The engaging session generated lots of important questions from the attendees. Here are some of the key questions and answers from the webinar.
[Time stamp: 7 min 5 sec] Question 1: How do you establish ROI for influencers?
Jackie’s answer: “This really varies depending on the business objectives of what you’re trying to achieve at that point. So if the business objective is increasing awareness, the ROI could be looking at the value of the earned reach of the content versus what it would have cost for a similar ad spend to reach that type of audience. If it has increased prescriptions, you can monitor the kind of reach of the content or campaigns and compare it to historical sales data. Those are just a few but there are other ways to do it and it really depends on the goals and business objectives in each particular case.”
[12: 23] Q2: KOL and KOI as you defined it, is it specifically related to the pharma industry?
Jackie’s answer: “We use this in Pharma & Life Sciences but KOI, Key Online Influencer, depending on the organisation could also be called a Digital Opinion Leader, or a digital influencer. So Key Online Influencer could work across many different industries not just pharmaceutical but KOL is the term that’s fairly consistent and used across Pharma and Life Sciences to specifically mean these Key Opinion Leaders who are primarily HCPs, medical researchers or scientists. So KOL is fairly pharma-specific but KOI could go across industries and, like I said, KOI could be a DOL or a DI or e-influencer depending on the lingo used in the specific organisation. We have just taken on KOI as the term because it’s one of the most broadly used.”
[20:12] Q3: What are the most popular social media and platform that they [KOIs] use? Do you have that info?
Jackie’s answer: “Absolutely! So some of the networks that work really well for this are historically Twitter but there are changes happening there every day. But what is good about that is that HCPs generally speak around medical conferences and congresses and share opinions on studies and trial results around conferences and congresses and you can also see their networks and followers on networks like Twitter. You can also identify networks on YouTube and LinkedIn will soon be coming and other networks like Instagram and if they have a public profile on Facebook. That is a little bit harder to do as much of the the access is locked down but I would say Twitter increasingly TikTok soon LinkedIn, yes, Instagram and YouTube, those are some of the key networks.”
[21:27] Q4: How do you measure and understand what the KOI’s audience looks like?
Jackie’s answer: “There are ways to do this manually using open-source tools, such as NodeXL and Gephi, or there are tools like Audiense and Affinio which help you do this much more quickly because that’s what their enterprise software is based. So you can do it manually, it just will take more of your time or you can use specialised tools.”
[23:11] Q5: How do you identify which HCPs belong to which collective or speciality?”
Jackie’s answer: “It is by looking at how they identify themselves in their profiles, the links to their LinkedIn or academic or hospital affiliations that they have listed or academic accreditations that they have shared. ”
[23:38] Q6: Can you can you use PubMed to identify specialties as well as their publishing partner?
Jackie’s answer: “Yes absolutely. So you can look at first off author, second author, and there’s some good AI tools out there right now too if you haven’t seen it yet. Research Rabbit is really really helpful in identifying based on the original kind of author name or topic area the authors who are relevant or connected to that space.”
[36:28] Why go beyond KOLs to KOIs?
Jackie’s answer: “So the key opinion leaders are traditionally offline or in the medical literature and journals whereas the KOIs are already leading the conversation online, so they have the credibility within that channel platform or community. So it’s good to understand, listen, learn and work with them because they’re already tapped into the community in a way that that has kind of relevance authority and trust that an organisation or company coming into that conversation may not have on their own.”
