5 Tips to Maximize Medicare’s Short Campaign Window

Medicare marketing is uniquely difficult. Those companies who can successfully navigate the annual plan development, the governmental approvals, the marketing campaign development, the internal compliance reviews and the media planning and placement are given the reward of less than two months to market their plan, and they must do it at the exact same time every single competitor is also marketing their plans. Knowing how to maximize every moment of the annual enrollment period is vital to success, and from our experience, these are five tips to ensuring success.

Tip #1: Start with strategy

The best campaigns begin and end with a great strategy that allows for clear reporting. It’s tough to hit a target if you don’t know what it looks like. Starting with the end in mind will set the stage for future optimizations. It will also inform which tactics will give you the most bang for your buck. For example, if your goal is brand awareness, display tactics can help you reach the most people. If you’re looking for an action, tactics like paid search can put you in front of users who are actively searching for you and may be more likely to convert.

Tip #2: Get in market as early as possible

You may be faced with constraints that influence your time in market. Whether you’re dealing with regulations, limited information, or time-sensitive content, look for ways to prime the market before your campaign goes live. Having brand messaging in market prior to a campaign launch may be a good way to boost awareness. Consider teasing an upcoming release to generate interest before more details become available. In general, the more time you have in market, the better. Platforms like Google require time to optimize to benefit from machine learning. For paid search, we recommend at least one month in market before your campaign goes live to help maximize results.

Tip #3: Give yourself options

When time is of the essence, it helps to have a wide range of pre-approved options, especially in markets where regulation is high. Build twice as many digital ads as you need so you can layer in or remove the ones that aren’t performing. The more ads you can swap in, the more opportunities you have to learn.

Tip #4: Optimize effectively

Not all optimizations are created equal. Think through the underlying goal of each tactic to make sure you’re optimizing appropriately. For example, brand awareness campaigns focus on overall impressions. Optimize these for reach. For campaigns geared around conversions, optimize on user actions like clicking “enroll now” or “buy now.” Understanding what success looks like for each tactic will help you make game-time decisions so you can get the best performance out of your campaign overall.

Tip 5: Take good notes

One of the best things you can do to set yourself up for future success is to take good notes of everything you learned during the campaign. Any helpful findings should be shared out and saved in a way that makes them easy to reference as part of the strategy development process for the next campaign.

At Jump Company, nothing thrills us more than seeing campaigns deliver game-changing results. It’s amazing to see what is possible when you are intentional about how to make the most out of your time in market…no matter how limited it may be.