Health Promotion & Digital Channels: A New Framework for Successful Health Promotion Campaigns

Table of Contents

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Health and digital channels

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What’s wrong with the current digital health promotion model?

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i) Create an online resource

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ii) Create a blog

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iii) Ask people to take an action

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This traditional model produces mediocre results

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Mistake #1: Cliché marketing

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Mistake #2: Information overload

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Mistake #3: Ineffective use of interactive tools

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Mistake #4: Information fifirst, traffifific second

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A new framework for health promotion

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Principle #1: Add value with a unique audience asset

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Principle #2: Interrupt at the point of need

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Principle #3: Market for intent

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Case Study: ‘Stop Bullying’ Campaign

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Summing up

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A better way to think about health promotion and digital channels This eBooklet is going to change how you think about digital health promotion campaigns. We are going to depart from the usual mix of online tactics that many national non-profits, government agencies, and organizations use to raise awareness and change behaviour. We will show you why the digital components of most health promotion campaigns fail to attract large audiences or make much of an impact. Our hope is that you will see the possibility in digital and better understand how audiences are using these channels.

What your organization will discover: By the end of the eBooklet, your organization will understand: • Why social sharing campaigns often fail with health promotion. • Why many health promotion sites do not attract large numbers of visitors. • Three essential frameworks to help rethink the way digital can be used in health promotion.

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Health and digital channels According to a new study done by PEW Research Centre, a nonpartisan American think tank, audiences are increasingly turning to digital channels to learn about their health issues. Among 3,000 adults surveyed by Pew, 35 percent say they’ve gone online at one time or another to diagnose a medical condition. According to the study, that’s one in three people using search engines, social media, and online tools to diagnose health issues. The study also found: • 72% of all Internet users polled looked for health information online over the past year. • 77% said they started at a search engine such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo. • Another 13% went to a specialized medical site, such as WebMD. It’s clear that audiences are turning online for health issues. But how is their experience? Are governments, social enterprises, and non-profits doing enough to meet the demands of audiences? We think there are huge opportunities to better use digital channels to raise awareness for health issues and promote new healthy behaviours. We will begin by diagnosing what we feel are some common mistakes made by current health promotion campaigns and then offer some analyses of how current tactics can better take advantage of digital trends.

What’s wrong with the current digital health promotion model? The standard digital component of health promotion campaigns will usually include one or all of the following well-worn tactics.

i) Create an online resource If we were to sum up the strategy behind most digital health promotion campaigns it would be this: create a website filled with information and then try to make that information fun through contests and interactive tools to help users learn about healthy lifestyle actions, including grocery shopping, eating, exercise, and disease prevention.

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This standard tactic of creating a library of helpful tips often consumes a large part of the budget, but as most marketers know the results are less than stellar.

ii) Create a blog The blog tips are generally generic and broad. As evidenced by most social share buttons and your analytics, few visitors ever read them.

iii) Ask people to take an action This often includes actions like downloading an action plan, signing a petition, or creating an account. For health promotion campaigns to achieve better success we need to realize that information alone isn’t enough. People have become immune to it. They can find “healthy meal tips” anywhere online.

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We believe that the key to successful health promotion is really in innovating the delivery of information. It isn’t enough to just create blog posts or offer helpful links. Health promotion campaigns need to do a better job of delivering information at the right time (through mobile and advanced targeting) and helping increase the perceived value of content. We will cover these two points in detail later.

This traditional model produces mediocre results The above model can be found in countless health promotion campaigns and is used by thousands of non-profits, government agencies, and organizations. It’s no secret that most of these online campaigns have low numbers of visitors, high bounce rates, and low audience participation. So why aren’t these campaigns working as well as they could? There are four mistakes we typically see.

Mistake #1: Cliché marketing Marketing textbooks teach us that we need to speak the language of the audience. We need to get inside their heads. We need to show them that “this is for you, this is your story.” In principle, this is an excellent philosophy. The problem is that the execution of images and key messages often looks like this:

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There they are, the four target segments: the white-collar professional, the college student, the tradesperson, and the medical professional. Compare the above cliché website to a viral campaign such as http://slaveryfootprint.org/.

Putting stock images of smiling moms, construction workers, and business people will not travel through digital channels. We need to work harder to create content that tells the story to our intended audiences.

