At this time, many pharma marketers are turning up the dial on self-serve content for healthcare professionals (HCPs), investing in upgrades to websites and digital activities for 2021. The majority (according to Across Health’s 2020 Maturometer survey) are confident that their portals will gain traction.

But what does 'traction' really mean? What data and insights will help pharma evaluate the true value and longer-term opportunities that digital activities present, both for their organisations and their HCP audiences?

EPG Health, who launched its new HCP website Medthority (www.medthority.com) this year, can shed some light, having planned success criteria into every element of its strategic digital roadmap. From site structure and user experience to content consumption and journeys through Key Educational Messages, there has been laser focus on adopting the right KPIs, event tracking and metrics for meaningful digital insights. See the digital metrics that EPG Health deem important.

The challenge

2019 research study The Evolving Role of Websites for Healthcare Professionals revealed that, while 92% of pharma gave high priority to website data and metrics, only 24% tracked specific website content KPIs, 88% couldn’t measure ROI/outcomes and less than half considered their websites to be successful in meeting either their own business objectives or the needs of HCPs.

While pharma may understand the importance of data for steering digital strategy and individual online activities, most are drowning in a sea of data that they struggle to adequately understand or use. The ability to demonstrate value, efficacy of content, quality of engagement and outcomes is a real challenge.

Poor data can be the downfall of a digital programme. With marketers facing increasing pressure to prove ROI, a team that struggles to analyse their data may not be given authority to act on trends and insights or make further investment decisions to improve outcomes.

A better way of working

The reality is that handling of website data and metrics is not easy. The good news though is that simple changes in approach can have a significant positive impact on both engagement and insights.

EPG Health’s experience is that pharma is often blinkered by quantity over quality, being overwhelmingly concerned with reach. But, without proper context, traditional metrics like page views, sessions and users are often meaningless or provide a false sense of effectiveness.

KPIs and metrics should help you understand the consumption of individual key messages and the effectiveness of your content, site structure and user journey. Context is key.

Establishing the right, bespoke KPIs for your digital activity at the planning stage is a detailed task but allows you to set event tracking and metrics for meaningful insights and an accurate measure of success. Not doing so is a common and costly mistake.

To harness the power of your website data, you must develop the art of setting KPIs and metrics aligned to your specific objectives, target personas, key educational messages, content, website features and journeys. For advice on tracking HCP engagement with you Key Educational Message, read the whitepaper: Accomplish Meaningful HCP Engagement Online

If you track the right KPIs, you can better understand the depth of engagement, control the journey, measure content ROI and confidently plan ongoing tactics and resource.

For example, rather than monitoring the number of ‘plays’ for a KOL video or page views for a patient case study, you might monitor the number/percentage of target HCPs that watch the video or scroll the page deep enough to consume one key message or two etc. Armed with this information you can adapt content to ensure a higher percentage consume your messages in the future.

Measuring Meaningful Metrics with Medthority

There has never been a more important time to embrace digital metrics and KPIs. They will play a vital role in digital transformation through COVID-19, and for successful HCP engagement beyond. See some of the metrics that help EPG Health understand, build and sustain HCP engagement with pharma funded Learning Zones on Medthority.

VIEW KEY METRICS