Health awareness campaigns hold tremendous potential in providing educational value to target audiences. By raising public healthcare awareness about important health issues, strategic healthcare marketing can reduce ill health and premature deaths from treatable diseases if addressed in time. Healthcare awareness campaigns’ importance lies in allowing people to take accountability for their health.
Why Are Health Awareness Campaigns Effective?
Healthcare awareness marketing educates individuals and communities about risks and symptoms that may lead to serious health conditions. Moreover, healthcare marketing not only prompts people to take their symptoms seriously but also directs them to relevant healthcare professionals and resources that can address their health concerns. Health awareness campaigns enable patients to better understand their health conditions and the options and treatments they can access. A health awareness campaign differs from health product marketing because rather than influencing people to buy a product, healthcare marketing seeks to influence people to buy into prioritizing their health and wellness.
Three Ways Great Marketing Is Crucial for Health Awareness
There is a symbiotic relationship between health awareness and healthcare marketing. Take social media for example. Social media marketing campaigns that are both creative and educational, help healthcare professionals establish relationships with their desired patient population and influence public opinion about important health issues. Social media is also a valuable tool in gauging the impact of awareness campaigns — allowing health providers to observe how public opinion shifts in response to a specific health communication.
1. Promotes Disease Prevention and Healthy Lifestyles
Social media offers an accessible and convenient platform for sharing health information about disease prevention and reduction with large audiences. Gone are the days when health information was solely promoted through print brochures and public service announcements. Health organizations and professionals can use social media to disseminate information about a spectrum of health and wellness topics — including disease prevention, healthy lifestyles, and treatment options. Social media offers new and innovative ways for healthcare professionals to engage with audiences through visually appealing content, such as videos, infographics, and other multimedia. Health promotion through social media has become more interactive, engaging, and accessible.
2. Extends Patient Care Outside of the Hospital
Social media is a powerful tool for sharing health-related information and engaging in health behaviors. Health-related content on social media can be broadly categorized into three main types: health information, health behaviors, and social support.
Health information is any content related to health or healthcare, including information about medical conditions, treatments, medications, and preventative health measures. Social media platforms are often used to share health information, and many health organizations have established a social media presence to disseminate accurate and up-to-date health information to their audiences. Individuals may also share health information on their personal social media accounts, either to raise awareness about a particular health issue or to seek advice from their social networks.
Health behaviors are the actions individuals take to maintain or improve their health, such as exercise, healthy eating, and getting enough sleep. Social media can be used to promote and encourage healthy behaviors — both through direct messaging and sharing of motivational content. Many health and wellness influencers have built engaging social media audiences by sharing their personal stories, showing their healthy lifestyle habits, and encouraging others to adopt similar habits.
3. Bolsters Social Support
Social support is the emotional and practical support individuals receive from their social networks. Social media has incredible potential to offer social support, especially for people living with chronic health conditions. Online support groups and forums offer connections with others who are going through similar experiences, providing a sense of community and shared understanding. Social media can also connect people with health professional recommendations and other resources that can provide additional support.
5 Successful Health Campaign Examples
ALS: Ice Bucket Challenge
In 2014, the Ice Bucket Challenge went viral on Facebook, creating a massively successful campaign to educate people about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease) and fund its research. According to ALSA, $115 million in total was raised by the Ice Bucket Challenge in less than 60 days, enabling ALSA to increase its annual funding for research by 187%. As a result of this health awareness movement, researchers were able to make scientific advancements that helped with the care and treatment of people with ALS.
Alcohol Change: Dry January
Alcohol Change, a British charity and campaign group, hosted the first Dry January in 2012. This created a social media movement that encouraged people to examine their relationship with alcohol and the health risks that can come with it. Dry January has now evolved outside of Great Britain, with many Americans also taking a break from consuming alcohol. In 2022, the U.S. participation in Dry January was 35%, an increase from 21% in 2019. Dry January has become such a well-known health advocacy campaign example that some low- or no-alcohol brands have started to cater their marketing toward audiences that are sober-curious during January.
Mayo Clinic: Mayo Clinic Connect
Based in Rochester, Minn., the Mayo Clinic is one of the highest-regarded medical centers in the world. Through the use of online platforms, but primarily Mayo Clinic Connect, the Mayo Clinic has created a social platform for patients that empowers them to become better advocates for their health and the health of others — and helps to establish trust between the Mayo Clinic providers and their patients. Studies show that members of Mayo Clinic Connect felt better educated and supported. The Mayo Clinic’s use of social media to build a community and safe space for patients has been so impactful that it simultaneously serves as a form of social media marketing for the medical center.
Charité Berlin: Printed by Parkinson’s
To raise funds and build awareness about Parkinson’s disease, Charité Berlin, a major medical center in Germany, worked with Innocean Worldwide, a global ad agency, to create the Printed by Parkinson’s campaign, an incredibly successful public health campaign example. The team “infected” a 3-D printing machine with the tremors of six Parkinson’s patients, and 3-D printed their favorite objects according to the degree of their tremors. The distorted objects, along with video stories from the patients, have now traveled the world, been exhibited in museums, and helped countless people better understand the symptoms and impact of Parkinson’s.
