Episode 2, Part 2: Scaling Up - Taking Your Paid Digital Media to the Next Level

In "Scaling Up: Taking Your Paid Digital Media to the Next Level," host Bill Gadless chats with emagineHealth's Director of Paid Digital Media, Phill Joe,  to navigate the vast landscape of paid digital advertising in healthcare and biopharma 💊💻.

Need help convincing executives about increased digital ad spend? Phill details the importance of articulating ROI, customer lifetime value (LTV), and sharing case studies, benchmarks, and test results 💡💰.

We explore the world of advanced ad platforms including LinkedIn Ads, programmatic advertising, and native advertising platforms. They can be game-changers for healthcare and biopharma brands if used effectively🎯.

Programmatic advertising, with its real-time bidding and data-driven targeting, does have its challenges such as ad fraud and brand safety. Phill provides comprehensive insights into its ecosystem.

OTT or CTV advertising? They may be ideal for marketers on a budget, offering cost-effectiveness and precision. 

Measurement and optimization are essential 📊. The hosts highlight key metrics and discuss brand lift, including ad recall, brand awareness, and perception. A/B testing and creativity are vital for efficient marketing strategies 🧪🎨.

Looking ahead, Gadless and Joe predict a future of paid digital advertising centered on personalization, hypersegmentation, and AI tools. Avoid common pitfalls, focus on compelling content, and leverage predictive analytics for a winning strategy 🚀🤖💡.

Join us for Part 1 of this insightful episode to turbocharge your paid digital media strategies!

Thank you for listening to OUTCOMES. Please find more healthcare and biopharma marketing thought leadership in the Insights section of our website and follow us on LinkedIn!

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to Outcomes, the Healthcare and Biopharma Marketing podcast, where marketing leaders discuss the most effective strategies for the health sectors coming from a digital first AI powered perspective. So, Phil, staying within the realm of these advanced, uh, paid media strategies like programmatic. What are some metrics and KPIs that marketers, um, would wanna pay attention to? Yeah. Well I think in addition to conversions and clickthrough rates and engagement rates and cost per acquisition, I think you also look at some affinity LE level, uh, Uh, KPIs, which are, um, aligned with brand lift and brand lift is essentially looking at the affinity that a customer has for your brand or the ability for that customer to recognize your brand or recall it or, um, to perceive it in a certain way. And this is, um, pretty common across. Most of programmatic measuring is that you wanna see if there's any incremental lift in brand recall, uh, which would be, you know, assessing the effectiveness of the ads. And this is a measurement that looks at, um, the ads that you're running and running different creatives against a test audience set and determining which one. Of this set via a survey at the end of the ad, which, which of those ads increase the perception? So, um, one of the big opportunities with programmatic is the, is the ability to test creative and to test different variations to see what's moving the needle. And that scalability, um, is, is a big reason why we're, why we would test so much, uh, within the space. So, Thinking about, you know, what are the things that are gonna drive the needle as far as your brand perception or brand consideration. Um, those metrics are, are really what programmatic, um, gives insight into. Um, we can also look at KPIs that would indicate whether. People are returning to, to, to, to your, your content. Um, looking at those user behaviors within those platforms, when people look at your ads, so are they clicking through, uh, looking at like, how long are they spending on, on the view through or, or the view of your, your ad. So there's so many different things that you can do within programmatic that, um, really. Uh, kind of aligns with trying to build your brand awareness. So, um, that those are, I think, the key things to think about when you're kind of moving budget to these areas. And I'm assuming, you know, with regard to AB testing and, and other optimization techniques, you should always be doing that, right? Whether it's, whether it's testing one offer against another, or just testing one creative against another for a same offer. Yeah, you should always be testing everything against something else, correct. Right. And I, yeah, I think the simpler way to do this is to have at least two ads that you're running at the, at the same time. But, you know, you, you asked me earlier, you know, what, what is, what are the big opportunities? And I mentioned video, but content in general. Um, The, the ability to create content today is so much easier now, and this is why, you know, by the very default of, of, of creating content, you, you have things to start casting. Um, I, I think, you know, like for many clients, we, we, we. Are running 15 different ads, um, for one campaign. Uh, and we could do that because of, um, you know, responsive ads. Google provides a easy way for us to upload diff 15 different variations and allow the algorithm to figure out which test to run. Um, you could do this for all the. All of these platforms. Mm-hmm. And there's kind of no excuse to not test. I think you should always be testing. And by default, the way