Agility is extremely important when it comes to health and wellness — whether you’re thinking of Mbappé and his explosive speed or Sam Kerr’s textbook finishing. But for health and wellness brands, agility shouldn’t end there. The ability to move quickly and easily should trickle down into every aspect of your digital activity — particularly when it comes to customer insight.
What does agility mean to marketers?
Agility is defined as “the ability to move quickly and easily”. For most marketers, this translates to flexibility: whether that’s planning a dynamic content strategy to work around seasonal campaigns or setting up a Google Ads campaign with the ability to test and change levers on the fly.
Since the pandemic, agility has taken on a greater meaning, particularly for Curated and its clients. Agility is “the ability to think and understand quickly”, particularly when it comes to understanding customers. Agile strategy is always on, always thinking, always listening to customer behaviour to understand what is shaping and changing their decision-making. Agility is insight, at speed.
In-agency, agility is also the ideal catalyst for product development. In our own need to adapt to support clients through a changing COVID landscape, we developed a product for our clients that did exactly that. Enter Assurance.
Why is agile customer insight particularly important in the health and wellness industry?
Keeping an ear to the ground and an eye on your customer is important whatever your industry. However, it would be foolish to ignore the particular need for agility in the health and wellness space, given the current state of play.
Trends and consumer attitudes towards health and wellness were constantly evolving, perhaps at a faster rate than attitudes within other sectors. Don’t believe me? To give a few examples at the speed at which sentiment switches within the industry, take a look at these YouGov sentiment polls over the past two years:
So if consumer attitudes around wellness can change this rapidly over a number of months, then brands need to be more agile in keeping on top of these shifts, to adapt their strategy accordingly — and at speed.
Insight agility in action: Specsavers’ COVID-19 Care Hub
While many businesses were forced to close due to Government restrictions, Specsavers remained open, providing essential eye and hearing services to those in-need. Curated’s partnered with Specsavers to help keep them in-the-know with ever-changing customer concerns, connecting to hearts, minds, eyes and ears across the nation.
With ever-changing guidance and clinical research connecting COVID-19 to eye and hearing conditions, Specsavers partnered with Curated to pivot their content activity to support customers and communities through lockdown uncertainty. The resulting Covid-19 Care Hub housed articles and videos ranging from eye health and hearing advice, to myth-busting articles. Topics were identified through Curated’s Assurance Framework, which used search listening to identify emerging health trends, such as blue light and conjunctivitis, in real-time. Content was developed in collaboration with clinical experts, and regularly updated as new research emerged.
The methodology
Our team used insight agility to identify trending eye and hearing health FAQs emerging in real-time. The team conducted daily search listening for key terminology relating to eye and hearing care across Google trends and news platforms to keep ahead of customer interest. We then selected key insights within Specsavers’ expertise to be developed into content for the hub, working closely with in-house clinical experts to ensure content was factual and informative. Resulting content responded directly to highly-searched customer queries and emerging clinical research.
Examples of insight gathered through this framework included the rapid rise in searches for ‘blue light glasses’ which began rising around March / April 2020 as a result of working from home and widespread mask-wearing. With research finding no proven eye health benefit of wearing blue light glasses, Specsavers responded quickly with a myth-busting article, collaborating with the College of Optometrists to debunk claims and help customers make informed health decisions.
March 2020 also saw the rise in searches for ‘how to stop glasses fogging up with a mask’ and ‘sanitiser in the eye’, as a result of widespread cleaning practices and mask-wearing, for which articles were also developed. Through this same framework, we were also able to detect a rise in Google searches for COVID-related eye symptoms including conjunctivitis and eye pain, which preceded research later proving them as symptoms. Content was updated as and when new research emerged, and still is to-this-day, with the same methodology guiding content upcycling. In this way, content becomes always-on, regularly changing based on the latest customer insights.
The results
Overall reach for content was huge, driving over 3.9 million unique page views since April 2020 — 2.5 million landing organically. In total, the hub content generated over 3,700 rankings for new keyword phrases.
Find out more about our award-winning campaign here.
Assuring a better future
By using insight in this way, marketers can revert back to basics, where the customer is king. This is where customer-focused insight steps in and assurance takes the lead. And ultimately, understanding the environment better, and delivering channel activity that actually stands out, helps drive improved commercial results.
Like the sound of our agile insights framework? Get in touch with our consultants here. You can find out more about Curated’s award-winning work with health and wellness clients here.
