedIn’s algorithm will look for people with similar characteristics.
Now that you have chosen an objective and have defined the target group, it is time to create your advertisements. This can be done in various ways.
This ad format will appear in the newsfeed of your target audience. It contains an image, introductory text, headline, and description. You can also add a link to this ad format.
A carousel ad will also appear in the newsfeed of LinkedIn. It is a series of swipeable cards, so you can use multiple images to tell your story. Like a ‘normal’ single-image ad, it also contains an introductory text, headline, description and a link.
Instead of images, you can also use video to spread your message. Your main message should be visible in the first 10 seconds of the video for most people to see it. Just like the ad formats mentioned above, you can add an introductory text, headline, description and a link.
Text Ads appear in the right column of the LinkedIn desktop interface and contain a small visual and short message. It is easy to create multiple Text Ads with different texts and images at the same time. This way, you can find out which ad works best for your target audience.
A Spotlight ad can only be seen on a desktop and contains personalised information, like the profile picture and the user’s name. They can be used for brand awareness and website traffic.
The sole objective of follower ad is to generate more followers on your LinkedIn company page. This ad format is only viewed on desktops and contains your company page’s logo along with the user’s personalised information.
With Document Ads, you can share entire LinkedIn articles without sending your target audience to a landing page. You can also include a LinkedIn Lead Gen Form with this ad form to generate HCP leads on the platform.
With Conversation Ads, you can send direct messages to members of your target audience on LinkedIn. You can add multiple call-to-action buttons to your message, guiding them to your landing page or whitepaper.
Event Ads enable you to promote your LinkedIn event to your target audience. For instance, this can be a webinar or your presence at a trade fair.
In LinkedIn Campaign Manager, you can choose between setting a daily budget or a total budget. This allows you to always keep a grip on your advertising spend. Setting a total budget means you never spend more money than you have planned. Setting a daily budget ensures that LinkedIn gradually spends your budget. This gives you time to optimise your ads.