that we set up our accounts and the tools that are available, we are always testing, we always have multiple variations. It's a iterative process. So, um, we, we, we've kind of gone beyond AB testing and are now doing multivariate testing. Mm-hmm. Which means that you have different, uh, you likely have at least three ads, but you're. Test testing different components of each ad, and you're able to isolate what worked for this one and, and what didn't work for the others. So there's a lot of opportunity there. Um, and it's not hard, um, because I think the way that. Um, content is created today, and the ability that the platform has to segment out different variations of that is it's, it makes it super easy. So, Phil, speaking very specifically to our audience here, which, um, you know, we don't work, we don't work with, nor is this podcast specifically focused on big pharma with deep, deep pockets and multi-million dollar advertising budgets. We're we're talking primarily to the smaller. To mid-size healthcare or biopharma organizations. Mm-hmm. Um, smaller, smaller marketing budgets across the board and in light of current economic conditions and all sorts of things affecting marketing budgets even harder to justify any additional spend. I'm just wondering if we could, if we could get down to Brass tack a bit and get, and give some specifics to like, is there a sweet spot. To do more advanced advertising like programmatic. Is it minimum 10 grand a month? Is it 20 grand a month? There's no one size fits all. I get that. But any, any insight you can give to the smaller advertiser there? Yeah, I think, um, yes. For, for programmatic, I would say at least $10,000 a month. Um, if you can't get. Quite there, there are still options available. Um, I think that's why working with an agency is great because you can get a discounted rate, uh, and, you know, pull, pull those resources with other clients through an agency. So I think there's definitely value, um, for if you have a lower piece of that budget. The lowest I've seen is, is 5,000. But there, you know, there's, uh, Aspects of, of performance and, and scalability that you have to think about. Um, but I, I think the, you know, holistically for the, the health and, and biopharma space, um, you know what I've seen, and I, there's a recent report about HubSpot, you know, averages of, um, media spend for the company. Uh, could be around seven to 10% of, of revenue. And I think this is an average, so it could be much lower and it could be much higher. But I think if you wanted to benchmark, how much should I be spending on, on, on, on Rev, you know, of my revenue on, on media or advertising? Seven to 10%. Now, if the product is, sorry, if your company is essentially in a phase where they have a product and they're commercializing and say, you know, you're coming out with a new drug, that percentage goes up. It could go up to, you know, 13 to 15% of your fiscal year's budget because you're pushing out marketing material to try to grow the awareness of that product. So these things kind of ebb and flow. Um, But, but overall, uh, of that budget, about 20 or so percent should be at least primarily digital, at least 20%. But as you can imagine, most marketing is now digital. So I would say like, we often see between 50 and 70% of that, that marketing budget. Digital. Mm-hmm. But if you are still doing, you know, um, Billboards or non-digital billboards or doing newspapers, you know, you, you wanna make sure that you have at least 20% of your, your budget and digital. And from there, um, it's, it's kind of, you know, The, there, there's tremendous opportunity, as most things are becoming more and more digital. Yep. And, and honestly, you know, your agency should be helping you with this case. You're, yeah. You know, the onus is on us to be providing our clients or prospective clients with the data. Um, to arm them for the presentation or even present with them to their executives, the business case, the data, what they can expect from it. Um, you know, again, I, I realize we don't always have the insights into the complete closed loop. But the more we can be involved, we know our clients are not experts at this particular subject matter. Mm-hmm. And that's why they turn to us. So, uh, we should be the ones helping them make the case in addition to managing it for them. Um, moving on. Can, exactly. Can you talk about some common mistakes, um, um, that, that you see marketers make when trying to scale up their digital advertising and anything they can do to avoid those? Yeah. Um, so some of the, the challenges, it's, it's, you know, there's industry-wide, but there's also just kind of a lack of understanding. Um, a couple of challenges, but I'll, I'll look at them. The first one is essentially, you know, ad fraud. Um, that, that. That is much better than it used to be. But when you're thinking about scale, um, whether you're getting your ads in front of a human versus a robot, it's very still, very much still a, um, consideration. So there's a ton of vendors and partners that solve this problem, but it is still a ongoing effort to make sure that you're ahead of that and make sure that you're. You know, reducing the amount of ad fraud in your, in your campaigns. I think the other challenge sometimes is the scale, uh, of premium content. So your ability to, to access that premium content could be harder. So, There's a lot of bad content on available on programmatic, as