In crowded online spaces, reaching the target audience for healthcare campaigns is more challenging than ever. Paid digital advertising offers a way to get messages in front of specific groups, helping organisations maximise the impact of their communications activity. Tash Hadley, Communications and Marketing Manager at the Health Innovation Network South London, explores how healthcare organisations can use paid advertising to reach the people they most want to influence.
Healthcare organisations are using digital channels more than ever to communicate with a wide range of audiences. Many organisations rely heavily on organic social media, which is unpaid content shared through an organisation’s existing social media channels.
Social media platforms use algorithms to determine which content appears in users’ feeds. Research suggests the average LinkedIn organic reach is around 2.95% of followers, meaning many posts are seen by only a small proportion of an organisation’s audience. While organic content can be an effective way to engage followers, it can be difficult to achieve consistent reach through organic activity alone.
Ofcom’s Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report found that 89% of adult internet users use at least one social media platform, rising to 97% among 16 to 34 year olds. This presents a significant opportunity for healthcare organisations to engage people online. However, the challenge is not just about reaching more people, but reaching the right people. For many healthcare organisations, existing followers are often people already engaged with their health or connected to services. As a result, organic social media may not reach the people that a campaign is designed to influence, particularly underserved communities or groups experiencing health inequalities.
Paid digital advertising offers one way of addressing this challenge by paying platforms such as Meta (Facebook and Instagram’s parent company), YouTube, LinkedIn or TikTok to promote content to specific audiences, including people who do not already follow an organisation’s channels. It offers a way of reaching targeted audiences more reliably and allows you to measure the impact of your communications activity accurately. It also helps ensure that the time and resources invested in developing campaigns and content are matched by a strategy that gets those messages in front of the people most likely to take action.
At the Health Innovation Network South London, we have seen the impact paid digital advertising can have on health and behaviour change communications activities. Over the past two years, we’ve run a range of different digital advertising campaigns, which have helped us to:
- Reach more than 1.2 million people from across the UK;
- Shift attitudes, including raising awareness and consideration of alternative career paths for graduate nurses and Allied Health Professionals;
- Change behaviours, including improving participation from underrepresented communities in health and care research and redirecting young people at risk of health misinformation towards trusted NHS advice.
Reaching the right audience
One of the key advantages of paid digital advertising is the ability to target specific audiences based on demographics, location, interests and online behaviours. The level of audience targeting available can be highly specific. For example, audiences we’ve previously targeted include:
- Nursing students studying in London;
- Residents living within a defined radius of a hospital;
- Women aged 18 to 44 living in areas with the highest levels of deprivation in south west London;
- People with interests linked to particular health conditions or topics.
Campaigns can be designed around a range of objectives including raising awareness, promoting engagement, or encouraging specific behaviours (such as downloading an app or completing a sign-up form). Budgets can also be adapted to suit individual projects, making paid advertising accessible for organisations of different sizes.
Why paid advertising works for healthcare communications
Healthcare communicators are rarely trying to reach everyone. More often, they need to reach specific groups, whether that’s residents living in a particular area, people at greater risk of poor health outcomes or particular groups of healthcare professionals. Paid advertising allows organisations to target these audiences directly rather than relying on social media algorithms to determine who sees their content.
Paid advertising also helps organisations maximise the value of their communications investment. Considerable time and resources are often spent developing campaign content, but that investment can be undermined if the intended audience never sees it. Paid advertising helps ensure messages reach the people they were designed for.
Unlike many traditional communications channels, paid advertising also provides detailed performance data. Campaign performance can be monitored in real time, allowing communications teams to understand which audiences are responding, which messages are resonating and where changes may be needed to improve results.
Most importantly, paid advertising allows organisations to move beyond basic engagement measures such as likes, views and followers and understand whether communications activity is actually contributing towards more meaningful outcomes.
How we’ve used paid advertising to support research delivery
Research delivery is one example of how we’ve used paid digital advertising to support healthcare communications. We’ve recently worked with the NIHR Research Delivery Network to deliver campaigns designed to raise awareness of health and care research and encourage participation in research opportunities.
Promoting research careers to early career healthcare professionals
In 2024, we delivered a campaign aiming to raise awareness of research careers among nurses, midwives and allied health professionals, positioning research as an attractive career pathway for graduates considering alternatives to more traditional clinical roles. We developed short form video content and promoted it through Meta, YouTube and Google advertising. Activity was targeted at healthcare students and early career professionals aged 18 to 34 across London.
Results
- More than 550,000 impressions were delivered across campaign channels;
- More than 77,000 views were generated across campaign videos;
- Campaign assets became three of the four most viewed NIHR YouTube videos of all time;
- Google searches for clinical research employment related terms increased during the campaign period, with some search terms reaching their highest recorded volumes;
- During the campaign period, we recorded an increase in volume of more than 10% in NHS Jobs searches for clinical research employment-related terms.
Watch the video: A week in the life of a research nurse
Increasing participation in clinical research
Earlier this year, we worked with NHS South West London to test whether paid social media advertising could help increase participation in clinical research studies among pregnant people living in south west London.
A key objective was to reach people from global majority communities who may be less likely to engage through traditional recruitment routes. The campaign combined influencer-led content with targeted advertising focused on women aged 18 to 44 living in specific locations in south west London. We also used a machine learning-based approach called Dynamic Creative Optimisation, which automatically tested different versions of campaign content and prioritised the combinations generating the strongest engagement and response rates.
Results
- More than 740,000 impressions were generated across the campaign;
- More than 3,200 visits were driven to participating study websites;
- Dynamic Creative Optimisation generated 27% more link clicks, a 43% higher click-through rate and a 22% lower cost per click than standard campaign creative;
- 100% increase in expressions of interest from south west London residents for participating studies;
- The proportion of participants from global majority communities completing the studies increased by more than 19% during the campaign period.
Watch the video: Understanding research during pregnancy
How we can help
Paid digital advertising can feel complex, particularly for organisations using it for the first time. We work closely with organisations to:
- Understand their objectives and define what success looks like;
- Identify the audiences they need to reach;
- Develop campaigns that align with their objectives and budget;
- Test and refine messaging to improve campaign performance;
- Monitor and evaluate success.
Whatever your objective, we can help ensure your communications reach the right audiences and deliver measurable results.
Not sure where to start?
Get in touch to discuss your objectives and explore what paid digital advertising could achieve for your project.
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