The gig economy is booming. Freelancers everywhere are proving that a side hustle can become your main source of income, or that you can break free from a traditional 9-to-5 for better work-life balance. It’s projected that by 2027 independent workers will make up 50% of the U.S. workforce.
The freedom of freelance work comes with so many benefits but insurance benefits aren’t one of them. When it comes to dental insurance, about half of Americans get their plan through their employer, and another third get coverage through Medicare, Medicaid or public programs. So what are your options if you’re self-employed? Many just go without dental insurance – about 72 million Americans are uninsured. What they might not know is that they can buy a dental plan on their own any time.
Delta Dental wanted to reach this growing population of freelancers with a message of how easy it can be to get covered and take care of your oral health.
To reach independent workers we used social media. We placed ads where our gig workers were already spending time networking, advertising, and even creating content of their own.
We started by thinking about why people choose this path and what they love about it. Their work might not neatly fit into a job title when someone asks “What do you do?” But what if they just used a job title to help the world understand, and went right on being themselves and doing what they enjoy? For example, a tattoo artist answers, “I’m in branding,” or a video game streamer says, “I’m in broadcasting.”
Using this idea, we created static and carousel ads that had this element of curious confusion on its face. Why is this dog walker saying she’s in management? This image-copy dissonance helped to stop the scroll. And it helped us connect with our audience. We see you. We understand you, and you don’t need to explain yourselves. Our value prop came second: Delta Dental has individual dental plans for you no matter what you do for work. Ads were tailored to each state where we advertised to feature popular occupations.
We paired these ads with some videos that helped educate our target audience on a key barrier to purchase – knowledge that they could get affordable dental insurance on their own. Who could share the word better than people who are living the freelance life? We scripted videos featuring content creators sharing how to ditch a 9-to-5 and still get a dental plan, but they took an unconventional approach that matched the unconventional style of our audience.
Their videos captured independent workers’ insurance concerns in fun and approachable ways. A private chef with a calming voice prepared a dish while talking about how she found dental insurance on her own. A content creator doing a funny skit about a common dream involving her teeth. Both styles fit into social platforms seamlessly, which boosted engagement from our audiences.
All of our ads celebrated the fun of freelance first and promoted the product second -- a strategy that paid off.
Overall, the campaign achieved a 3% CTR across videos, carousels and static ads, with some placements getting as high as 8% CTR. This was 7x higher than our previous year’s campaign, demonstrating engaging creative and effective targeting.
Video content generated the majority of the clicks. We prioritized placements in stories where our audiences are actively engaged, leading to an 11x increase in site visits year over year.
Finally, and most importantly, we saw an 18% increase in individual plan online sales year over year in states where we ran the campaign. That was a 3.5% sales lift over states where we didn’t run the campaign. In our lowest brand awareness markets, we saw an increase of 33% in new online sales.
These increases in engagement and individual plan sales show that we reached our audience and met our objectives to boost plan enrollment.