you can imagine, and that sliver, very premium content, um, uh, still can be pricey. So I think it's, it is very important to understand what that mix and balance is. And, and, you know, a lot of clients unknowingly could go into, uh, publishers that are not driving any value because they're, the, the data isn't accurate that they're sharing or the data, uh, Indicates a a certain profile, persona profile, that's not true. So this is why data partners are really important to validate that data and make sure that it's accurate. Mm-hmm. Um, and make sure that you're, you're, you know, reaching these people that are, you know, the, the ones that you wanna reach. I think the other, um, challenge is, Again, although it's a benefit, high segmentation and fragmentation of the market. Mm-hmm. That's, it's a great benefit, but it's also a challenge because I imagine sifting through the right partners, understanding which, you know, uh, partners are working for you and not is an evolving challenge. Um, so that is a consideration. And I think, I think, um, you know, I. Measuring, um, you know, attribution for marketers is, uh, I, I, I guess a ongoing struggle ever since I've been in the industry and I know even before. So I think, you know, understanding how to measure things properly and how to. Figure out why things are not going the way you planned them. Uh, maybe your, your, your alert, your measurement framework wasn't accurate, or maybe you, um, didn't account for, uh, certain aspects of, you know, potentially it could be that the fee structure, um, that you didn't account for, for some of the, the, the bidding that you're doing. Um, and that could. You know, doubt, performance a bit. So there, there's a number of, you know, things that you need to look out for. And, you know, as I rattle those off, I understand why people are apprehensive about programmatic because there's so many different challenges that, uh, you know, you'll have to kind of work through in order to make it, um, work for you. But like I ultimately think, you know, with these challenges, the benefits. You know, definitely outweigh them. Right? As far as getting that scale and finding those audiences. And I think the biggest thing that we haven't talked about, but I kind of wanna just say in general is like, you know, your, your paid media campaign, not only is the goal and hope for them to drive roi, but really. You want that campaign or whatever you're spending your media dollars to do, is to educate and to be a test kitchen, if you will, of ideas for your brand, ideas for how to target consumers. You want to learn from those campaigns, and I think that's really the. Biggest value that, um, you know, paid media can provide. Uh, that's why I like testing into, we're always saying test, test, test, because we, we, we don't know for sure what's gonna work, but like having a understanding of the test framework, having a set of best practices, Those are key starting points and your brand is unique as well as your customers. So having those as guideposts are, are critical. But um, with programmatic it's the same way. Just like, you know, you want to take, expand into Google 15 years ago. And when expand into programmatic today, it's still the same process. It's learning the landscape, it's learning the tool set, the things to look for and things to, you know, uh, be on the lookout for. Yeah. And ultimately recurring theme through everything is, it's always about good data, and that's what digital allows for as compared to 20 plus years ago before any of this stuff existed. I mean, yeah. You had data on, let's say, whether it was a print ad and how many responses you got, or a direct mailing and how many responses you got. Of course. Mm-hmm. You could track that data, but the, the granular and immediate level of data, That you can have today with digital advertising is like nothing ever before. And that's the big advantage of it. Mm-hmm. Um, in order to make those improvements and be conduct, you know, conducting those tests and make immediate changes based on the results of those tests where it doesn't, everything doesn't take, you know, 3, 6, 12, 18 months to make changes and see results. You can be doing this stuff practically in real time. Um, yeah. You mentioned content a few minutes ago, um, as part of your answer, and, and let's talk about that a little bit. What is the role of, of content in digital advertising? What kinds of content have you found to be most effective in this particular sector of healthcare and, and biopharma, uh, particularly in, you know, in regard to these more advanced advertising strategies? Sure. Um, yeah, I think. Content is crucial. Uh, content is, is kind of the connective glue that, um, shares your brand story. The value proposition, it shows your voice, your identity, the differentiation factors. To choose you versus someone else. Um, those are critical. So I think, you know, a, you know, companies need to be very clear on having a, a sense of that and, and, and wanting to. Convey that. Um, so I, I think, you know, the types of content that does a couple of those things is, I think simply like thought leadership content specifically as it relates to biopharma and, and, and educational content of, you know, how, uh, the product or how, how the, you know, solution works for consumers and really being thoughtful about the fears and anxieties and worries and. Challenges of the consumer. So I, I would say along