benenden health was founded in 1905, pre-dating the NHS, and was established to provide medical support to Post Office workers and then latterly members of the public sector. It is now open to the public and offers affordable access to discretionary healthcare services that complement those offered by the NHS.
As part of a complete communication strategy to drive awareness, benenden health wanted to grow its social communities, drive traffic to its website and encourage brand ambassadorship.
We split the audience between consumers and business users. For consumers, we focused on Facebook and Twitter, whilst we targeted the business audience with LinkedIn and Twitter. All the campaigns are based around personal engagement with the audience.
For the consumer audience, we have exclusive online competitions and useful health and wellbeing advice. The audience on Facebook is largely made up of women between 35 and 55. They are interested in their families, hobbies and enjoy fun, cute content. They also like to help others, and do something nice for someone they know. In January we ran “New Old Me”, encouraging people to get back to their good habits from the past. Users sent in pictures of what they had been doing, and wanted to start doing again to improve their lifestyle. The pictures were then shortlisted for a competition and users voted for their winner.
For February, we ran “Where do broken hearts go?”. Instead of focusing on those in love for Valentine’s day, the campaign was about how to cope with a broken heart. We had articles giving practical advice, as well as a competition in which users nominated someone they think deserved a treat. The winning nominee received a £200 Champneys spa voucher.
The business audience needed a different approach. The strategy here revolves around benenden giving expert advice aimed specifically at issues faced by SMEs. For example, in January we gave advice on how to handle an outbreak of winter flu or vomiting bug in the office.
In the first quarter, the social campaigns have generated over 4000 clicks through to the benenden website, an increase of over 100% on the same period the year before. The competitions have proved popular, with almost 400 entries for the Champneys spa voucher, each sharing their story about someone they know who needs a treat.
Our success has come from genuine, personal engagement from the benenden social community. Users have shared their stories with us, meaning we can respond to them on a personal level. Compared to the same period the previous year, Facebook reach has increased by 79%, with engagement up by 66%.