Medical Marketing and Media: Director of Commercial Strategy and Innovation at Cognizant Company Cadient Writes About Engaging Healthcare Professionals Using LinkedIn Showcase

“We know that omnichannel approaches allow marketers to deliver the right message at the right time to their target audiences. Pharma marketers and social sites like LinkedIn are starting to take notice,” writes Gene Yuchin Miller. Excerpts:

“With more than 350 million users around the world and 200,000 new users a day, LinkedIn is used by an incredibly wide range of professionals, including healthcare providers. In fact, according to LinkedIn, there are already more than 4 million US healthcare professionals who currently use the platform. Like other professionals, HCPs use LinkedIn to look for employment opportunities, participate in conversations and share valuable news and content with their network.

Given this strong and growing HCP user base, a powerful opportunity has emerged to publish content directly on LinkedIn in order to increase the visibility of a company's corporate narrative and services as part of an integrated marketing strategy that spans paid, owned and earned media. Viewed through the lens of paid, owned and earned media, LinkedIn now offers a complete marketing ecosystem for generating both broad awareness and campaigns and content targeting HCPs.

Five tips to jump-start HCP engagement on a LinkedIn Showcase page:

1. Create a playbook that outlines engagement rules and scenarios.

2. Establish monitoring rules to be notified of new comments to posts.

3. Set engagement expectations for the HCP community to set guidelines around the types of conversations that should be encouraged on the page.

4. Approve an editorial calendar. Companies can mine their current website content, videos, partner content and more to help brainstorm post ideas and themes. 

5. Understand what works, and evolve. Review the analytics from the Showcase Page to help determine which content was the most impactful. Evolve the program’s storytelling, materials and services.

Like other emerging social channels, LinkedIn will gain momentum and acceptance within pharma marketing as new examples and use cases continue to emerge. The platform has the tools needed to drive paid, owned and earned content strategies.

For pharma marketers willing to try a relatively untested platform among the pharmaceutical industry, LinkedIn provides myriad benefits for pharma companies. The healthcare industry is already moving toward increased patient engagement. Pharmaceutical companies will need to follow suit—and utilizing networks like LinkedIn will help marketers not only advertise to HCPs but also actively engage with their target audience.”

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