Connect Hearing

Health

Connecting with customers in denial

Business challenge

Connect Hearing provide hearing solutions, everything from top end invisible hearing aids to government rebated aids, with a focus on personalised service.

Hearing loss deteriorates with age, leaving many either unaware or in denial about the extent of it. A Newspoll survey of 300 Victorians 60+ showed only 13% were ‘very likely’ to have their hearing tested and 76% unlikely to do so. 25% thought society’s negative attitudes to hearing aids made them off-putting.

Because hearing loss is widespread, we focused our investment efforts on two extremes of the 50+ market as our best prospects, to create differentiation:

‘Private’ clients: Younger, wealthier, working or retired (more likely to have health insurance)
‘Government’ clients: older, poorer, retired and more reliance on government assistance

Evergreen developed a strategy for a local area marketing pilot, both lead generation (generate 400 new leads) and reactivation (target 10%). Audiologists develop long term relationships with customers so the campaign needed to facilitate relationships with the local stores, who provide personalised service through the entire journey, from testing, free trials, fitting, payment plans , warranty and upgrades.

Objectives were to build a new prospect database, reactivate leads and reinforce Connect Hearing’s differentiated positioning in the market.

Strategy

Our strategic focus was to demonstrate how people’s lifestyles were impaired when they suffered from hearing loss. We used Roy Morgan Research to identify the top activities in each market and tailored the creative executions to suit: going out for drinks, going cycling or listening to music. Each ad had an offer for a free hearing test, or encouragement to trial Connect Hearing’s online hearing test as a less confronting option at home. The creative went through online pre-testing against a 50+ audience sample.

Images and copy were designed to appeal to each target ie the ‘private’ target had copy references to latest technology & aesthetics, while the ‘government’ had information on rebates.

Execution

Three local areas in Melbourne were chosen: Balwyn (higher socio economic), Dandenong (lower socio economic) and Ballarat (mid-range regional).

Direct mail lists were purchased against two profiles: 50-65 with private medical insurance and 60+ with income less than 20K. Those with private health were also targeted via eDM.

The campaign featured the local audiologist in an advertorial, as well as PR support in each area, using Newspoll results as statistic references.

Evergreen developed a strategy to target healthcare professionals (GP’s) who were also viewed as prospects given over 60% of GPs are over 50. Strategy is to develop short snappy messages that explain a link between a relevant illness and hearing loss to create interest referral conversations.

We are working with community groups (Probus) to run Health Forums featuring celebrity speakers to be co-funded with other health providers.

Results

The campaign generated 56 new phone enquiries and 1092 unique visitors to the website. The PR was also very successful, with clinics quoting customer walk in’s referencing stories they had read in the local papers.

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Connecting with customers in denial

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