Our culture is undergoing a crisis of trust. Amid misinformation, manipulative messaging and the rise of self-proclaimed experts on social media, real expertise has never been needed more, especially in health and wellness. The Well by Northwell—a brand publication that delivers trusted expertise at moments of truth in people’s lives—is our commitment to the future of healthcare.
We connect with our audience—Chief Medical Officers of the Home— to provide them with personalized content that reduces stress, makes them laugh and feel more confident on their healthcare journey. When we study our audience, we see that they’re frustrated with the health information they find. Publishers monetize their anxiety, and other health systems sanitize it through cold & clinical information. And in 2023, the proliferation of AI has made the health information landscape incredibly more complex. As our audience navigates these challenges, the way they’re consuming health information is evolving.
Our mission is to become a trusted partner in moments of truth. Be there for our audience during life-altering diagnoses, to correct misinformation, and to guide them through challenges and the unknown.
In 2023, our goals focused on:
- Brand trust: As a hospital system, our top goal was earning the trust of the community we serve.
- Audience engagement: We focused on building relationships with the community we serve, expanding to new spaces where audiences spent time online (e.g. search, social, publications and WOM networks).
- Business referrals: Draw a line from awareness to activation with the goal of generating appointments for Northwell services.
Our audience is at the core of The Well’s entire operation. In moments of need, people need voices of trust. The Well scales our expertise to reach people in those moments and offer them a way out of their anxiety and a next step to take. We aim to close the chasm between health seekers and health experts, while improving overall health literacy. We do this by translating our clinicians' expertise into highly relevant, accessible and easy to understand content that helps solve our audiences' real concerns.
We identify these concerns through continuously studying audience behavior to inform our editorial planning, identifying emerging topics, TikTok trends to debunk (or confirm!), and new channels (including YouTube, TikTok, vertical newsletters and a podcast) we should prioritize as consumption habits evolve.
Our core strategy is focused on creating high quality signature editorial content fit for where we know our audience is spending time.
- We study our audience on an ongoing basis to identify opportunities for relevance. We triangulate inputs from third- and first-party data sources and internal intelligence to create content that is in-demand for our specific audience.
- We create expert-driven content by engaging Northwell’s vast network of clinicians and applying signature editorial formats designed to meet a specific audience need. Though most content is created net-new, we also leverage AI tools to mine expertise in our previously published articles to give content a second life if applicable for a new audience need. Examples of specific editorial formats include:
- Day in the Life [TikTok + Website]. A video diary of an expert’s day. So far, we’ve followed a nutritionist to learn her go-to meal plan & fitness routine as well as an OB/GYN.
- Dear Doctor [Website/Search]: Q&A with Northwell physicians discussing audience questions — including marijuana’s impact on the brain and why you pee when you sneeze.
- Hack Your Health [YouTube]: Short videos featuring experts sharing quick & easy health and wellness tips that viewers can try at home
- Well Being [Email]: A topic-specific newsletter product designed for audience members interested in fitness, nutrition and recipe content.
- We launch content with a hyper-targeted, per-piece distribution plan, focusing on a mix of owned channels. When we see positive results, we amplify performance through paid efforts.
We monitor feedback and performance to optimize campaigns and inform future planning. This includes ongoing evaluation of inbound channels and conversion rates to other pages on northwell.edu, resulting in optimizations like copy and design tweaks to improve those rates over time.
2023 performance highlights include:
- Referral business to Northwell.edu: The Well’s articles referred 15,000+ visits to Northwell.edu. These referrals are more cost-efficient compared to other marketing activities as measured by site engagement & appointments generated.
- Preference driver for Northwell among aware audiences: In an independent brand survey, on the question “If cost or insurance coverage were not an issue, which of these healthcare systems would you prefer to use for future medical needs for you or your family,” Well visitors were 111% more likely than the surveyed general population to rank Northwell as their #1 choice.
- Record-breaking media spend efficiency: Due to high-quality content & a mantra of “every piece gets its own media plan” average CPLC was 18 cents - more than 5x better than published benchmarks.
- Increased relevance on social media: In the weeks following our TikTok launch, videos received 4M views and the account gained 25,000+ followers. Since then, we’ve driven 10M+ views and 500,000 engagements; we’re also finalizing our Instagram strategy for a 1Q24 launch.
- Conversion to email subscribers: Well articles drove more people to become ongoing subscribers to The Well’s newsletters, with a 29% YoY increase in list size. These subscribers remain very engaged with Well content, with a 57% open rate on Well editorial newsletters.
Performance highs in audience engagement: We reached an all-time high in content engagements, the fifth consecutive year of growth.
Video for The Well By Northwell Health, with Revmade
