Moderna’s Influencer Strategy: Redefining Healthcare Marketing Success

Overcoming Challenges in Healthcare Marketing: Moderna’s Pandemic Response

In 2023, as the world continued to navigate the lingering challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, widespread COVID fatigue set in, with many people growing weary of and resistant to pandemic-related discussions. This shift, compounded by intense competition in the healthcare and pharmaceutical space from a well-funded rival, presented a significant challenge for Moderna as it sought to promote its groundbreaking vaccine, Spikevax, and boost vaccination rates – especially among high-risk individuals.

To navigate these challenges and outpace the competition, Moderna partnered with Coegi, combining their cutting-edge healthcare solutions with our innovative, influencer-driven marketing strategies, tailored for the healthcare industry.

Crafting a Community-Centric Strategy for Healthcare Engagement

Recognizing the critical importance of authenticity and relevance in the healthcare and pharma space, we crafted a strategy that went beyond traditional, promotional messaging. Our approach was centered on connecting with communities to build trust and empower our audience to make Spikevax a routine choice in preventive healthcare. We did this by engaging with influencers who were not just voices, but vital members of the communities we wished to reach.

Leveraging Influencers to Transform Healthcare Marketing Campaigns

Our agency team worked closely with the client to identify the right mix of 150 creators, each representing one of our purposeful persona communities. These collaborations helped us establish the #SpikevaxPartner Community, a groundbreaking healthcare influencer marketing campaign that effectively utilized nano and micro-influencers, setting a new standard in pharma marketing. By leveraging unique personas that resonated with Moderna’s distinct micro-communities, we delivered messages that were more than just heard – they were deeply felt, creating meaningful connections with our audience. We also amplified the strongest content on paid media channels to extend the impact of the authentic Spikevax messaging.

Data-Driven Optimizations: Measuring Success in Healthcare Campaigns

We implemented a comprehensive measurement strategy to assess the quality and impact of our media beyond standard platform metrics, enabling real-time optimizations. We utilized Attention Unit Scoring to gauge the lift in audience attention our content drove and script lift analysis to correlate vaccinations with exposure to influencer media. Additionally, we paired this with audience analysis of emotional response to and intensity perception of the content to predict long-term brand growth and short-term sales effects.

Setting New Benchmarks in Healthcare Marketing Results

The #SpikexaxPartner community led to significant increases in brand awareness, market share, and public engagement, including:

  • Helping drive nearly 24% of all US vaccine conversions
  • Delivering over 503 million impressions across organic and paid channels that surpassed the attention score benchmark by 9%
  • Surpassing engagement rate goals by 484% while also driving nearly 72,000 Spikevax page visits
  • And most notably, driving strong business impact with Spikevax’s market share increasing 23% YoY

Leading the Future of Healthcare Communication Through Innovation

Our innovative approach and strategic partnerships paved the path for new standards in health and community-based communication. Visit coegipartners.com or follow us on our social channels to learn how our breakthrough solutions can benefit your brand. 

Using Multicultural Influencers to Drive Vaccine Consideration for Moderna

Brief

Moderna was seeking to drive preference for their COVID-19 booster with multicultural consumers by using authentic, relevant creator-driven storytelling. 

Highlights

28%
lift in vaccine consideration


88%
lift in vaccine discussion intent


7.56%
paid engagement rate compared to 1.86% industry benchmark

Challenge

Moderna’s marketing goal was to drive preference for COVID-19 bivalent booster by leveraging their positioning as the disruptive innovation leader in the space. They wanted to establish an enduring preference for their branded products by: 

  • Educating multicultural consumers
  • Growing urgency and 
  • Increasing uptake of the new COVID-19 booster vaccination

To establish this trust, Moderna needed to provide authenticity in its delivery when communicating with its multicultural audiences. We felt this would be best accomplished through influencer marketing

Solution

A key opportunity identified by the Coegi team was that 15.1M people within target DMAs primarily spoke Spanish. To deliver an authentic message, our aim was to support Spanish speakers’ health journeys while driving business impact for the pharmaceutical tech brand. We focused on utilizing booster messaging that was not only in Spanish, but content that was more culturally relevant. 