with thought leadership, patient stories are sure, huge patient stories are, um, I guess the testimonials of the value that your, your, your, your, um, solution brings. So those tend to be very impactful, um, from a concert perspective. And, you know, as I was relating to video, I think that's, You know, tho those two content types, testimonies and patient stories, um, and illustrations of like what your product does. It's great on video because it, it, it, it breaks down that, that that misunderstanding that a customer might have about who you are and what you provide. And it gives them a, a, a clear sense of your brand in so many sense, not. You know, you could not only provide a visual, but you can provide an audio and you can also have captions in the ad to, to bring your message. So it's, it's multisensory, um, communication that allows you to tell your story and that's impactful. Um, and you know, I think also, uh, what we've seen really work is when seniors, stakeholders take a part of that. So brand founders and brand, uh, CEOs when they're. Actively engage in communicating to their customers and their patients and their clients in a way that is one to, it would be one to many for, for the brand, but it's one-to-one for that patient. It's one-to-one for that consumer hearing directly from leadership. Um, it's such a really impactful way. So I, I think, you know, testimonies from clients and all in as well as, People that work for your brand. It's huge. That, that, that makes a big difference when you are trying to distinguish yourself because, um, there's so much content and I think out there in the world in general, we all know this, but the ability to have someone on your, at your brand talk about. The brand, but also be that person to make that human connection. Mm-hmm. Is really, I think, what's gonna define the brands from success. And, you know, I, I think that's still gonna be a, a, a cre a key differentiator in the market. Those brands that are humanized and, and are willing to put, you know, people out and tell the stories. So. Yeah, ES especially, you know, we've talked here so much today about the audiences being the actual consumer of the product or service. But you know, even though we're past the great resignation, I think in the healthcare and scientific sectors, there's certainly still a talent crisis and it's not gonna end anytime soon. So, Think about the value from a employee recruitment perspective of having those, you know, those people speak about the brand, speak about culture. Um, support the corporate branding and corporate reputation aspect of all of this. And, you know, ultimately all of this comes down to, like I was saying earlier, it comes down to who are the audiences, what are their journeys? Because that, that varies tremendously if we're talking about a healthcare organization, like a hospital or a healthcare system. Obviously our primary focus is gonna be patients and their caregivers, but over on the biopharma side, it's investors, it's HCPs, it's patients, it's partners, it's employment ca, it's, it's a whole bunch of things. So ultimately, who you're trying to appeal to, what are their respective journeys, and then plug in the appropriate content themes that are going to resonate with those personas at different points of their journey. And I mean, hey, if you had unlimited resources, you could, you could make videos for each of those personas at each of those respective points along their journey. Um, I think very few, very few, if any of our clients have unlimited resources. So you really, you really do have to hone in on a particular audience usually. Um, but again, define their journeys. Plug in the content themes and, and figure out what's gonna resonate most. Yeah, and I think like the, the, the content, uh, piece of this is, you know, like we're talking paid media, but you can leverage this con, you could take your SEO content and leverage it in paid media, take your social media content, leverage it in paid media, vice versa, like, You can leverage your content in different ways using, getting the most value out of what you've already, um, produced. So, you know, it doesn't have to be daunting. Um, and there's definitely cost savings, uh, uh, available if you kind of plan your content strategy out correctly, right? Um, but there, there's so many opportunities to kind of, uh, take clips from longer. Um, pieces of content longer form content pieces and, and clip them up and create narratives through your ads for the, that, that, uh, audience segment. So there's, there's a lot of things you can do with smaller budgets. Yeah. And it's such a, that's such a great point because we know here, I mean, I'm not gonna pretend that our clients and us that we're always viewing stuff as that integrated effort that it should be. We know things are largely siloed and that, um, You know, oftentimes, probably more often than not, SEO is viewed as its own thing and is not fully integrated with paid and social is separate from those, and what you just said is so key. Develop the content themes and the messages that are going to resonate with those audiences and their journeys and, and, and make it cohesive. Use them across the multiple channels, paid social, seo, your website. Uh, email, podcasts, everything. And, um, it really, I mean, we all could do a better job of, of fully integrating things, uh, changing gears. Yeah. To the topic that is, uh, is on everybody's mind