background: digital marketing for top health care system
Based in Los Angeles, California, UCLA Health is among the most comprehensive and advanced health care systems in the world, serving more than 670,000 unique patients per year. UCLA Health hospitals ranked first in California and third nationally in the most recent US News & World Report evaluation.
Fathom partners with UCLA Health on strategy and execution across digital advertising, search engine optimization, and marketing automation.
approach: reach healthcare-active audience at scale
We began to activate patient acquisition marketing on SXM Media’s platform Pandora in the fall of 2020. The goal was to grow patient volume across primary care, pediatric care, and colorectal cancer screenings—three service lines hit particularly hard by the pandemic. Among many reasons, we decided to pilot Pandora given the ability to reach a healthcare-active audience at scale, through a medium that is proven to positively impact one’s health—audio.
“Marketers are expected to drive revenue, and in healthcare, that means increasing patient volume. Tapping into Pandora’s targeted, captive audiences allowed us to do just that for UCLA Health—and at a much more efficient cost than comparable channels,” explained Steve Kessen, CEO at Fathom.
As we scaled campaigns, we tapped into Pandora’s 1st party demo targeting, 3rd party audiences, and diversified ad product solutions including audio, display, and video. Campaigns targeted Adults 25+ (primary care), Women 21-44 (pediatrics), and Adults 45+ (colorectal) who are registered listeners in specific zip codes and/or counties in California for accurate geolocation targeting.
3rd party segments such as health insurance owners, parents of young children, and HIPAA-compliant colorectal targeting (via Crossix) were added to the campaign to reach those most likely in need of UCLA Health’s primary care, pediatric, and colorectal doctors.
outcomes: significant, efficient appointment volume
The personalized approach delivered via Pandora has certainly paid off. Over an eight-month period, UCLA Health campaigns on SXM Media generated over 2,800 unique appointment requests and did so four times more efficiently than all other display channels. This included an 86% lower cost-per-appointment request than competitors for the Colorectal campaign; 73% lower CPA for the Pandora Pediatric campaign; and 51% lower CPA for the Pandora Primary Care campaign.
“The results we’ve achieved for UCLA Health with SXM Media clearly demonstrate that streaming audio should be a part of every enterprise marketer’s media mix. If you’re not investing in this channel, and in particular with SXM Media, you’re leaving revenue on the table,” added Kessen.
This is an abbreviated version of a case study published in Adweek; Read the complete version here.