Quitting tobacco is a big challenge. The Louisiana Department of Health contracted Gatorworks to help convince people to try.
The Project
When it comes to quitting tobacco, the first step can be the hardest–making the decision to quit. It’s the start of a long journey that, for most, results in many attempts and failures before success is achieved. Quit With Us LA is here to help be a support system for tobacco users who are looking to quit, and Gatorworks helped develop a digital marketing campaign centered around brand awareness and promoting resources to help get the word out to Louisiana residents.
Creative Strategy
After years of running campaign-specific creative provided by the client, the Gatorworks team dug into the data to help develop a creative strategy. While building on core brand elements, this work helped identify the messaging that users resonated with most and was combined with brand motivations, challenges, and our target audience to develop a new creative strategy built to position Quit With Us LA as a free, useful resource for helping Louisianans live a healthier, happier, tobacco-free lifestyle. These new digital marketing ads showed the challenges of quitting, but also recognized that people can rise above these difficulties. With the local Louisiana love of competitive sports, our new messaging focused on all aspects of the fight to quit tobacco from the kickoff of making the decision, to the clash with the craving, to finding your cheerleaders and helping you “Quit like a Winner”. Once this creative strategy was deployed to all aspects of our digital marketing efforts, the results of this campaign were immediately noticeable.
Brand Awareness in Programmatic
Gatorworks implemented a variety of programmatic digital ads throughout this campaign.
Targeted Display, or the banner ads that follow you around the internet, was a primary digital marketing service that we used to help target tobacco users who could benefit from the resources that Quit With Us LA. In addition to targeting statewide tobacco users, interests in casinos and gambling played a role here, as well as the geofencing of various gas stations within our target locations.
Targeted Email, or the renting of an email list that fits our target demographic, was another programmatic service we leaned into heavily. A unique email design was created for each email sent, which gave our team numerous opportunities to test different messaging and designs to gather data on what our audience is engaging with. We sent 12 unique emails to audiences of 50,000 each – achieving an open rate of over 18%. For cold emails, this far exceeded the expectations of both the client and Gatorworks. We also accomplished a 2.45% Click-Through-Rate, driving over 14,000 unique users to the website.
Gas Station TV was a unique digital service that our team executed for this campaign. Working with a dynamic media placement tool, our team strategically identified gas stations for creative placement. This led to over 1.1 million ad impressions in the key areas we were targeting.
Paid Social Traffic
Gains Paid social campaigns also played a significant role. Similar to our programmatic display, statewide tobacco users were largely the target here, with various strategies centered around the approach for each target area, such as increased efforts in rural areas where fewer resources are available than in larger, concentrated cities. These ads were grew along with the campaign – initially being targeted to key parishes, and eventually being served Statewide as our mandate evolved.
Pay-Per-Click Strategy
After about a year of running display and paid social and making significant strides with brand awareness, Gatorworks built a Google Ads campaign to further diversify our digital efforts and convert users to sign up for quit coaching and other free resources. Using the data from our ads and in-depth research, we were able to identify our messaging and campaign approach with our audience in all corners of the state. In a short amount of time, we were able to see some positive results of our efforts, including successfully getting search ads in front of users searching for tobacco cessation services and resources. This drove over 15,000 users to the website, where just under 5,000 people took the first step to enroll in a tobacco cessation program. At just $17.57 per conversion, this was by far the most cost effective aspect of the campaign.
Project Summary
Prior to working with Gatorworks, Quit With Us Louisiana was an established brand looking for more awareness and users to sign up for their free resources. After executing our team’s strategic digital marketing plan, our team was able to elevate the brand to new heights with a redeveloped creative strategy and our suite of digital marketing services with Google Ads, Paid Social, Targeted Display, Targeted Email, and Gas Station Advertising. This work resulted in tremendous increases in web traffic, program signups, and audience awareness throughout the state of Louisiana to help our state residents know that Quit With Us Louisiana is here to help.