Last year AWARD Marketing was brought in by a large UK high street pharmacy, health and beauty retailer to help with a communications strategy to address a very specific volunteer recruitment challenge. The retailer was looking to recruit volunteers to its home testing panel for a number of its own brand beauty and skincare products, with diversity being a key driver.
They identified a clear need to attract more females over 40 years old from within the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities.
A model approach
AWARD Marketing’s extensive experience in this area means we have created a communications model that will ultimately ensure companies get results quickly and cost effectively when recruiting very specific participants.
We build a profile of the people who have the potential attributes to become a volunteer and we look at their ideal volunteer journey from first awareness through to sign-up onto the trial or panel.
In order to target them successfully, we look at the age group, their geographical location, their interests and behaviours alongside motivations and who/what influences them, checking any relevant stats e.g. ONS along the way.
Using a tried and tested AWARD model, we set about identifying who to communicate with, where they were and how to reach them and created our strategy and plan.
Our campaign combined on and off line activity from Google advertising to radio and 48 sheet billboards etc. We also recommended social media activity and the engagement with key influencers from within the BAME community which also presented opportunities for outreach.
We remain in close communication with the client reporting on analytics, reach and resulting enquiries, so we can judge what methods of volunteer recruitment communications are proving most effective.
Getting results
As a result of the hard hitting month long campaign with 4.2m impressions delivered online there was an increase of approx. 150% in users of the client web site and the client was delighted with the results. It’s well on its way to achieving its goals for a more diverse representation on the panel.
Experience from clinical recruitment communications
Our experience within clinical trials recruitment means we are regularly tasked with targeting specific ethnic groups for individual studies. For example due to the proliferation of diabetes or sickle cell anaemia within the BAME communities, we are reaching out to those communities to take part in trials into the condition. We know where to focus recruitment communications spend.
If you’re looking to improve your recruitment marketing and to hear more about the recruitment communication challenges AWARD Marketing has worked on, get in touch via email: ann@awardmarketing.co.uk
