Increasing Engagement, Impressions, and Views through Segmentation and Paid Social Media

Background: Paid social media can be an effective tool to significantly increase the amount of engagements, impressions, and video views for a campaign compared to organic results alone. This study shows how segmentation can help increase the effectiveness and efficiency of paid social media and improve communications with target audiences, as evidenced by a behavior change campaign in Mississippi, Virginia, and Vermont.

Program background: We demonstrate the opportunities presented by paid social media through two examples from the “Down and Dirty” campaign. Down and Dirty is a lifestyle branded anti-smoking campaign in Mississippi, Virginia, and Vermont that targets youth ages 13-20 that identify with the “Country” subculture. Country teens have elevated risks of cigarette smoking, vaping, and smokeless tobacco use and have proven resistant to traditional anti-smoking campaigns. The campaign’s goal is to make living tobacco-free more appealing by aligning the subculture’s values with a tobacco-free lifestyle.

Evaluation Methods and Results: Paid social media can be an effective tool to segment audiences into subcultures that share similar interests and behaviors. Down and Dirty ran ad campaigns on Facebook that were targeted specifically to interests exclusive to Country teens. These targeted campaigns generated followers and engagements for the brand.

Down and Dirty’s paid ad campaign on Facebook was designed to produce web clicks, drive engagements, and increase brand awareness through page likes. There were two message campaigns tested, which were titled “Built Up”  and “Cash Out On Dip.”

The “Built Up” budget was $23,000.  This resulted in 26,737 web clicks, 2,670 new page likes,  68,210 engagements, and 147,161 video views. Ads included text and imagery that was particularly relevant to the Down and Dirty audience.

The “Cash Out,” budget was $50,000. This resulted in 28,922 web clicks, 5,831 page likes, 67,730 engagements, and 701,301 video views. Ads included text and imagery that was particularly relevant to the Down and Dirty audience.

Both messages outperformed benchmarks for public health campaigns. A review of the types of teens engaging with the brand showed that the vast majority came from the Country subculture (based on reviews of their social media profiles). In addition, many online conversations demonstrated that teens were hearing new information, were challenging their perceived norms, and were bringing their friends into the conversation (through tagging). This increased engagement with the target audience no doubt contributed organic traffic to the campaign totals.

Conclusions: Segmentation can be used to precisely target paid social media, to create more compelling content, and to more effectively reach audience members on social media. The more precise the target audience, the more effectively a campaign can attract the highest risk individuals.

Implications for research and/or practice: Campaigns can use paid social media as part of their digital strategy to increase success of marketing campaigns targeted at specific subcultures.  Paid social media provide broader capabilities than merely “promoting” posts or driving web traffic. Current advertising tools offer robust analytics that can be used to better inform and optimize broader campaign strategies and tactics.