By Adam Usher, Digital Communications Manager
In today’s digital age, the way we measure the impact of communications campaigns has evolved significantly. Online metrics can be utilised by health communicators to gain valuable insights into audience behaviour, message effectiveness, and campaign performance. When evaluating your content, it is important to consider the bigger picture, informed by a range of metrics and not just those with the highest figures.
In February 2024 the Government Communication Service released an updated GCS Evaluation Cycle. This resource “outlines a clear, structured process that empowers communication professionals to meaningfully evaluate all types of communication activity, measure the impact of their work accurately and seek effective ways to improve”. This is a helpful resource to understand how you can use the right metrics as part of your communication evaluations.
From vanity metrics to actionable metrics
The metrics you use need to be the most suitable to your communication activities, on the right communication channel, and at each stage of your activity. Without practice, it can be easy to fall into the trap of listening to vanity metrics instead of more meaningful measurements.
Tableau defines vanity metrics as “metrics that make you look good to others but do not help you understand your own performance in a way that informs future strategies. These metrics are exciting to point to if you want to appear to be improving, but they often aren’t actionable and aren’t related to anything you can control or repeat in a meaningful way”.
For example, judging the impact of your campaign by the number of page views for your campaign website could provide you a big, shiny number, but this doesn’t give you the context as to how useful visitors found your content. Coupling this with engagement metrics can be a real eye opener, you may have received 1,000 page views, but if 950 of those only scroll to around 50% of the page, and the average engagement time is 15 seconds, what does that say about the quality of your content and its suitability to this audience?
Another example is if your campaign provides mental health support for young people aged 16-24, and you get a burst of pageviews, someone focused on vanity metrics would use this to indicate an increase in interest. But if the average age range of visitors is 35-44 (or older), then this indicates that the content is being engaged with more by parents, carers, other responsible adults or potentially healthcare providers. Your content may be correct, but if it isn’t written with young people in mind, using relatable language and media (such as images), and available on the channels they use, then you may be missing your target audience.
This is where actionable metrics are different. They provide you a more accurate or meaningful picture of performance.
Case study
TPHC communications consultants supported the “Your next poo could save your life” campaign to increase bowel cancer screening uptake in London. We provided strategic guidance, coordinated agencies and engaged NHS partners to achieve an effective rollout. We supported the NHS England – London team by providing regular website analytics reports, including an assessment of what the data was telling us, and potential content improvements to better engage with target audiences. We also developed digital content, an SEO plan, a PR plan, a communications toolkit, and secured brand partnerships.
The impact of the campaign
The campaign achieved positive media coverage across London, including BBC London News, and was widely shared by stakeholders including the NHS and the Mayor’s office.
Importantly, 69% of people surveyed after the campaign said they had used and returned their bowel cancer screening kit – a statistically significant increase from 63% before the campaign. Learn more about our role in this work here.
Online analytics tools
There are a range of online tools you can use to understand how successful your content is, including:
- Google Analytics – which helps website and app owners understand how their users interact with their platforms
- other website analytics tools
- social media scheduling tools
- brand and social media listening tools
- native social media analytics such as X Analytics and Meta Business Suite
- other listening tools such as Google Alerts.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
In July 2024 Google finalised its sunsetting of ‘Universal Analytics’ which had been in place for many years. The replacement, Google Analytics 4, has a new way of measuring actions, and incorporates several improvements:
- It collects both website and app data to help you better understand the holistic customer journey.
- It uses event-based data rather than session-based data.
- It has privacy controls such as cookieless measurement.
One of the most exciting improvements in GA4 is the availability of engagement metrics, such as ‘engagement rate’ or ‘average engagement time’. These provide a much more meaningful, and oftentimes eye-opening understanding of how users interact with your website.
If you were a user of the old Universal Analytics, then GA4 may take some time to get used to, but its worth it for the new metrics you can use.
Sessions vs engaged session
There is an important difference between sessions and engaged sessions. A session is a period during which a user visits your website. An engaged session is where a user visits your site, and either: spends longer than 10 seconds on the page, has 2 or more screen or page views, or triggers a key event. The engagement rate is the percentage of engaged sessions on your site or app, and this metric helps you measure visits that had some form of meaningful engagement.
With Universal Analytics, a session where someone visits your site but doesn’t visit any other page, and then leaves, would be classed as a bounce. But with GA4, if they visit and read your content for 10 seconds or more and then leave, it’s recorded as an engaged session.
Scroll depth
Another useful metric in GA4 is scroll depth, which tells you how far down the page users read. You may, as an example, have 1,000 pageviews, but if only 10 of those reach the bottom of the page, this could indicate a change is needed to the content.
This metric can quickly lead to an understanding that not everyone reads as far down as you had hoped.
These are just two examples, if you haven’t looked into the new capabilities GA4 can provide your organisation, we recommend you take some time to check it out.
Social media
There has been an evolution in social media metrics too. Traditional vanity metrics such as the number of impressions, or the number of followers don’t reflect the quality of those interactions. Better metrics which could provide you with more context are:
- Click-through rate – indicating users who are clicking on your links in a post.
- Engagement per post – the rate of engagements per post.
- Sentiment – how people feel about your outputs and your company.
- Audience growth rate – an indicator of your growth velocity.
Conclusion
To harness the power of online metrics so that you can paint a fuller picture of your content’s performance consider the following tips:
- Define your goals: Have a clear understanding of the objectives you want to achieve. Once you have a clear understanding of your goals, you can select the right metrics to measure your success.
- Choose the right metrics: Focus on metrics that align with your specific goals and provide actionable insights. Avoid getting bogged down in a sea of data by being selective, but don’t over-rely on a single metric. No single metric is ever perfect, so build an understanding of the limitations of your metrics and build this into your commentary.
- Take advantage of ever-evolving analytics tools: Utilise digital tools to understand the range of metrics available to you – we live in a digital world, and these tools change over time.
- Track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Identify a few key performance indicators that are most important to your organisation. Monitor these KPIs regularly to track progress and make necessary adjustments.
- Use a data-driven approach: Use data to inform your decision-making process. Analyse trends, identify patterns and use insights to optimise your future strategies.
- Don’t over-rely on metrics: While metrics are valuable, they should not be the sole factor of success. Qualitative feedback, such as surveys and focus groups, can provide additional context and help you understand the nuances of your audience’s perceptions.
By following these tips and embracing the evolution of metrics, you can test, refine and optimise your healthcare communications for your desired audiences. You can use metrics to help you make informed decisions, not as a rigid framework to constrain your creativity.
TPHC communications and engagement service
Our team of communications consultants offer a wide range of services and are well placed to advise on the latest trends and developments in digital communications. If you are interested in understanding how we work with our clients to advise and deliver data-driven communications using relevant metrics, please get in touch for a conversation.
Email our Consulting team if you have any questions or would like to discuss how we can support you with your digital communications: rf-tr.tphc-communication@nhs.net.
About the author
Adam Usher Adam is a Digital Communications Manager at TPHC with responsibility for the management and development of our digital communications channels. He is a Certified Digital Marketing Professional with a diploma in Digital Marketing and has over a decade in marketing experiences and expertise across a variety of industries.