Social Marketing for MindMate

Raising awareness of mental health support in Leeds for young people, their families and the professionals who support them.

The Brief

The MindMate project, commissioned by NHS Leeds Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), aims to help young people explore emotional wellbeing and mental health issues and offer information about where further support is available. It also provides parents, carers and healthcare professionals with the information and resources they need to support young people with their mental health.

When HMA won the contract to initiate a social marketing campaign for MindMate, the website had been in existence for some time. The brief was to raise awareness of MindMate within and around Leeds, with a specific, measurable goal to encourage the primary audience of 18-24 year olds to use the website independently.

From website analytics it was clear that the primary audience were using the website during daytime hours, leading to the assumption that they were logging on during school or college hours, under the supervision of a parent, carer or teacher.

One of the key metrics that would indicate 18-24 year olds were visiting the website independently would be a rise in sessions from this demographic during the evenings and weekends.

Alongside this, we also established clear project goals to:

Increase the share of traffic from social media referrals
Increase the share of traffic coming from the 18-24 age group
Maintain the level of website traffic from other age groups
Increase visits to the ‘I’m 17 and Under’ section of the website

Part of the initial brief was also to ensure that this was seen as a knowledge transfer project and that the work we delivered enabled the communications team at the CCG to continue the work once the strategy and initial implementation had been delivered.

The Approach

There’s no doubt that the subject of mental health needs to be dealt with sensitively and empathetically, and it was critical that the creation of messaging and content needed to be done in a way that connected with the intended audience.

From the very start of the project, we worked closely with the MindMate ambassadors – a group of young people who volunteer their time to work with MindMate, not only promoting the website, but creating a positive impact for young people’s mental health in the city through many different channels. By co-creating content with the ambassadors, we were then able to effectively communicate with our target audience through social media.

Using a multi-channel approach, we set out to significantly improve the visibility of MindMate, delivering a framework for the creation of exciting content and its dissemination. A Facebook page for MindMate already existed, and so new channels were created that would best resonate with the target audience – Twitter and Instagram.
By creating a clear organic social media strategy we were able to offer a human voice to the MindMate brand, encourage community engagement and signpost MindMate as a useful resource for young people.

Alongside this, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising across various social channels gave us the ability to proactively reach the right people with the right message, and increase awareness specifically to those who had not previously been aware of MindMate.

Throughout the campaign we also hosted two Twitter takeovers, in which the MindMate ambassadors were given a platform to share their help and advice, along with their own personal experiences.
To support the strategy, social media guidelines and policy documents were created along with risk assessments, content calendar and reporting templates to support the ongoing delivery of marketing activity.

The Results

Overall, website sessions increased 54% when compared to the previous period before the campaign, with an 18% share coming from social media channels (previously 2%).

We were successful in encouraging an increase in evening and weekend visits, with a 124% increase in website sessions between 5-10pm and a 54% increase in Saturday and Sunday sessions. This gave a strong signal that users were now visiting the website on their own terms, due to increased awareness.

Within the 18-24 age group, website sessions increased 29%. All the other age groups not only maintained the same level of traffic, but also increased slightly across the board – this indicated increased awareness of parents, carers and professionals.

Another notable measure came in the form of visits to the ‘I’m 17 and Under’ section of the website, with a lift of 369%.

In total, throughout the campaign, 702,025 people were reached across all social media channels.

You can visit the MindMate website at https://www.mindmate.org.uk.