Consumers have previously felt anxiety and uneasiness about where they could receive safe care for COVID and sought education on the differences among cold, flu and COVID symptoms. Now in 2022, consumers have much more familiarity of respiratory-like symptoms and value access to quick care and testing.
However, it can be difficult to tell the differences amongst cold, flu and COVID symptoms – and where to seek the right kind of care when not feeling well.
The Cold, Flu, COVID integrated marketing campaign set out to drive awareness that Advocate Health’s Quick Care Video Visits are available 24/7 for cold, flu and COVID symptoms while instilling consumer confidence video visits are safe, effective and convenient.
The campaign’s call to action prompted consumers to start a video visit. Our objective focused to patient education with the goal to treat low-acuity patients at-home and reduce unnecessary visits to the emergency department.
Marketing tactics reinforced convenient access while highlighting video visits are always with a trusted Advocate Health clinician part of our seamless, integrated network of care.
In anticipation of the cyclical Cold, Flu, COVID season, we highlighted Quick Care Video Visits as a safe and effective option for those with cold, flu and COVID symptoms through our internal and external channels Oct. 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023. Tactics in English and Spanish included digital and social ads, patient emails and extension to our employer partners. Internally, we expanded on our teammate flu shot information running in our newsletters and intranets in addition to digital screens at our hospital sites. Educational materials such as video, infographics and health enews articles focused on alleviating consumer symptom uncertainty and instructed where to go for the right level of care.
Focused triage created a consumer-first experience that is both grounded in our Safe Care Promise and aligned to our Virtual Health always-on strategy, creating potential referral opportunities that drive Primary Care growth.
Multichannel outreach targeted consumers, adult and pediatric patients (age 2-17) and our internal audiences which included teammates, providers and frontline staff.
Marketing channels included:
A unique challenge was predicting when the seasonal surge of respiratory illnesses would occur. In previous years, we suspected the spike in cases would happen during the holiday months. To combat this challenge, we created NEW tactics with specific hyperfocus on “know where to go” helping consumers to choose the right care setting at the right time based on the severity of symptoms.
Messaging focused on, “When in doubt, check it out and feel better with a virtual visit” with the conversion goal to start a video visit now.
We amplified social and earned media efforts to strengthen our main goal to treat low-acuity patients at home through virtual visits while continually educating on the differences in virtual, urgent and emergency care.
Through a coordinated approach among marketing, public affairs, the virtual health product and clinical teams, we were able to able to successfully navigate the cold & flu surge that impacted the Midwest in November and December 2022.
Amplified efforts included: targeted patient emails, earned media in our Green Bay, Wisconsin market as well as Meta Carousel ads and Facebook infographics.
The Similarities of Cold, Flu and COVID Symptoms Facebook Infographic was a top-performing social asset for all of 2022 across all campaigns, which reinforces our campaign content provided utility to all audiences – specifically on how to seek care for highly infectious diseases.
With simplistic headlines such as “When in Doubt, Check it Out,” we were able to address peak times of respiratory illnesses and encourage consumers to stay home when sick and start a video visit 24/7.
Top Quick Care Video Visit diagnoses throughout the campaign include COVID infection, upper respiratory infections, acute bacterial rhinosinusitis (infection in the nasal cavity and sinuses) and pharyngitis (sore throat).
We plan to continue to build off these learnings for next year’s respiratory-focused campaign as the nature of this content will continually evolve.
