Background/Purpose:  

CDC pilot-tested a marketing campaign to promote self-management education (SME) as a chronic disease management strategy.  The campaign targets adults ages 45-75 with any chronic condition, including arthritis.  The campaign includes a variety of paid ads (digital, print, radio, billboard, physician office) along with earned media and partner activities.  The campaign call to action is to visit www.cdc.gov/LearnMoreFeelBetter to learn more about SME.

Digital ads are easily tracked (e.g., Did the receiver click on the ad presented?), which allows us to assess variations in campaign tactics.  Web analytics also can track how many visits each page of a website receives.

The purpose of this analysis is to compare the productivity of digital SME ads depending on what terms the person was searching when they received the ad, and to explore what webpages attract the most interest on the SME website.

Methods:

As part of the pilot-test, campaign ads were presented to people who conducted Google searches for information about a variety of chronic diseases including arthritis, and one of 4 different clusters of search terms (e.g., Arthritis +Signs/Symptoms/Diagnosis, +General information, +Care/Treatment, +Management). The Google ad vendor reported how many times each cluster of search terms was searched so the ad could be presented (i.e., Impressions).  Site Catalyst, a web analytics software program,  tracked productivity defined in 3 ways: number of times people receiving the ad clicked on it (Clicks), percentage of people who clicked on ad out of all exposed to the ad (Click thru Rate [CTR]), total cost to run ad divided by number of clicks (Cost per Click [CPC]), and average number of minutes spent on the website by those who clicked through the ad to the site (Minutes on Site [MOS]).

The campaign website homepage linked to 4 subpages:  Site Catalyst was used to track how often these pages were visited from the homepage.

Results:

During the campaign pilot-test, Google ad words produced 115,925 Impressions and 5,737 Clicks.  The following table reports Impressions and productivity of digital ads by CTR, CPC, and MOS depending on search term used.

17% of the 26,851 visits to the homepage (from all sources) resulted in visits to at least 1 subpage.  SME programs subpage received the most views (1501), followed by What is SME, About the Campaign, and What Others are Saying/Testimonials (811, 330, 293 views respectively).

Conclusion:

Although searches for disease General Information many more opportunities to present the SME ads, people searching for Signs/Symptoms/Diagnosis were 3 times as likely to click on the SME ad.  Those who received the SME ad while searching Care/Treatment spent the most time on the SME site.  People who reached the SME site were most interested in SME Programs, and least interested in Testimonials.  This information can help shape SME marketing.