and has been, and we'll continue to be for a while. Let's talk a little bit about ai, artificial intelligence, J gpt, the works. Um, I know it's, It's still relatively, I mean, AI is not early, it's been around for years, but this, this AI craze and the emergence of chat G P T and so forth and all the other tools, this is really only a few months old. So, um, yeah. So I don't think anyone's expecting these tremendous insights and experience that you have leveraging all this stuff, but Sure. But anything you are seeing already and have seen, you know, how do you see it currently impacting paid digital? And Yeah. You know, how do you foresee it reshaping the future of advertising? Sure. So, um, interestingly, I think, uh, all of the vendors, um, for for paid advertising have been a bit of the head of the game. So if you think about Google, um, Google started implementing AI back in 20 20 11. So there's a long history of. Um, everyone from Facebook and, you know, uh, Microsoft, which I have all huge plat ad platforms. They've used AI to empower the targeting and the scaling of these systems. So I think it's always been with us. What we're seeing now is kind of a. The, the, uh, experience of everyone else kind of having these tools available for their workflows. Um, and I think what, what it it is doing is decelerating the pace and the, uh, the expectations for, um, what AI provides. So, Today, I think, you know, we're saying we just saw Google, um, io day where they're releasing new generative, um, search experiences, uh, for on their, on their website. Um, we don't know what it's gonna look like final, uh, when it's finalized and when it's released out of beta, but there, there's. It's, it's definitely gonna change, I think, user behavior. Um, but what, what we're seeing is a lot of, you know, companies using it internal for tools and trying to, I would say marketers using them internally to kind of figure out ways to work faster and quicker and, um, you know, do different, uh, Tasks that might have taken a couple hours, now it takes maybe a, a half hour or 15 minutes. So there's efficiency gains, which I think everyone should take advantage of. Mm-hmm. But I think as it relates to, um, brands consuming consumers or, or the, their, their patients that they're growing after, what I'm seeing as early, early indications that this will be a shift in user behavior and. Shift in user expectations that we don't really know how it's what the fallout's gonna be. Um, there's new platforms now and I would consider open AI a new platform. I consider Bard and perplexity and B Chat. All of these chat interfaces are what I will consider the early seeds of new platforms. And I think what that's gonna indicate is the change in, you know, do their behavior, which will be followed by different. Ad types and ad, um, uh, ad views, so you know. I, there's, uh, a report that b uh, will be providing ads for developers through their, um, being chat api. Um, so they're already trying to monetize this, but I think that the challenge will be how do you monetize what is essentially a new user behavior? It will be a lot of testing and. Failing and figuring out how users are gonna interact with, with ads within this format. But I think, you know, um, you know, takes succeed in this scenario. Like actually the, the, the basics, the brilliant basics of understanding your consumers, understanding where they live, understanding, um, you know, where they are is gonna be a big part of it. But also what this is enabling is hyper. Personalization, hyper segmentation. Again, it is being able to personalize copy at a much greater scale than you would've in the past. You know, I've talked about like we have 15 different variations running, but I don't. See a reason why we couldn't have a hundred different variations of copy running or, you know, different video, you know, hundreds of different variations of videos because that's becoming more programmatic to to do. So I think this very personalized experience where you're, you where I'm leveraging data to actually give me signals of what would work better with one consumer set. Than another. It's, it's gonna be key. And we're talking about audience personas and audience, you know, segments, or at least I, I've been talking a lot about that, but I think they will become even more smaller. So, you know, we'll have more of them, but they'll become much smaller till we get to the point where there's a one-on-one connection where, yeah, I know this person is very unique in that they like this, but they don't like this. I know I have different and peculiar taste and I have different, you know, like I don't fit perfectly on one box. So like no one, no one does. So I think as more data is available to us and as this automation, um, It's used more. We'll get to the point where every experience is personalized and I think, I don't think that's that far off. I think that, you know, in order to get to that point where we're, we're already at the point where we're leveraging a ton of data to actually see what works and what doesn't, I just think it's gonna be applied to many different facets. Yeah, and think about the power of that. So one, one particular area that that is hard to hard for advertisers is, is rare disease. So think about the power of when we do get to that almost one to one advertiser to consumer scenario, how appealing that's gonna be for a, a drug company or a provider that's trying to