3 Reasons to Target HCPs with Facebook Advertising

Posted by Patrick McCafferty on April 3rd, 2017

As an HCP marketer or advertising professional, you are likely already involved or evaluating highly targeted direct to provider, programmatic digital advertising campaigns.  Many marketers who are not quite at the point of engaging with a DSP (demand side platform) to execute truly programmatic campaigns or are seeking even wider, more diverse reach, are looking toward social platforms such as Facebook.  No matter what channels you are using, targeting the exact physicians that are most appropriate for the messaging is crucial to the success and compliance of your campaigns.  Wherever you are deploying your campaigns, recent data shows that HCPs are responding to digital advertisements across a variety of websites, including social media. In fact, Facebook advertising can be one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to engage with your target audience online.  Below are 3 reasons you may want to consider Facebook advertising as part of your digital strategy.

1. Easy to Learn
   If you’re more of a marketing generalist and not a traditional advertiser, digital advertising can feel outside of your scope of knowledge. Fortunately, Facebook provides a very easy-to-use interface that walks you step by step through the process of setting up an advertising campaign, from uploading your creative, to choosing your target audience, and setting your budget. There is also a plethora of analytics available to you to track and monitor your campaign for optimization. 
2. Affordability
   Digital advertising platforms have a very wide range in costs, with some DSPs charging a minimum of 6 figures per month. Even Google AdWords has become considerably more expensive in the last year, with many HCP marketing keywords doubling in their cost per click price. If you’re piloting an advertising platform and a new strategy for the first time, you may want to spend considerably less while you’re testing. Facebook, for now at least, is one of the lowest priced digital advertising platforms for its level of engagement and ability to utilize 3^rd party data.
3. Flexible Audience Targeting 
   The biggest advantage to Facebook advertising is its audience targeting options. As you know, an incredibly creative campaign idea, a clever strategy, and an enormous budget won’t yield results or remain in compliance unless you know you’re targeting the right individuals. Facebook has multiple targeting options based on your needs. The first option, though admittedly less reliable, would be to build your own audience right in the platform based on a number of demographic and behavioral data that Facebook collects. While this is a quick and cheap approach, the targeting options are fairly limited and not necessarily within regulatory compliance. The second option is to select your audience first with a 3^rd party data partner to target the exact healthcare professionals you need, right down to the NPI level.

MedData Group has a database of over 1.9M HCPs filtered by dozens of professional, demographic and firmographic fields including specialty data, NPI, practice size, clinical behavior, and so much more. We work with HCP marketers to give them access to the exact targets, or digital IDs, they need to fuel highly targeted and fully compliant digital advertising campaigns.

Want to learn more about how to leverage digital IDs for your next targeted advertising campaign whether on Facebook or anywhere else on the web?  We’d love to hear from you.  Contact me today with your questions, comments and feedback or contact sales directly at: [email protected] or call (978)-887-0039.