Content marketing

Tools Healthcare Marketers Can Use to Reach Consumers on LinkedIn

In a previous blog we showed why LinkedIn is an effective platform for reaching key healthcare B2B and B2C audiences. By embracing a full-funnel healthcare content marketing strategy, brands like Abbott Laboratories, Pfizer, and Walgreens have relied on LinkedIn to deliver their messages, build brand awareness and ultimately convert consumers into customers.

In 2020, we saw higher volumes of engagement with healthcare media among LinkedIn members. So, we know the healthcare consumer audience is on LinkedIn.

In this blog, we will look at some of the powerful tools that LinkedIn offers to marketers, and how those tools can help brands refine their strategies to reach healthcare audiences, and drive more successful campaigns.

You can reach the right audience for your targeted message on LinkedIn where there are over 756M global active members, including:

An Always-On Marketing Strategy

Healthcare content and consumption of that content online has increased exponentially, and not just because of the pandemic. While the increase in content can be helpful, at times, there can be conflicting information. According to a study by Weber-Shandwick, 52% of the U.S. population is concerned that the health content they are reading online is not credible. This means that brands looking to create healthcare content need trusted partners to ensure audiences are open to receiving their message. Our members have more trust in what they see and read on LinkedIn, with 94% saying our platform is less likely to show deceptive content compared to only 38% on other social media platforms. LinkedIn can provide that trusted venue for your message, but there isn’t one single way that consumers are receiving their healthcare content. It’s important for brands to experiment with a variety of formats (social media platforms, infographics, and blogs) to see which is the most engaging to their audience. Effective, always-on, healthcare marketing efforts ensure you’re connecting with the right audience at the right time with the right format.

Healthcare Targeting: Broad Vs. Narrow

Let’s assume you have the content and calendar planned out for an always-on strategy (we’ll cover that subject at another time). The next question is your distribution strategy. Who do you target? A broad, holistic approach may be suitable for a consumer audience with a general interest in healthcare, but if you’re trying to reach a specific healthcare sector, you’ll need to use targeting.

Source: PulsePoint Healthcare Advertising Perceptions Survey, 2017. n=1000

This is because targeted messaging is more relevant and adds more value.

Your campaigns can generate interest, and build brand awareness with LinkedIn’s unique targeting capabilities. These powerful tools for high-quality targeting, which are especially powerful when combined with your own data, unlock your ability to target key healthcare-specific audiences - e.g., from nurses to opinion leaders to potential health insurance plan members.

Targeting Tools For Higher Engagement and More Conversions

Reach the right people. Matched Audiences allow you to run campaigns that reach key audiences through flexible company and contact targeting.

Retarget with precision. With Matched Audiences you can also segment your audience based on actions they have already taken with your brand.

Go beyond demographics. Skill, Interest, Industry, Job, Role, Seniority, and Group targeting allow you to create niche, specific audiences based on the attributes most important for your campaign. Maybe you want to reach people with specific titles like “Insurance Broker” or “Cardiologist.” Or, maybe you want to reach people with specific skills like “health insurance” or “clinical research.” You can do it all with customizable targeting tools.

In addition, you can reach decision-makers, and influencers that steer buying-committee decisions all along the marketing funnel with a wide variety of paid ad formats.

Supercharge Campaigns With LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN)

With the LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN), healthcare marketers can easily scale their Sponsored Content campaigns to the same target audience across our suite of trusted publishers - where LinkedIn members are almost twice as reachable. LAN gives you control over where your ads appear by allowing you to block publishers based on IAB category or through custom blocklists. It also helps you target healthcare audiences like opinion leaders, providers and payers.

Today’s influencers could be tomorrow’s managers, so build relationships based on trust and affinity across your potential audiences.

A Measure of Success

Healthcare marketers must think about both short and long-term value when building campaigns - and use both immediate KPIs and long-term ROI metrics. LinkedIn’s measurement tools can help healthcare marketers to embrace new ways to calculate impact and communicate value.

Summary

In addition to LinkedIn’s motivated members, the platform’s sophisticated targeting and comprehensive measurement tools are valuable assets in a healthcare marketer’s arsenal. Combine those tools with the wide variety of unique ad formats available on LinkedIn and the reach-extending benefits of the LinkedIn Audience Network, and it’s easy to see why more healthcare marketers are turning to LinkedIn for effective campaigns that deliver results.

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