How do you connect audiences with cancer screening content on social media to support appointment uptake?
Cheshire & Merseyside Cancer Alliance
Content Strategy, Branding, Digital Marketing
The Cheshire & Merseyside Cancer Alliance (CMCA) takes every opportunity to prevent cancer and ensure outstanding cancer care is provided across the region. The Screening & Immunisations team strive to reduce health inequalities and increase the uptake for cervical, breast and bowel screening and HPV vaccination to help save lives.
There are missed opportunities to reach key audience segments with vital messaging that can break down barriers and provide educational content from a trustworthy, authoritative source. So, the screening team partnered with us to develop a multi-channel content strategy, 6-month delivery plan and project branding to support the individual screening programme uptake objectives.
A key part of the content strategy was understanding the specific target audience of each screening programme in order to tailor content to engage, educate and motivate the right people. We scoped the target audience segments in a collaborative workshop with the screening team to identify the pain points, barriers and needs, alongside undertaking desktop research.
We developed content pillars to ensure all content created aligns with the objectives and audience needs while establishing a balanced content mix that engages, informs and entertains. With audiences ranging from 18-74 years old, we defined an effective social channel approach across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok depending on channel demographics to maximise relevance and engagement.
It’s a fact that most people don’t want to be reminded of cancer while they’re scrolling socials. So, our strategy focused on positive, engaging content that would encourage the target audience to follow the page, rather than employing scaremongering tactics.
We created a logo for the Cheshire & Merseyside Screening social channels, opting for a bright and friendly colour palette and the inclusion of the NHS logo to highlight the channel as a trusted source. The use of the circle represents the cycle of different health journeys such as prevention, screening and treatment while giving the logo a more approachable feel, with an internal multicoloured ring to represent the range of screenings under one overarching brand.
As the channel targets such a broad audience range, we wanted each audience to be able to easily identify content that’s relevant to them. So, we created ‘tags’ for each category – cervical, breast and bowel screening, HPV vaccine – using unique colours that can be seen when scrolling quickly down a feed.
To dispel screening myths, break down barriers and increase conversations around positive screening experiences, we create and share intelligence-driven targeted assets across relevant social media channels. We utilise different visual formats to keep the content visually engaging, including carousels, animations and videos from screening attendees talking about their positive experiences.
Alongside organic social posts, we support the screening team with paid social ads across Facebook and Instagram to reach the right people at the right time with targeted messaging. So far, we’ve reached 158k+ people across a mix of social ads promoting the Call for a Kit initiative, cervical screening appointments and HPV vaccines at Pride.
