How Technology Supports Sound Influencer Marketing for Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Brands

Many healthcare companies were initially hesitant to embrace influencer marketing, wary of compliance traps and regulatory hurdles. Others overcame their trepidation and took early steps to engage influential individuals online, whether that be KOLS, patients, or healthcare experts. Those early adopters reaped immediate rewards, as detailed by my colleague Peter van Brunt in this compelling blog post from 2014. 

Five years later, things have changed; Pharmaceutical and other healthcare executives now largely understand the importance of an authentic digital presence and have overcome their anxiety around adverse events reporting to instead focus on the most effective ways to be digitally active. This is essential; patient populations are increasingly digital and that shows no signs of stopping. 

In 2018, 90% of respondents from 18 to 24 years of age said they would trust medical information shared by others on their social media networks. Patients will continue to leverage social media to inform their treatment paths and physician inquiries. Thus, it is important that healthcare companies meet them on their journey to understanding. 

Recently, Traackr released two new capabilities that can increase healthcare executives ability to be safe and effective in aligning their brands with influential voices online. These features augment the already robust ability of Traackr’s platform to ensure that digital KOLs and healthcare experts are effectively reaching key populations that interest healthcare companies, increasing awareness, and building trust. 

Audience Quality scoring enables you to understand someone’s digital following. This goes beyond demographics and psychographics of an audience to include important data around the number of “fake” followers, other influencers, and authentic, engaged audience members in any individual’s social base. If a digital KOL has a massive following but 70% is made up of bots or mass followers looking to artificially heighten their engagement, they probably will not have a positive impact on patient awareness. 

Values Match allows you to look at the historical content of an influencer and score them in accordance with your unique, and specific, organizational values to ensure brand safe influencer selection. Do they talk frequently about politics or litter their posts with foul language? Have they partnered with competitive treatments, or worse, “fake” medicine in the past? This is an essential lens in protecting your organization and ensuring your relationships act as a positive extension of brand.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you want to reach patients grappling with psoriasis. You can use Traackr to identify influential individuals who have talked about their psoriasis (and still have an engaged, growing follower base) in the past. 

You can leverage Traackr to look into their audience to ensure: 

• they live where your medication can be prescribed, 
• are interested in health, in skincare, and 
• that they fall within the age range of your addressable market. 
  

Look a little bit closer, what percentage of their audience is trusted, are actual real people? Do some deeper analysis to see if they have received a lot of audience engagement when sharing healthcare advice or expertise historically. Make sure that they haven’t said anything controversial or anti science in the past and match the unique values of your organization. How is their compliance? Do they make all the appropriate disclosures when speaking about prescription medications? All of this will enable you to approach each individual with confidence. 

Data is empowering: for patients, for medical practitioners, and for healthcare companies. Traackr, now more than ever, provides the nuanced data required to make safe and effective decisions for your brand, whether you are saving lives or selling sneakers.