While Delta Dental has been providing dental benefits for 70 years, the company traditionally sold primarily B2B. Our direct-to-consumer offerings have grown in popularity in recent years, and with it, our marketing strategy has evolved too.
The marketing team wanted to drive more traffic to acquisition pages and ultimately increase conversions. We ran a pilot to test Google Search and Performance Max ads, and early results were promising. Using those learnings, creative, segment and digital marketing worked together to build an SEM always-on strategy that would drive our individual prospects down the funnel.
The initial plan was two-fold: optimize our keyword strategy to capture leads in search and broaden our reach with the power of Performance Max. From a creative standpoint, Google forced us to think differently. The marketing value of multiple ad placements mixing and matching assets was clear, but that also meant we couldn’t control the message. How could we effectively advertise and represent our brand in this context?
We had a campaign concept that we were already excited about: For whatever makes you smile. This acquisition campaign celebrates the uniqueness of the individual – and the coverage that supports them “for whatever makes you smile.” It features fun and eye-catching images of people enjoying some unique hobbies or occupations paired that with copy supporting the value propositions for dental insurance and Delta Dental. It was a strong idea for our target consumer, but it didn’t neatly fit into Google ads.
Best practices from Google suggest leading with product benefits in the copy, and an image of a man skydiving with copy about buying dental insurance just didn’t add up. We could write different lines that would work in our tagline, but we couldn’t guarantee they’d display. The solution? Option C. Treat the images in Performance Max like an ad, so we could still use our attention-grabbing images. Then we’d use the copy space for our value propositions as recommended. For our bottom-of-funnel customers in search, we continued to focus on copy that supported our optimized keyword strategy.
The completed assets included a man in a chicken suit, a woman gardening with her lizard, skateboarders, face painters, ice divers and more – all while promoting the value of Delta Dental insurance in the product-focused SEM copy.
This approach of leading with fun and following with sales was a winning combination. We saw great results with our unconventional direction, and expanded our campaign to Microsoft Advertising, plus added Demand Gen ads on Google to raise brand awareness among target segments – once again drawing on our theme of “for whatever makes you smile.”
Overall, engagement with the ads far exceeded industry benchmarks, and SEM-driven sales exceeded expectations with a CPA far below benchmark.
More results:
