Social media can turn into a black hole without goals and a strategy to guide your effort.
You know your medical supply or manufacturing company needs a social media presence. Figuring out where to budget your money, time, and energy is another story.
For medical supply manufacturers and distributors, weighing the benefits of LinkedIn vs. Facebook for healthcare is a critical part of any successful strategy – but the answer isn’t so obvious even for strict B2Bs.
They’re each so different. Instead, consider your company’s unique audience segments, products, and goals while considering the factors of each platform here.
LinkedIn Vs. Facebook for Reaching Your Healthcare Audience
As of January 2021, 2.8 billion people use Facebook at least monthly. You might not catch decision-makers or end-users in their work zone, but you can still hook their interest with non-promotional content.
Just consider how many healthcare professionals use Facebook on and off the clock. What type of content would they like? Infographics, news stories, relaxation tips perhaps? Consider Facebook’s more casual nature to form an emotional connection.
Of course, if your audience includes any consumer segments, Facebook is also a must-have. Share relevant tips and graphics.
LinkedIn, meanwhile, only boasts 740 million users with most living outside the United States so really consider the global professional audience potential here: doctors, nurses, hospitals, distributors, manufacturers, logistics, researchers, assistants, and much more.
By LinkedIn’s own account, four of every five users influence decisions at their company. Not only that, but LinkedIn users across the board have twice the buying power of your average internet audience.
As a healthcare manufacturer or distributor, these facts also make LinkedIn an excellent platform for connecting with influencers to spread your message with relevant content.
LinkedIn Vs. Facebook for Maximizing Healthcare Ad Potential
Both LinkedIn and Facebook offer some of the best targeted ad capabilities of any social media platform.
LinkedIn excels because it’s already pretty targeted as a professional network. When you want to run ads, you have all the user-friendly tools you need: sponsored content, direct message ads, dynamic ads, and text ads.
Use LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager to choose your objective, build your ad content and type, and narrow your audience based on over 20 attributes. As a professional platform, LinkedIn’s attributes focus more on firmographics.
Facebook, however, offers roughly the same type of ad capabilities but with more consumer-centric attributes – like pages followed, hobbies, demographics, and interests.
Don’t let it fool you though: You can also tweak your Facebook audiences for firmographics as well.
Both platforms also offer useful retargeting capabilities. Facebook Pixel lets you analyze lead or customer behavior around the web. LinkedIn, meanwhile, offers Insights for similar potential at a higher cost – along with URL-specific retargeting for those niche landing pages.
LinkedIn Vs. Facebook for Healthcare Specific-Tools
See, here’s where LinkedIn takes over Facebook for healthcare distributors and manufacturers. According to LinkedIn, the platform boasts:
- 8.6 million practitioners
- 12 million CXOs
- 6.2 million physicians, surgeons, dentists, and nurses
- 3.3 million hospital executives
- 4.3 million pharmaceutical professionals
- 600 thousand institutional investors
- Healthcare influencers with over 2.4 million combined followers
That’s why LinkedIn specifically created its Healthcare Hub: an all-in-one marketing portal for companies just like yours.
With the Healthcare Hub for marketers, you can capitalize on key health dates and observances, better understand your unique metrics and ROI, improve your overall customer experience, and develop relevant ad campaigns.
Facebook offers healthcare groups, pages, and targeting but nothing like this.
LinkedIn Vs. Facebook for Different Types of Communication
Really consider how you want your brand voice to sound across each platform. Spending some time to forge your communication style on each app can go miles towards building genuine connections.
For example, LinkedIn is the perfect place to get employees involved as ambassadors or advocates. On LinkedIn, people who follow your employees are much more likely to be interested in your latest content compared to Facebook.
On Facebook, stick with groups, comment sections, and pages for interacting as your brand with a more casual tone.
LinkedIn Vs. Facebook for Healthcare Account-Based Marketing
LinkedIn is definitely the top-choice for account-based marketing – especially with the Healthcare Hub giving you a playbook full of tools for launching your campaigns with the right metrics and vibe.
But it gets better because LinkedIn also offers a full suite of ABM targeting tools for uploading account lists and leveraging LinkedIn’s first-party account data – the secret sauce for bringing your campaigns to life.
Plus, LinkedIn’s attributes for building targeted campaigns specifically list firmographic details like company size, member schools and interests, skills, job level, job seniority, company name, and more.
Don’t count Facebook out just yet though. Although the tech giant doesn’t have the same first-party account data as LinkedIn, it does offer basic firmographic targeting for company name, job role, industry, and a few others to nail down a strategy.
Just consider how you’d use Facebook’s ABM targeting. Read the room: Facebook is more casual so consider networking events, webinars, and other laid-back content.
LinkedIn Vs. Facebook for Healthcare Brand Building
We don’t want to discount Facebook for healthcare branding because the platform does offer extensive tools like brand awareness campaigns, image carousels, video, and even shopping (even if it’s mostly for window shopping).
However, LinkedIn’s Healthcare Hub offers a wide range of tips specifically targeted to the unique branding needs of healthcare manufacturers and distributors. Plus, you can download LinkedIn’s health and wellness observance calendar to run engaging branded campaigns for dates that best relate to your company and audience segments.
Understand the Tools of LinkedIn Vs. Facebook for Healthcare Before Setting Goals
See, it’s not as clear-cut as using LinkedIn for healthcare professionals and Facebook for patients. It takes a little more nuance figuring out who you want to reach and what kind of content they’d like best at each touchpoint. Well, and practicing each platform’s countless tools and features but that’s another story.
Find out why so many manufacturers and distributors rely on Share Moving Media to propel their visibility online and off by contacting us today!
