Enabling a medical device company to unlock the potential of social media
Introduction
Our client had recently launched European-focussed consumer and HCP facing websites designed to raise awareness of heart valve disease, a serious heart condition effecting mainly older patients. The team was keen to explore the potential of Facebook’s Newsfeed advertising to drive traffic to these sites, alongside lead generation and app install objectives.
However, the lack of a suitable, locally-accessible Facebook presence meant our client's first challenge was to set up an appropriate Facebook page. To do this they required buy-in from a range of internal stakeholders, which is when they approached us for help. Our objectives were to:
- Educate wider internal stakeholders on the benefits of Facebook advertising
- Devise the processes necessary to safely launch consumer and HCP-focused activity in a European context
- To oversee the launch on Facebook, handle ensuing interaction and devise and implement a well-rounded Facebook advertising strategy
Insight
In order to achieve these objectives, we first worked to identify the key barriers which the client needed to overcome. These included:
- Lack of knowledge in the wider team about the benefits of Facebook advertising
- Concerns around compliance and adverse event reporting
- Concerns around the amount of time and resource which would be required to manage Pages with potential for comments in multiple languages
Implementation
The first step was to devise an in-depth workshop for key stakeholders, firstly to educate individuals and secondly to discuss and resolve their concerns. Points covered included:
- Background information and case studies on the effectiveness of Facebook advertising along with an overview of what we believed we could achieve
- The positive side of interaction on Facebook, together with an indication of expected activity levels
- Information on how Facebook pages can be set up and managed with brand safety in mind
- Proposed processes for community management, including effectively managing comments in multiple languages and dealing compliantly with adverse events
Once the workshop had been successfully delivered, we then:
- Finalised the required processes, taking into account the feedback we’d received
- Developed standardised responses for anticipated social media comments. These responses were crafted so key messages were submitted for compliance approval while still allowing some flexibility to tailor it to an individual’s comment.
- Finalise social media assets and complete the mechanics of setting up social media accounts
- Simultaneously prepare paid assets; finalise account set up and targeting to ensure minimal lag time for advertising go-live
- Complete client-specific adverse event training for our community managers
Impact
As a result of this work we launched our client on social media within the agreed timeframe and were able to start leveraging social media advertising almost immediately, including:
- A consumer campaign, with a call to action to order an information pack.
- A GP campaign designed to drive app installs.
Although as noted, the original objective of this activity was simply to enable Newsfeed advertising, the success of our approach meant the client quickly realised the benefits of engagement on social media, including:
- Positive feedback for raising awareness of a serious yet under-diagnosed condition
- Spontaneous sharing of successful treatment stories
- First-hand insight into consumer’s beliefs and preconceptions about the type of heart disease
These developments quickly piqued the interest of the senior team client-side and the go ahead was given for a further campaign specifically designed to stimulate engagement –a significant shift for a client which previously had significant concerns about handling interaction on social media.
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