Challenge
Louisiana, one of the early COVID-19 hot spots in the United States, was seeking 100,000 downloads of a mobile phone app that documented and tracked citizens who had contracted the virus, along with those who may have come in contact with that citizen. Complicating the objective is many citizens were concerned about privacy and skeptical about sharing their information.
Insight
To no surprise of the team, research and insight revealed an uphill battle to get residents of Louisiana to download the app and sign up for an account.
Specifically, the issues faced were two-fold:
- A significant portion of the population was unlikely to trust a government backed app that traces their location and health status.
- There were significant misinformation/conspiracies being spread about COVID-19 that led many to question how serious the disease was.
At the same time, research defined a dynamic role that people play within a community and their family. Because of the social and DNA fabric of the collective people, segmentation and focus cannot lose sight of belonging, intentions, and connections. And through those connections, the right strategy could overcome mistrust and conspiracies.
Strategy
The traits that create the uniqueness of individuals also assign degrees of complexity to success (downloads). Motivation increases the likeliness of conversion, while challenges raise the hurdle. The strategy must both address and leverage, so the directive chosen was as follows:
- Limited media coverage and heavy educational content.
- Big ask with significant hurdle of action (download app).
- Multiple segments defined by mindset and tolerance of cause and ultimate action.
- Coalition-based initiative across macro and micro communities.
SOLUTION/EXECUTION
Going forward, our solution and executions were
the following:
- Chose highly visible and customizable media channels that would complement our community outreach strategy.
- Create custom audience segments focused on higher frequency advertising for individuals who needed education on the subject but did not inherently distrust this type of app.
- Create custom audience segments focused on lower frequency advertising for individuals who did NOT need education on the subject and inherently trust this type of app.
Results
At the onset, this initiative had a mid-six figure budget to achieve 100,000 downloads. By launch, cuts had eroded the budget to 15% of its original scale. Undeterred, Morgan & Co. was able to execute a campaign that achieved 74% of the download goals. Detailed results include:
- Click-Through Rates outperformed across the board, with Facebook’s 0.89% compared to the national healthcare average of 0.83% and display ads delivering a 0.21% compared to the national average of 0.06%-0.08%.
- The Cost Per Click (CPC) delivered at $1.10 which outperformed the national healthcare average of $1.32.
- There were 73,783 downloads for a media cost per install of $1.15 (nearly $1 dollar less than $2.07 average U.S. Cost Per Install for all iOS apps).
- This campaign exceeded all expectations, especially in light of the worries and distrust around both COVID-19 and a government backed app based on “tracking” a user’s location and status.