National MS Society: The Prevalence Campaign
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society launched its Prevalence Campaign to reassure and empower people learning how to navigate life with MS. This campaign, with the strategic guidance of Communications Strategy Group (CSGⓇ), connected its audience to important post-diagnosis resources and inspiring patient stories. In addition to providing MS patients with educational resources, the content developed for the campaign earned more than 15,000 page views and kept readers on the site for an average of two and a half minutes, far exceeding the average website session duration of one minute.
Key Attributes of a Successful Health Awareness Campaign
Provide Authoritative Information
Providing trustworthy information about the targeted health risk is the first step in creating a campaign that can influence people to change their behaviors. For example, the CDC and AMA developed a marketing campaign through public service ads called “Do I have Prediabetes?” to raise awareness about prediabetes, which is a red flag for the onset of type 2 diabetes. The ad campaign provides extensive information, including a quiz, FAQs, and lifestyle tips, all presented in an accessible format.
Offer Preventive Health Measures and Early Interventions
Communicating relevant information and resources that can assist with early intervention can save lives. People may be unaware they have symptoms that are indicative of a more serious underlying health issue. The Know Your Lemons breast cancer awareness movement provides meaningful information about identifying the symptoms of breast cancer. When breast cancer is caught in the earliest stage, the survival rate is almost 100%.
Establish Credibility
Healthcare awareness campaigns are an opportunity for an institution or organization to establish credibility as a trusted source of information. Providing qualified advice that resonates with your audience positions you as an authority in your field, allowing your organization to amplify its message. For example, Cochlear Americas, the global leader in implantable hearing solutions, had CSG revitalize its social media marketing strategy to encourage its target market to achieve better hearing outcomes. By extracting the stories of people who had benefited from Cochlear products and creating meaningful content, Cochlear Americas built credibility with its target audience.
Use Data to Inform Your Campaign
Healthcare providers can use social media data analytics to gauge the public’s opinion on specific health matters and conversations. For example, the FDA released its new anti-smoking campaign, Every Try Counts, in 2018, based on data showing that it takes people more than one try to quit smoking for good. Because the FDA identified this widespread pain point, they were able to construct a campaign that resonated and influenced people to keep trying to change their behavior.
Engage Creatively
A big component of raising awareness is peaking people’s interest and grabbing their attention. To do this, it’s important to think creatively about every aspect of the campaign and consider experimenting with unexpected elements, such as layout, design, and messaging. When Holiday Retirement, the largest independent senior living provider in North America, needed help to better understand how to guide seniors and their families through the difficult decision-making process, CSG developed a customer journey workshop to chart the points of need, key behaviors, potential barriers and areas of opportunity all along the path from “I need a change” to “I belong at Holiday.” Armed with this intelligence, CSG planned and created health communication based on anticipated behaviors and barriers for seniors and their families. The resulting content journey was dynamic and designed to authentically educate, comfort, inspire, and connect to Holiday Retirement’s core audiences at every critical point in their journey.
Unlock the Keys to Effective Health Awareness Campaigns
At the end of the day, your content marketing strategy is only as good as your understanding of the audience your content is addressing. Deploying the most effective social media and digital marketing tools can be transformative in getting your health awareness campaigns in front of the right audience. Contact us today to discover how CSG’s experienced PR and marketing specialists can help your organization create a health awareness campaign that enhances your impact across multiple markets.
FAQs About Health Awareness Campaigns
What are the benefits of health campaigns?
Public health campaigns spread awareness about diseases and health hazards, which can encourage people to seek medical attention for themselves or others. Health and wellness campaigns save lives and support the work of healthcare providers.
Why are awareness campaigns important?
Healthcare awareness campaigns educate the public about diseases and risks, and provide resources for learning more or getting help.
What is a health awareness campaign?
A health awareness campaign is marketing designed to educate people about diseases and health hazards, with goals of prevention and encouraging people to take control of their health.
How effective are public health campaigns?
Targeted messaging in a health campaign can help to change the behaviors of a population. Successful public health campaigns can educate and influence your target market to change their behavior.
How do you promote health awareness?
Health awareness is promoted by evidence-based marketing that harnesses compelling and educational content and benefits your target clientele.
What are the components of an effective health awareness campaign?
Every successful health campaign example includes an important message, detailed information about the target audience, creative content that engages, educates, and motivates, and an effective avenue for reaching the target audience.
What are campaigns in healthcare?
Healthcare campaigns raise awareness of important health issues, provide critical health education, and encourage people to take action to improve their health and change their behavior.
Health awareness campaigns play a critical role in educating communities, improving public health, preventing diseases, and promoting wellness. With the right marketing strategies, healthcare awareness can extend patient care outside of the hospital and bolster social support within niche communities.