In order to speak to a Spanish speaking audience, we needed to learn about them in more detail. We started this process by leveraging data technology and intelligence platform, Resonate. Coegi placed an audience learning pixel across digital placements to learn about the Spanish speaking audience and their online behaviors. 

We collaborated with Moderna to identify the top US DMAs by vaccine data in combination with the highest indexing DMAs for Spanish speakers. In doing so, we were able to blend a demographic and geographic targeting strategy in an effort to build trust and affinity with a Spanish speaking audience. 

Coegi carried out a rigorous process to identify a varied mix of macro to micro influencers to generate authentic stories. These influencers were diverse – ranging from health content focused, healthcare workers to the average, lifestyle influencer.  But all were unified by sharing a value of preventative health and translating why vaccination against Covid-19 is important to them. Throughout the campaign, our team partnered with 13 influencers and delivered content to 15M Spanish-speaking individuals across the country.

We asked each creator to generate three pieces of content that authentically communicated the power and benefits of Moderna’s COVID-19 bivalent vaccine booster. Focusing on compliance while building the highest level of interest, relatability, and trust, we requested that the messaging of each piece answered these three questions:

  • Why is COVID-19 still relevant?
  • Why get vaccinated or boosted?
  • Why trust this brand’s product?

Results

Our influencer content performed well through multiple measurement perspectives. The content outperformed influencer benchmarks with some of our influencer content going viral – one piece of content earned a total reach of 414,000 which exceeded the influencer’s follower count by 2,000%. 

Coegi also leveraged a post-campaign brand lift study to measure more advanced impact learnings. According to the study, our influencer content delivered a 28% lift in vaccine consideration and a 88% lift in discussion intent, outperforming the Kantar benchmark by 4x. 

Organic Influencer Content

  • 1,447,404 Impressions
  • 732,297 Reach
  • 13,686 Engagements 
  • 6.36% Engagement Rate

Paid Influencer Content

  • 16,942,764 Impressions
  • 13,185,622 Reach 
  • 1,617,533 Post Engagements
  • 7.56% Engagement Rate vs 1.86% industry benchmark 
  • 2.28% Estimated Ad Recall Lift 
  • $5.25 Average CPM vs $8.75 industry benchmark

Key Learnings

We attribute a lot of our success to the authentic and real content created by our partnered influencers. The healthcare and pharmaceutical vertical poses many challenges. But with our focus on producing genuine, authentic messages for the Spanish speaking audience in the United States, we were able to provide engaging content in a form this audience could relate with.  

To learn more, check out Coegi’s guide to influencer marketing

Driving 12K Leads for a Luxury Home Appliance Brand

Brief

A luxury home ice maker brand partnered with Coegi to create a B2B2C strategy that would establish relationships with custom builders, designers, and homeowners, driving in-store visits to authorized brand dealers and growing their sales pipeline.

Highlights

12,000
Leads Generated


68%
Lift in Dealer Visits

 

Challenge

Consumers who were in-market for home appliances were easy to reach and wanted the client’s products. However, they could not buy directly from the brand. We needed to reach kitchen designers and renovators to close the awareness gap between consumers and professionals. 

Our team had three key questions: 

  • How can we reach this niche audience beyond traditional B2B channels?
  • How do we evaluate if we effectively reached this audience?
  • How can Coegi set up the client for long-term success with this audience?

This home designer and builder audience had proven difficult to reach online. So, we needed to expand beyond traditional B2B channels, such as LinkedIn, to drive lead generation and build a long-term CRM growth strategy for the brand. 

Solution

Building Awareness With B2B Audiences

Digital media platforms offered limited reach to build awareness among our very niche group of trade professionals. Instead, we partnered with key trade publications to leverage their email syndication lists. 

Prior to activating any digital media, Coegi worked with three leading industry publications for a three week email-blast campaign prompting website visitation. This allowed us to build a fresh, highly-qualified audience list primed through sequential messaging. 

