How to measure the impact of healthcare marketing campaigns in 3 steps

Measuring the business impact of cross-channel digital campaigns can be complex and challenging given the additional restrictions when obtaining personal identifiable information (PII) and staying HIPPA compliant. However, using the proper tools and strategies, meaningful measurement is absolutely possible for healthcare brands.

When determining campaign performance, it’s critical to understand how KPIs for all stages of the customer journey work together to create a holistic picture. Take these three steps to outline your overarching measurement strategy.

First, think outside the box of CTR, CPM and CPC to find the most meaningful metrics to reach your core business goals. Then build a custom measurement framework factoring in multiple KPIs leveling up to business objectives. Finally, if media metrics do not answer business questions, incorporate advanced measurement strategies.

At Coegi, we firmly believe all campaign spend, whether brand-focused or conversion-focused, should be held accountable and can be accurately measured. When identifying KPIs for campaigns, you will likely need to identify and layer several to have a more robust understanding of stages in the consumer journey where you see the strongest results.

Setting the foundation for a strong campaign

After building out the funnel stages, tactics and KPIs, align brand and agency teams on creative messaging, benchmarks and supporting metrics. Finally, compile a list of key questions to make up the campaign’s learning agenda. Asking these questions ensures the media tactics will not only perform well, but also uncovers insights for the brand and allows continuous optimizations of media spend.

Building a custom measurement framework

Once a campaign is live, enter results into a custom measurement framework, unique to your brand goals. A weighted measurement framework utilizes multiple data sources to address the opportunities and define campaign results on brand goals. The core KPIs are weighted based on their significance and incorporated into a customized formula. Here are a couple of examples of what these formulas can look like.

Custom scorecard example 1:

Brand Strength*(45%) + Location Visits*(30%) + Sales*(25%) = Brand Health Score

Custom scorecard example 2:

In this example, we segment the brand health score into key geographic markets to understand which areas are strongest and which may need more attention. These equations roll up brand lift metrics, media metrics and trend integration data into one overarching metric, enabling brands to track holistic brand health and campaign performance. This allows us to see how all the pieces of the puzzle work together and evaluate the strength of each key market.

Uncover more insights with advanced measurement strategies

Some healthcare brands with physical locations may find it difficult to measure the effects of digital marketing on in-person traffic. Similarly, pharmaceutical brands can struggle to measure the results of sales teams layered with both on- and offline marketing. In all of these instances, advanced measurement studies can help provide answers, explore correlations and display incremental lift in metrics such as brand lift, traffic lift and sales lift.

What are advanced measurement studies?

Advanced measurement simply refers to any tactics employed to answer questions unanswerable by traditional media metrics. These tactics can be the test to show if you’re truly reaching goals. For example, did my brand have an increase in unaided brand awareness? Did my retail locations gain incremental visits from the campaign? Or has my brand had an increase in market share as a result of the media running?

Advanced measurement tactics for healthcare brands

Brand lift studies measure the incremental impact on brand-focused KPIs such as brand affinity, brand favorability or ad recall. They help gauge success from omnichannel campaigns on branding goals. These can be beneficial for any brands looking to increase brand awareness, market share or ad efficacy.

Foot traffic lift studies provide online to offline attribution for campaigns driving consumers to physical locations. These are typically enabled using mobile location data to measure incremental increase in visitation to ultimately quantify the full impact of cross-channel media campaigns on foot traffic. These studies are best suited for hospital systems or retail health brands with multiple locations.

With these strategies, you can be confident your marketing dollars are not being wasted and clearly understand how to optimize your digital tactics for maximum impact.