In the ever-evolving landscape of the pharmaceutical industry, digital opinion leaders (DOLs) are playing an increasingly crucial role in shaping the scientific narrative. It’s important for pharmaceutical companies to engage in long-term partnerships with true DOLs who share their scientific perspective. However, identifying a DOL that engages in authentic scientific content, rather than videos of their dog, is no easy task!
Therefore, we have developed 10 essential questions that you must ask yourself about DOLs to help you navigate the dynamic space that is DOL mapping.
1. What is a DOL?
Before you roll your eyes and think “I don’t need to work with a social medial influencer”, allow us to emphasise that a DOL is neither an HCP with many followers from promoting cosmetics routines, nor a traditional KOL with an empty Social Media profile. For a professional to be considered a DOL or a digital influencer, they need to regularly post and engage in discussions around their therapeutic area; they also need to follow and be followed by respected HCPs, organisations and other DOLs.
2. Why should I be doing a DOL mapping?
DOLs are shaping the opinions of their peers and patient base, as well as influencing health policy decisions; they can potentially impact your brand long before your product is introduced to the market. So, whether you are branching into a new therapy area, nearing the launch of a product or seeking to disseminate evolving data and messaging around a longstanding molecule, DOLs can help reach a wider audience than traditional KOLs alone.
3. Who exactly am I looking for?
The attributes of DOLs that you are trying to find will depend on what is important to your business and the scientific messages that you want to convey. DOLs can be HCPs, researchers, patient advocates, or industry experts. Think about the specific scientific interests your DOLs will hold that will help to tell your scientific story. Do I have sufficient diversity across my DOLs, in all aspects, to reach my target audience and represent my brand?
4. How do DOLs use their influence?
DOLs often collaborate with pharmaceutical companies, patient advocacy groups, research organisations, and fellow HCPs to amplify their influence and disseminate accurate medical information. On social platforms, this can take many forms from posting original research, seeking opinions and polls to drive engagement and generate online discussion to participating in webinars and live stream events. These partnerships with pharma help to facilitate the development of educational content, patient support initiatives, and scientific collaborations.
5. How does one find DOLs?
DOL mapping is a nuanced process that must be tailored to your specific business needs. Our approach at Scout is based upon rigorous searching, web-scraping and data curation of millions of data points, which are then fed into a customisable social media influence scoring algorithm. This takes into consideration the reach, relevance, resonance and quality of posts, as well as attributes of a DOL’s followers. Finally, our analysts manually validate all potential DOLs to ensure that they are appropriate for your unique priorities.
6. Why don’t I just use my Key Opinion Leader (KOL) list?
Your KOLs are not guaranteed to have an online presence and, even if they do, it may not be as significant as the top DOLs in your space. You can work with your existing KOLs to enhance their digital footprint and capabilities; however, even if a KOL does indeed wish to become a DOL, this will take time. A DOL mapping will identify people with ready-formed skills and audiences, who are already being followed and listened to in the social space. You may read our blog for more information about the difference between a KOL and a DOL.
7. What type of final output would be useful to me?
Do I need to see an easy-to-navigate summary of relative social activity? Details of relevant social activity specific to my therapy area? Statistics on followers and HCP audience? Scoring based on engagement and reach of social activity? Data-rich profiles that provide information on scientific interests and traditional activities like publications? Do I need the data to upload directly to my existing CRM? Do I need a bespoke, compliant platform to hold and manage information on my DOLs and KOLs? Scout can offer all of this and more as part of our deliverables for a DOL mapping project.
8. How will I use the final outputs to engage with the DOLs?
It’s important to engage DOLs with activities that are useful to the therapy area, rather than simply asking them to tweet about your product. We can help you create an engagement strategy for your DOLs, which takes into consideration their interests, strengths and expertise.
9. What do DOLs want from pharma?
DOLs seek partnerships that allow them to provide value to their audience while also advancing healthcare. They also want to work with pharma representatives that already know about their area of expertise and specific research interests, and the topics that are of interest to their base of followers.
10. Can’t I just run my own DOL mapping?
When you search for “DOL”, are you looking for a Digital Opinion Leader? The Department of Labor? Or Dogs On Leashes? If you’ve got the time to separate “the results you wanted to retrieve” out from “the golden retrievers”, then we hope this list helps to guide your next steps. At Scout, we are experts at partnering with you to identify and map the precise DOLs you need – we’ll do the fetching for you.