Driving Action From In-Market B2C Audiences

We took an audience-first approach focusing on consumers already in the consideration stage for relevant products, and drove three core audience segments to find the brand’s B2B dealers: 

  • Influencers: Custom builders and designers seeking a luxury ice maker producer for clients
  • Explorers: In-market consumer audiences already considering the brand 
  • Kitchen Buyers & Remodelers: In-market audiences with a history of purchasing luxury home goods but lacked brand awareness 

Coegi used Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest to reach users actively searching for home renovation ideas and products. This was accomplished using a blend of contextual, interest, lookalike and retargeting audiences. We also used display retargeting and a paid search strategy to own branded search terms and secure top-of-page placement at final stages of the consumer journey. 

Implementing a Full-Funnel Measurement Strategy

With email serving as the awareness driver, we were able to focus on measuring core actions, such as “Dealer Locator” button clicks and contact form submissions on their website. These actions helped us evaluate if we had reached the B2B audience and then implement sequential messaging and flighting to drive conversions.

The Results

By combining the audience quality of industry publications with digital reach and measurement, this B2B2C marketing campaign drove outstanding results. It generated 68% growth of in-person dealership visits and 12,000 B2B leads to establish a first-party CRM database. 

Key Learnings

  • Digital technology and tools that may not be top of mind for B2B marketers can be used creatively to solve problems
  • Understanding who your audience trusts up front leads to smart partnerships that take the guesswork out of your strategy

Building a Brand Performance Strategy for Bread & Butter Wines

Brief

Coegi partnered with a high-growth wine brand to launch a full-funnel digital campaign to quantify the impact on both brand and performance goals using advanced measurement studies.

 

Highlights

10.6%
Ad Recall Lift


9.1%
Purchase Intent Lift


621%
Site Traffic Lift

Challenge

Bread & Butter Wines came to Coegi in 2020 seeking a stronger marketing strategy to stand apart from the crowd of wine brands. Coegi was asked to provide a holistic, integrated marketing strategy that could reach their full-funnel goals:

  • Drive brand awareness in the US and Canada through emotional connection
  • Via increased brand awareness, drive trial and move brand into selection set within target consumers

Solution

Our targeting strategy reached consumers based on multiple data signals such as demographics, interests, and competitor affinity. This data indicated what was going to drive brand trial. Initially, we created six audience personas to focus on niche competitive opportunities and product use cases. Going into 2023, this was narrowed down to two core personas using purchase behavior data. 

We also used advanced research to understand wine buyers aged 25-54 and living in their top 8 sales states. Using an omni-channel digital strategy, our initial goal was to increase reach and frequency against key audiences. We selected channels offering efficiency and effectiveness, while also balancing lower-funnel ROAS goals. 

Key channels we are prioritizing include: 

  • Influencer and content partnerships to build trust and authenticity
  • Connected TV, display, and Facebook/Instagram to drive reach/frequency and website traffic
  • Instacart, Citrus Ads, and paid search to drive ROAS 

Additionally, we used advanced measurement through Upwave, Facebook, and Nielsen Catalina to understand the full-funnel impact on the brand – from ad recall to purchase intent. 

Throughout our multi-year partnership, we have served billions of cross-channel impressions. In the first three months, we saw a 621% increase in website visitors period over period and 27,000 site actions. 

The first Instacart campaign was especially successful in driving trial, with a nearly 3X ROAS, increasing attributable sales across all varietals. Instacart has continued to have a strong impact. The most recent campaign touts a 4X ROAS, 32% increase in YoY Instacart sales, and an average cost of conversion of $3.73. 

Our campaigns run with Nielsen Catalina were successful at driving incremental value for the brand. The display campaigns helped reclaim former customers with especially strong performance from lost/lapsed customers. The CTV campaign boosted exposure among key audiences and generated $230,101 in sales value of products transferred to their e-commerce cart after seeing an ad. 

The Bread & Butter team continues to be pleased with the Coegi partnership. 

