Raising awareness of the major public disease that is allergy

Pharmaceutical company Mylan in 2014 wished to increase the awareness of the widespread disease which is allergy. Consumers are increasingly using digital platforms to seek medical advice, and so embracing the platform became a natural next step for Mylan. A comprehensive system of channels made sure to reach the targeted audience, with the correct message and tone of voice. This was key for getting high engagement, large traffic and widespread media coverage.

• Build awareness around the subject ‘allergy’, create a community for engagement and information sharing
• Build Allergiguiden as a preferred source for media information
• Encourage the public to see their doctor, for proper diagnosis and treatment

We wanted to build Allergiguiden as a preferred source of allergy information for consumers and the media. The website and Facebook page were created for this very purpose – being both dynamic and intuitive. Our focus was to create content for the site and drive traffic from the Facebook page. This includes recruiting ‘allergy ambassadors’ with real stories from their everyday life, running surveys to provide firsthand information about allergy, and creating infographics for Facebook and the media. The tactical use of ambassadors has been especially successful in creating engagement, not only on Allergiguiden’s own sites, but also on the ambassadors’ SoMe channels.

Facebook has been the most important SoMe channel for Allergiguiden, but during the last year, we have also applied other SoMe channels like Instagram and Snapchat to reach a younger audience. We had an especially large effect creating a Snapchat filter that focused on the symptoms of allergy, which was active through the pollen season of 2019.

The traffic on the site has kept increased since launch. Last year the Allergiguiden site had almost 800 000 pageviews, which is an increase of 55% since 2018. In 2020 we are on schedule to elevate these figures even further.

The ambition to become a preferred source for the media, is well on its way. In total, the media published 81 articles that included “Allergiguiden” in 2019, with a reach of more than 7,4 million (keeping in mind Norway has a population of 5.3 million). In total since launching, Allergiguiden has had about 500 media clippings and a reach of over 37 million.

In 2019 we increased the number of followers on Facebook with almost 4000, reaching over 3 million people in the target group. Furthermore, from Allergiguiden’s four content marketing articles distributed through Facebook last year, we achieved a CTR average of 7% (the global CTR benchmark for healthcare pages on Facebook being 0,83%, according to WordStream). In 2020 we have continued this positive trend. From January to mars we have reached over 1,4 million people in the target group and increased the number of followers by more than 600.

The Snapchat filter got a reach of 928 219, and more than 7 600 used the filter. The number of people who used the filter compared to the reach (conversion rate) is 0,89%, which indicates a successful campaign, according to Snapchat.