reach, trying to reach people where there might only be a thousand or 300 of them. In the entire country or in the entire world. Um, yeah, but we'll get there and this is gonna lend itself to that. Yeah. And, and, and what I, what I will say, um, you know, regarding specifically pharma companies and, and you know, there, there are obviously limitations as what we can do. Um, as far as we're marketing, there's a ton of limitations and obviously we want to be HIPAA compliant and all of those things that are very key. Um, I think when we. When we think about what this means for the landscape moving forward, this is why understanding your own customers and data is really key. This is why having a clear sense of your first party data, if you're not directly selling to patients, and you could do remarketing, like understanding that data is really key, but also just understanding these personas in a very enrich way where you can start. Leveraging these data sets within your targeting. You don't have to do remarketing, but like from the very first. Dollar spent. You want to have a clear understanding of who are the personas, who are these people you're going after? And the only way to get that is through a clear understanding of like what data you're getting from your website or whatever social channels that you're on. You wanna make sure that you have a clear sense of that and you're segmenting that out the best way you can. Within the, the restrictions and and requirements. But you, you wanna make sure that you're in a good place with your data so that when you wanna do programmatic or when you wanna expand to different areas that you know who you should be talking to. Right. And you know, um, where you should start going to meet your, your prospects. Right. Right. I think the, the. The general ways that think we're, we're envisioning AI benefit. All of all of our marketing is, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna help us know our target a lot better Okay. Than we have in the past because it just provides the ability to analyze a greater amount of data in better ways than we currently can. Mm-hmm. It's going to help us personalize to that user that we've defined better. In, in, in better, more efficient ways than we've been able to. Um, it's going to help us analyze the results of what we're doing better and faster. And it's a force multiplier where, you know, like you alluded to, and we've talked about this, you might, you might be able to test 25 pieces of ad copy. Without the client having to pay for that additional time necessarily, that it would've taken us to write 25 pieces of ad copy. Where in, you know, where in the past we might only be testing five or something. And so we're, you know, I think a lot of agencies, a lot of marketers are struggling with, is this gonna replace me? And, um, Diminish our value. I think most of us believe it's not going to replace us, but it, it is a force multiplier. It's going to allow us to do things at more scale than we've been able to. And then there's a whole other aspect of this, which is just use of chatbots, for instance. This is speculation. I'm not claiming to have that we've done this or we're doing this, but think about when we drive someone to a landing page, will having a chat bot on that landing page for the user better engage them that could drive a conversion more effectively? I mean, those are things that we're looking at. Um mm-hmm. You know how a chat bot can improve engagement and improve conversion as well, and that'll. Lend itself obviously to paid as well. So again mm-hmm. This is all new. Yeah. We don't have all these answers. Yeah. And any proof of this, but we'll see. Yeah. And, and I, I think it's super exciting. I think, you know, what, what's happening is that, you know, we're become the, the, the, the web or in general digital is becoming multi more multimodal. So there's so many different ways we can interact with things now. And I think that's just gonna. Like we, we've just started to see the interactions that we can have with, with text to video or video to audio. Audio. Like I think the ways that we're consuming information and will digest or ingest that information is changing so quickly. And the opportunities are, are huge right now. So that, you know, when we think about media, That's going to just follow that path. So you know, the restrictions that we currently have on how we can engage with our customers, I think that will change. I think, you know, you can have personal conversations with them in ways that are, um, Engaging and that provides value for them, but also kind of help you understand your, your business better. So there, there's so many opportunities I think that we haven't scratched the surface and it's exciting to kind of be here for, for this shift. Exactly. With regulatory being, you know, our biggest obstacle as it is with, with everything when it comes to the industries that we work in. But we'll see and we'll all navigate that together. Um, well, Phil, this has been, uh, just a tremendous amount of information. There's, there's just so much about this topic. I think we're gonna probably be talking a lot in the future on our PO podcast mm-hmm. With you on future episodes. Uh, but this was, this was great and, um, and I appreciate all your insights. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's, uh, been enjoyable, so yeah, really happy to. Pleasure. All right, thanks, Phil. Yeah, thank you.