Using Facebook Lead Ads to Drive a Sales Pipeline

The Brief

Using Facebook Lead Ads to Drive a Sales Pipeline

Our client, Grit Moto Adventures, came to us with a unique opportunity to drive sign ups for an exclusive backcountry motorcycle tour. Their unique audience would be given the option to sign up for various tours in a wide time frame. Given the time commitment and niche experienced biker audience requirements, we set a goal of driving 320 leads using Facebook lead ads.

 

Highlights

707
Leads


$0.83
CPC


0.11%
Lead Conv Rate

Challenge

Due to the advanced level of riding experience needed to take part in Grit Moto Adventures tours, the target audience was niche. Interested individuals needed experience in off-road motorcycle riding, the lifestyle flexibility to travel throughout the week, and funds readily available to book a tour. Additionally, Grit Moto Adventures was a newly formed brand with little brand awareness at the time the campaign launched. Our strategy needed to include ways to build scale despite the targeting specificities, and take interested users from awareness to conversion as quickly as possible.

Solution

Our team navigated the audience restrictions by making custom third-party data segments with the largest US consumer panel, Resonate. This tool allowed us to develop and activate a scaled audience within our two primary audience personas: general Motorcycle Riders and Retired Riders with the income required for these trips. For media activation, we chose Facebook for its ability to scale, built-in lead generation functionality, and comprehensive interest targeting.

The resulting campaign drove an engagement rate of 4.54% with an impressive cost-per-click of $0.83. At the campaign’s conclusion, 707 Facebook lead ads were filled. This was a 200%+ increase from our original goal of 320 leads. These metrics demonstrate our success in reaching highly interested people at the right time.

We learned that strategically curated audiences, paired with informative creative, drove numerous leads. This found candidates for the tours while also expanding their email list. As we plan for cookie deprecation, tools such as Facebook lead generation campaigns will be important for building first-party data. This information will be extremely beneficial for Grit Moto Adventures moving forward.

Targeting Tourism Audiences With CTV Advertising Campaigns

The Brief

A state tourism client tapped Coegi to implement a CTV advertising campaign with the primary goal of driving awareness. We used a test-and-learn bidding strategy to identify optimal bid numbers across platforms. This allowed us to allocate the client’s budget across the most impactful CTV channels. Using this strategy, we achieved more even spend, higher unique views, and improved cost efficiency.

Highlights

2.75MM
Total Views


470,867
Unique Reach


$0.31
Cost per Unique Reach

Challenge

In programmatic CTV advertising campaigns, platforms will often optimize spend distribution towards total views. This oversimplification causes premium placements like Hulu to consume a disproportionate amount of the budget.

That risk was actualized when early reporting showed 99% of campaign spend going to Hulu and only 1% driving views on other high-indexing channels. As a high-impact platform, Hulu was important, but we wanted to ensure we were using other channels to expand the audience reach and maintain cost efficiency. 

Solution

Our specialists manually adjusted and optimized bids across different channels to create an even spend distribution. The goal was to identify the “sweet spot” that would give each strategic channel an appropriate amount of the budget.  Once the optimal channel mix was identified, the spend evened out to be 60% in Hulu and 40% distributed among other channels.

By serving ads to more niche channels such as Travel Channel, HGTV, and Discovery, we were able to reach key audience segments and boost overall ad performance. This generated 2,750,490 total completed video views, a cost-per-view of $0.05, a unique reach of 470,867 and a post-per-unique-reach of $0.31. 

Premium CTV channels can consume a disproportionate amount of budget. Correcting these standard optimizations with a manual test-and-learn strategy is necessary to find the ideal budget spend and maximize cost efficiency.

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Drive Travel Consideration by Leveraging Local Collaborations

The Brief

A travel and tourism client proposed a collaboration with a local chef to boost traveler consideration for their location. Using a cross-channel social media strategy, our teams saw strong results across Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest with below benchmark CPAs for this co-branded campaign.

