Date posted: 10 October 2017
Where Did All The Metrics Go?
As a pharmaceutical marketer you’d be forgiven for thinking, it’s not worth measuring the success of my digital marketing efforts. Digital’s contribution to sales is so disconnected from pharma’s boots-on-the-ground approach that it doesn’t warrant the effort.
At Method, we strongly challenge this perception. By aligning your business objectives with the right metrics, KPIs and stage of your customer’s journey, you can absolutely measure, optimise and report on the contribution of your digital marketing efforts to sales, and calculate your Return on Investment (ROI) to boot!
In this post, we’ll recommend the key metrics for you to use at each stage of the marketing funnel (top, middle and bottom) and show you how to calculate the ROI of your digital marketing activities.
Helping you look like the marketing rock star you are!
Top of funnel: disease awareness/unmet need
A priority for any launch brand. Educating the market and creating a space for your product is essential. The following metrics disclose how many people are being reached and how engaged they are with your content.
Objectives
- Reach your target audience in the channels they’re using
- Engage them with relevant, valuable content
- Raise awareness for your campaign
Metrics for the top of the funnel:
- Social likes, shares and following: track the engagement metrics to see what types of content, formats, times of day etc., work best with your target audience
- Unique visitors: monitor your website’s overall traffic — the number of individuals who visit during a given period of time
- Page views: the cumulative number of pages your visitors click on during a given period. Typically, the more page views received the higher the engagement
- Search engine traffic: reflects how well optimised your content is for search A key channel for busy physicians and inquisitive patients
- Bounce rate: the percentage of visitors who come to your site and immediately ‘bounce’ back to Google to continue their search. Above 40% means your audience may not be finding the content relevant/useful
If you’re not satisfied with the results, ask yourself:
- Is my content reaching the right audience?
- Have I tested and optimised my content?
- Does my content put audience needs first?
- Does my content address audience needs better than my competitors?
Middle of funnel: consideration/lead generation
Lead generation metrics help track and measure mid-funnel activities in a way that enables you to attribute leads to specific pieces of content.
For example, instead of using your brand site to only sell product (something most physicians will not be ready for), why not create content that moves customers along their buyer journey, from awareness to consideration and one step closer to prescribing your product?
Objectives
- Drive targeted traffic to your website from search and social channels
- Get that traffic to perform an action on your site e.g. subscribe, download, request
- Begin building a relationship and earning their trust
Metrics for the consideration phase:
- Click-throughs: every piece of content should have a clear and compelling call to action (CTA). In most instances, the CTA will drive your target audiences to your website
- Conversions: usually involves the visitor performing some action on your site. The action you seek and the content provided will align directly with the target audience’s position in the marketing funnel. Google Analytics can set and track:
- Goal completions:
- Newsletter sign-up
- Content downloads
- Video views
- Goal conversion rate: the total number of goal completions divided by the total number of sessions
- Assisted conversions: the monetary value of the conversions assisted by your content. Variant metrics on this include:
- Persistence: how many leads a piece generated and whether these leads resulted in further actions
- Multiple Attribution: lets multiple pieces of content get credit under a multi-touch attribution model
- Time Stamping: the last piece of content a lead viewed prior to converting to an opportunity
- Goal completions:
If you’re not satisfied with the results, ask yourself:
- How clear and compelling are the calls to action for your target audience?
- How high is the perceived value of the conversion offer to your customers?
- How easy/difficult are you making it for people to convert on the site?
- Are you asking for too much in the sign-up forms, or is your conversion tactic [registration button] too hard to find?
Bottom of funnel: sales enablement
Using content in the sales process can be a very effective tool, where pharma sales and marketing functions can work together to deliver real value to customers and the brand.
Objectives
- Supply leads to the sales team
- Facilitate the sales conversion process
To track how content is affecting sales enablement, monitor sales for leads who receive your content versus those who don’t. Consider:
- Pipeline opportunities generated: use a first-touch attribution model to tally the amount of sales generated because a prospect found your content
- Revenue influenced: determine the amount of revenue generated from content prior to prescribing being initiated
- Sales conversion rate: ideally, you’ll find that sending content to leads builds trust by addressing their objections, pain points, and questions. Consequently, they should prescribe at a higher rate than those who don’t receive your content
- Sales cycle length: if leads who receive content prescribe earlier than those who don’t, you’ll know your content is effective
- Sales size: because each piece of content should help overcome barriers, prescribing more of your product should become apparent
If you’re not satisfied with the results, ask yourself:
- Is my content addressing all identified customer questions, pain points and objections?
- Is my content perceived as credible and trustworthy?
- Does it synergistically support offline conversions by the sales team?
Calculating Your ROI
This is the point at which some pharmaceutical marketers and their agencies may stop.
But not us!
It’s time for you to look like a rock star! Show your boss and your boss’s boss the real value and return on investment you’ve delivered to the brand and business. Here’s how:
#1 Calculate the cost of investment
- Each month, determine the number of hours required to create/distribute content
- Multiply this by the hourly rate of your staff/agency
- Add your costs to promote the content
For example, you spend 100 hours per month creating content, at an average hourly rate of £120. Your costs (content promotion) are £5,000.
Total cost of investment is: £17,000 for the month.
#2 Calculate the return on investment
- Each month, track the number of leads the website generates
- Multiply this by the conversion rate, customers’ average lifetime value and the average profit margin you achieve
For example, your site generates 30 new leads per month at a conversion rate of 20%.
Each customer (6) has an average lifetime value of £20,000 at a 30% profit margin.
Total return on investment is £36,000 for the month.
#3 Calculate your ROI
- Subtract your investment from your return on investment
- Divide the answer by your investment
For example, (£36,000 – £17,000)/£17,000 = 111% ROI
Time to go and show the boss how awesome you are!
What are your experiences of identifying, monitoring and reporting metrics in your digital and content marketing campaigns?
Please share your comments below
About the author
Sam Collins
Sam founded Method in 2017 to create and share great content. Content valued by patients, physicians and pharma.