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Mistake #2: Information overload Is your audience really interested in reading 50 articles? Or do they arrive with a very specific problem they are trying to solve? Instead of presenting a huge library of health tips, create a structured way for visitors to quickly see the value of your content. The for-profit world offers lots of great examples. Mint.com, for example, helps new visitors see the value of their product with some helpful videos. The key point is that they are not dumping information on the user and making them selfserve. Instead, they are guiding and helping the user quickly solve the pain-point or answer the search query that led them to the site.

This is much better than dumping visitors onto a homepage with a bunch of generic tips. A golden rule of UX (user experience) is to guide the user through your experience. You need to orientate new users, show them the core information you want them to consume, and above all demonstrate the value of them spending time on your site.

Mistake #3: Ineffective use of interactive tools What is interactive? The principle is that it involves the user and asks for their participation, rather than delivering information in a one-way format. The reality for health promotion campaigns is that interactivity is often measured in mouse clicks. Instead of writing a brochure, they break up the brochure info into an interactive (or pseudo-interactive) tool.

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Do we create interactive tools because it is the best way to deliver this information? Or do we create interactive tools because we think that a spoonful of digital sugar is the best way to trick the user into swallowing the key messages of the campaign? Interactive content has no intrinsic value to the user. We need to rethink how and when interactive content should supplement traditional delivery such as blog posts or videos.

Mistake #4: Information first, traffic second The standard health promotion campaign goes something like this. Create a website. This is what we need to promote. Write the blog posts, create the tools, and film the videos. This is our message. This is what we need to get out to the public. OK, now it is time to promote. Email the Twitter influencers, hit up the press contacts, offer a prize, buy radio ads, and buy TV spots. Let the traffic come. It is no wonder this doesn’t work as well as we want. It is a mistake to think of information first and promotion second. Instead, let’s think of how we can tap into existing demand, existing search queries, existing audience desires and then create content that matches those demands. Let’s think less about promoting health causes. And more about connecting our audiences to resources and information that they are looking for, information that can save their life, enrich their health, and make an impact. We’ve covered what our agency Redbird Communications believes to be the common mistakes made. Now, let’s look at a new framework that will change how you think about health promotion.

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A new framework for health promotion We want to do more than create the same old “online information resource.” These websites are boring to the user and rarely get the flood of traffic we expect. We want to be honest about our marketing. Does putting a man in a construction outfit really reach that target segment? Does a stock image of a mother speak to the deepest corner of the hearts of females aged 28-35? We want to think deeper than turning health brochures into interactive tools. Interactive is great, but adding tool tips to a photo-shopped background isn’t revolutionary to the user anymore. Here are three principles to help us create innovative health promotion campaigns.

Principle #1: Add value with a unique audience asset An audience asset is much different than an online resource website or set of “fun, interactive tools.” Health promotion campaigns need to think less about how they can reach an audience and more about how they can build an audience. Building an audience asset is much different than promotion or “reaching” the target market through advertising, social media, and PR. Building an audience asset requires you to think more like a content producer or magazine editor than marketer. You need to think about what the audience truly cares about, their entry points into your content (via search and social media), and what they want from your content. The key idea is that you need to package this content in a unique way. You need to create something that they can’t get from a thousand other places online. Earth Rangers, a unique non-profit dedicated to raising the world’s next generation of wildlife protectors, has built an amazing audience asset. They let their target market sign up to become “Earth Rangers.” The organization features the achievements of dedicated “Earth Rangers” on their blog, offers free games to members, and launches contests to make sure their audience keeps consuming their educational content. This gives Earth Rangers a much deeper and more authentic understanding of their audience than most behavioural and health campaigns. Their blog posts often get 100 to 300 comments and lots of participation from their audience.

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They have focused intensely on building an audience and community of readers, rather than simply pushing out educational content. They also balance audience demand for certain types of content (such as posting on popular animals, top 10 posts, and other content that the audience responds well to) with more detailed educational content.

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Health promotion campaigns can learn from this example. We have to work harder to think about the audience’s story, what they are looking for, and how we can build a long-term relationship with the audience rather than trying to get them to “sign a pledge” or “take a fit test.”

Principle #2: Interrupt at the point of need Avinash Kaushik, a brilliant Google evangelist, has a principle health promotion campaigns need to adopt. It is called utility marketing. The premise is that rather than try to distract with advertising on bus stations or banner advertising, marketers need to “interrupt at the point of need.” The desktop website that offers “healthy shopping tips for busy moms” might seem like a good idea. But when was the last time you brought your laptop to the supermarket? Utility marketing is about moving away from traditional mass media advertising. It is about using technology like mobile targeting to better deliver our messages to the right audience—at the moment when what we offer is useful and relevant to their pain-point. As Avinash puts it,

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In normal marketing, we do research and bidding and guessing and demographic / psychographic / behavior targeting and so much more just to guess when to interrupt people with a message about our brand. Utility marketing is about delivering such incredible value that you simply become part of your audience’s life!