 

Highlights

126
Tour Guide Downloads


800K
Instagram Post Engagements


2.47%
Facebook CTR

Challenge

Our travel and tourism client tasked Coegi with executing a co-branded, mid-funnel campaign to boost website traffic as well as increase awareness. We were given high quality ‘how-to’ video creative from the popular chef. By presenting this to targeted audiences in mid-funnel campaigns, we were able to drive travel consideration among key audience groups.

Solution

We used a multi-channel paid social media strategy to target each platform’s specific audiences. Pinterest encapsulated the ‘foodie’ audience, while Facebook and Instagram’s goal was to drive the large travel audience to their site. Both platforms included look-a-like and retargeting segments to reach engaged users. Success was based on key website actions such as landing page views and post engagement.

This multifaceted strategy provided strong results. The Instagram and Facebook campaign achieved a CPLPV of $0.67 that came in well below our benchmark of $1.83. In addition, we also saw a 2.47% CTR, well above the 0.90% benchmark. The Pinterest campaign, despite having a smaller percentage of the budget, generated nearly 1.7MM impressions with a post engagement rate of 1.27% including 1,365 pin saves.

Key Learnings

  • Well-curated and professional creative catches eyes. This pushed our audience down the funnel quicker than most – generating 126 Tour Guide Downloads.
  • By partnering with an authentic, trusted figure such as a local chef or celebrity, travel brands can boost their image and drive audience engagement. 
  • Using “how-to” style Pinterest posts have a higher likelihood of being saved. This ultimately drives site traffic and brand awareness.

How to Drive Job Applicants for Healthcare Recruiting Campaigns

The Brief

A hospital client tasked Coegi with developing a digital healthcare recruiting campaign to drive interest and qualified website traffic for open job positions. Using a combination of social and display tactics, we were able to generate a significant increase in website visits and drive new job applications from a niche audience. 

Highlights

1,496
LinkedIn “Apply Now” conversions


10,000
page views from Display


0.63%
Facebook CTR

Challenge

The ultimate goal was to drive maximal website traffic. But Coegi understood it was critical to ensure the visitors were qualified potential applicants. Due to restrictions on employment-based ad campaigns, the team was creative with data usage across platforms, especially Facebook. Additionally, the client was recruiting for multiple positions, each with different qualifications. This resulted in separate creatives and messaging for each job position, adding a layer of complexity to campaign execution. 

 

Solution

We identified three primary channels for this healthcare recruiting campaign: LinkedIn, Facebook, and programmatic display. 

LinkedIn:

Linkedin was chosen to reach the job-seeking audiences while they were searching. Plus, because they could use job title targeting to be confident the intended audience was being reached. This tactic led to the highest number of “apply now” conversions.

Results: 1,496 application form submissions

Display:

Display was chosen to drive site traffic. Data segments allowed the team to reach niche job titles relevant to the target audience. Using custom data segments allowed for granular job title targeting, while also reaching a larger number of likely users. We ran all job titles in one campaign. Each ad set was targeting a specific job field driving users to unique landing pages. 

Display Results: Nearly 10,000 recruitment page views

Facebook: 

With Facebook, we navigated targeting limitations since employment is a special ad category. This forced a more general targeting strategy focused more on consideration, driving scale for the campaign. Like display, this was primarily used to drive site traffic and make job seekers aware of open positions. 

Facebook Results: 0.63% CTR, 5,650 interview page views, 8,783 career page views

This cross-channel strategy allowed us to target niche job titles and drive high site traffic, despite limitations. Healthcare and pharma brands often defer to brand awareness campaigns due to restrictions in targeting sensitive audiences and compliance laws. However, this campaign showed how health-focused brands can shake that mold and achieve out of the box, lower-funnel goals, such as recruitment, using strategic digital media plans.

Snapchat Swipe-Up Ads for Retargeting Teens

The Brief

Coegi developed a social strategy for a higher education client using Snapchat swipe-up ads to target potential students. Despite tactical challenges of targeting restrictions, this social campaign resulted in benchmark-breaking performance.

