Two Metric “Must Haves” for Healthcare Marketing: Audience Quality and Net Impact
Marketing without measurement is like sailing without a compass. You might be in motion but heading in the wrong direction, destined for a long and costly course correction. Fortune may favor the bold, but the prepared are better positioned to find fortune.
Accordingly, every marketing campaign in life sciences must incorporate measurement. Measurement determines a program’s effectiveness, confirms that educational messages are reaching the right audiences, identifies opportunities for optimization, and demonstrates return on investment.
But what are the right metrics for measuring effectiveness of DTC (direct to consumer) advertising campaigns? Two stand out: audience quality and net impact.
Audience quality
Audience quality is a fundamental metric in DTC programmatic advertising, demonstrating how well an audience reached by a campaign matches the intended audience. For example, in a diabetes care campaign, audience quality would show how well the campaign did in reaching relevant but anonymized consumers, such as those with a potential diabetes diagnosis or those interested in learning more about diabetes management.
Audience quality can:
- Serve as a leading indicator (a metric that predicts future outcomes and/or helps anticipate trends) of campaign performance.
- Identify whether ad spend was wasted, by revealing how well a campaign reached its intended audience.
- Support more granular optimization, at the channel, publisher, or tactic level.
Weekly monitoring of audience quality, and optimizing toward improving this metric, will lead to better campaign results. With access to near real-time data, marketers can make weekly adjustments to their media plans, ensuring that their campaigns continuously improve in reaching the right audience.
Net impact
While audience quality focuses on reach, net impact measures the actual effect of advertising on consumer behavior.
Net impact is calculated by comparing the conversion rate (i.e., number of new brand prescriptions divided by number of people exposed to media) of an exposed group (i.e., test group) against a control group that was not exposed to the advertising. The difference in net new scripts between these two groups, divided by the total exposed audience, results in the net impact. This metric goes beyond gross conversions to isolate the incremental impact of media exposure.
Net impact:
- Shows the true impact of advertising, helping to justify marketing investments.
- Guides future campaign budgets and media mix decisions.
- Can be used to compare the effectiveness of different channels or tactics.
Updating net impact throughout a campaign’s lifecycle allows for ongoing optimization and more informed decision-making.
Navigate your way to actionable insights with effective measurement
Think of measurement as your organization’s compass, guiding you not just to collect data, but to chart a course towards actionable insights. As you refine your measurement practices, consider how analytics and insights can be translated into concrete steps to improve advertising effectiveness and better serve healthcare audiences.
Watch our latest webinar where we “spill the tea” on measurement for DTC campaigns in healthcare. We’ll dive deeper into metrics like audience quality and net impact, uncover the red flags of poor measurement, and more. Let us help you navigate the complexities of measurement to drive meaningful action.