Rather than trying to get as many people to see, hear, or click on a health promotion campaign as possible, we need to think about how our content can first be delivered at the time and place an audience needs it. An excellent example from the for-profit world we saw recently was Turbo Tax. It was March. They had this awesome free “refund calculator” in the App Store with a nice call to action to try their software.

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TurboTax knows that this is their season; this is the time of year when people WANT information on taxes. Plus, this campaign was cleverly planned a few months ahead of the tax deadline. That way, they can remind people of their brand, show them the tax savings, and help customers choose their software the next time they visit Wal-Mart or before they rush to H&R Block. This means that instead of trying to get busy moms to read your “healthy meal tips” on your website, you could send out a mobile push notification when they are in the grocery aisle. Think about the context of where your information can live. The internet is much bigger than a static site.

Principle #3: Market for intent One of the most significant trends of the last five years has been the personalization of digital channels. This trend has become ingrained into our daily digital life—from the status updates we see on Facebook, the ads served to us, the products shown to us on Amazon, and of course the images, photos, and results we see on Google. Health promotion campaigns have not used this trend properly. There is much to gain with the personalization of digital. What is personalization? It is simply a closer alignment between content and the user’s immediate intent.

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Intent is everything for digital channels. It is what drives results in social, online advertising, and search engine traffic. Here’s a great example of “marketing for intent.”

Case Study: ‘Stop Bullying’ Campaign Let’s consider a campaign to stop bullying. While there have been many wonderful attempts to raise awareness and change behaviour, most agencies and non-profits do not really understand the role of search in getting the message out. Search engines are a part of our lives. And as any professional search analytics analyst knows, targeting keywords like “stop bullying” or “bullying tips for parents” is only a shallow use of this communication medium. Dig deeper into your analytics. You’ll discover that the search engine is a support group: it is a place where people reach out to see if their experience is shared, to explore their anxiety, and look for help. For example, if you search for “bullying tips for parents” you’ll find traditional behavioural change campaigns like this:

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This is a standard website. It has all the predictable calls to action: sign the pledge, send an e-card, and share the campaign on social media. The problem here is that a standard campaign like this isn’t working from the inside out. They aren’t thinking about the words, moods, and mindset of the user when searching for bullying related topics. Instead, they are simply providing information. Every search query reveals the user’s true intent. They are searching for specific answers and even, as the next example shows, specific experiences. For example, when you search for a term like this “I’m being bullied I hate my life”—a term that you can only find by digging deep into your analytics, you won’t find the official “antibullying” campaign websites. Instead, you’ll find little communities.

The above search is really the search query bullying campaigns need to be answering. They need to be there. But as you see above, no major or government campaigns are answering those types of searches. This is simply a result of the campaign only scratching the surface of what the audience actually is searching for—and the type of answers they need to help them.

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If we search for “bullying tips for kids” we get over 10 national organizations offering guides, phone support, and tips.

While the campaigns target those generic searches, they miss out on less obvious interactions. Sadly, the search query “I hate my life at school,” which reveals a clear need and call for bullying help, isn’t targeted by any of the major organizations and campaigns above.

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More importantly, one of the related keywords (see the highlighted box) is “I hate my life and I want to die.” It’s troubling on many levels that for a search like “bullying tips for kids” we get seven Google Ads competing for attention and a stack of websites and campaigns. Yet, for “I hate my life and I want to die,” the searcher isn’t even served one resource from national organizations. The return on investment for these organizations is not what it could be, and the resulting social costs can be enormous.

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Summing up Health and behavioural change campaigns need to advance beyond standard tactics and websites. They need to interact at a better time and place with visitors and understand what they are really looking for. By using the three principles outlined above, we will create campaigns that better reach audiences, put budgets to better use, and use digital channels to make a true impact in people’s lives.

Want us to help your corporation or organization? If you would like to find out how Redbird can help you with your next health promotion campaign, just get in touch. We’ll identify the biggest opportunities for you to see some measurable results and provide all the necessary digital strategy, web development, design, PR, and branding.

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