3 reasons why health marketers need insight into audience intention

What if you knew what your audiences were likely to do next? What if you could understand their intentions at critical points in their health journeys, and reach them with the most relevant message before they take the next step? For health, wellness or pharma marketers, gaining insight into your audience’s intentions could be a game-changer. Intentions reveal a person’s probable next action within context. For instance, knowing that a person might intend to buy an exercise bike or fill a prescription gives brands a unique opportunity to provide a highly relevant message at just the right time. Insight into intention enables you to: 1. Understand how your audience engages and what they are actually looking for. When you understand intention, it means you understand what your audience is actually interested in, so you can proactively offer your solutions to the people most likely to want them. Health publishers have abundant first-party data on how people engage with health content, the topics they explore and the questions they ask in order to make decisions about their well-being. These insights make it possible to analyze and understand users’ interests and behaviors, including patterns of engagement that might otherwise go unnoticed. In today’s data-privacy landscape, advertisers need the insights, context and actionability that only first-party data can provide. Go a step further for insight, not just into interests but intentions as well. New predictive-data science models can identify segments of users with a high likelihood of making a future purchase or taking an action in a specific product category. These models combine first-party data at scale, natural language processing (NLP) and machine-learning capabilities to reveal probable intentions. For instance, health interest data might identify a segment of people “interested in Vitamins, Minerals, & Supplements (VMS),” but now it’s possible to predict how likely someone is to make a purchase related to VMS—or even identify the specific vitamin, mineral, or supplement they are researching, like Vitamin-C, Vitamin-D, or B-12. 2. Define purpose-built audience segments. By combining the outputs of data-science models with additional audience insights from qualitative and behavioral analysis, we can build for advertisers powerful segmentations—that is, personas. Including intention as part of personas opens up new possibilities. For instance, advertisers can now target a persona to reach those interested in fitness content and who likely are intending to buy a bike. But we can also expand the scale of the audience to include similar segments, using machine-learning insights, for an even broader targetable audience of people who may be interested in bikes. Meanwhile, qualitative insights from surveys, polls and studies offer context on who, exactly, is engaging with specific content, what challenges they face and what they want for their health. Our personas describe not just health interest data but also demographic factors like age and income. 3. Be relevant at the right moment and drive action. Segments built with audience intention drive more action. Initial testing shows that an intentionality-based approach works, with one of our shopper segments being 74% more likely to click out to a retailer to buy a product than the control user group. This approach enables truly personalized experiences for individual health journeys, allowing advertisers to be more predictive and deliver the best message just before consumers make their next decision. Moreover, this level of audience insight makes it possible to build differentiated products that deliver new methods for how advertisers can engage with audiences. It also surfaces the mindset and barriers of particular audience segments, paving the way for advertisers to build optimized messaging and campaigns that better suit their needs. Take the next step with intention Brands can elevate their advertising using this intentionality-first approach, but they need a partner with the data set and analytic ability to take insights to the next level. Taking the next step with intention is about embracing a paradigm shift in health marketing, one that focuses on a deeper, data-driven understanding of what audiences are looking for now, as well as who they are and the challenges they face. In this way, we can deliver highly relevant, timely messages that resonate with consumers, drive action and ultimately improve health and wellness outcomes. It's more than a strategic advantage. It's an evolution in how we drive well-being. About Healthline Media Healthline Media drives well-being forward, leading 74 million people to take action and improve their lives every month. With our depth of insight, we meet people where they are in their personal health journeys and connect them with medically evidenced content, communities and solutions when they need it most. Trust, inclusivity and compassion for the human experience are at the heart of all we do. Healthline Media’s portfolio includes Healthline, Medical News Today, Psych Central, Greatist and Bezzy.

3 reasons why health marketers need insight into audience intention

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