Highlights

1.88%
Peak Swipe-Up Rate


0.91%
Avg. Swipe-Up Rate


6,345
Total Swipe-Ups

Challenge

For colleges and universities, advertising to potential students can be a tactical challenge. Most social media platforms allow targeting of individuals under the age of 18, but some severely limit advertisers’ ability to retarget to this key demographic. Potential students spend their time across several platforms. So determining where to most efficiently invest marketing dollars for this age range is not always clear.

With these challenges, higher education advertisers often pivot to target parents instead. While this can be effective, our client wanted to reach the students directly. 

Solution

After completing a strategic review of our options, we determined that Snapchat was the best option for two reasons. First, the platform allows advertisers to retarget the under 18 demographic, removing that tactical hurdle. Secondly, the target audience for our higher education clients are highly active on Snapchat. Beating out TikTok and Instagram, 35% of teens say Snapchat is their favorite social media app. With 87.3 million US monthly users, almost 30% of total internet users and 69% of teens and young adults, Snapchat quickly became the clear choice for this consideration campaign.

Snapchat swipe-up rates were the primary KPI. The benchmark for success was a swipe-up rate of 0.5%. With a budget of $3,300, the campaign generated 6,345 swipe ups, for an average rate of .91%. At its peak, the campaign generated a remarkable 1.88% swipe up rate. 

Part of this success was due to our use of lookalike audiences. This allowed us to scale and reach a broader audience and achieve a swipe-up rate of 1.05%, once again outperforming the 0.5% benchmark. 

Takeaways for Snapchat Swipe-Up Ad Success

An analysis of these high-performing campaigns leads us to believe that a significant portion of the success is attributable to the tactical strategy. The ads were being served to the right audience, at the right place, with the right technical execution. Both campaigns had different approaches to their creative design. This leads us to believe the visuals contributed less to performance than tactical execution. We hypothesize that with optimized creative strategy, similar campaigns would see even greater success.

To get started with Snapchat campaign optimizations, we recommend the following: 

  1. Focus on strong, front-loaded storytelling to hook the attention of the viewer. 
  2. Keep videos short. Snapchat recommends 0:03-0:05 seconds long. 
  3. Place your branding, offer and CTA in the first few seconds to ensure it is seen.
  4. Catch viewers’ attention with movement at the beginning of the video. 

 

Growing Omnichannel Retail Solutions for a Wine Brand

The Brief

Coegi helped a wine brand grow both its online and in-store sales by executing an omnichannel digital campaign. Leveraging strategic micro-targeting, paid social media, and grocery delivery app relationships, the campaign achieved impressive ROAS, along with increased purchases and store visits to retailers in the wine brand’s distribution network.

Highlights

5X
Return on Ad Spend


4,500
Direct to Consumer Purchases


9,700
Store Visits

Challenge

A “healthier-for-you” wine brand came to Coegi to expand its omnichannel retail presence. In 2020, they were facing the challenging effects of COVID-19 on shopping behaviors, as well as growing consumer demand for online alcohol sales. Our client needed to provide a convenient way for consumers to shop online while still growing brick-and-mortar sales.

Solution

Coegi helped our wine client create an omnichannel retail solution using digital media.

First, we leaned heavily into Facebook to support online sales using a social commerce ad along with a dynamic retargeting catalog ad. Throughout 2020, these two campaigns alone drove over 4,500 DTC purchases with an exceptional average ROAS of 6.76x. 

We also built a precise shopper marketing campaign on Facebook using co-branded retail carousels to target major DMAs on a national scale. The click-through URL showed consumers a list of nearby stores. We then deployed a foot traffic lift study, which attributed nearly 9,700 store visits to these campaigns.  

To build on this success, we partnered with grocery delivery providers, Drizly and Instacart. With Drizly, we ran a co-branded Facebook campaign to increase awareness of the brand’s availability on this platform. This allowed us to track delivery purchases attributed to the campaign to understand short-term ROI. Instacart in-platform ads were also a major success. In the final months of the year, the team saw an average ROAS of 5.9x with nearly $83,000 in attributable sales. 

Together, these campaigns increased overall brand equity while also driving an increase in omnichannel sales revenue. 

Coegi Partners

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