THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

Industry

See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Auto See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Beauty See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Business to Business See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Consumer Brand See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Education See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Entertainment See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Financial Services See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Fitness, Health, & Wellness
<br>See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Food & Beverage
See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Gaming See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Government & Politics See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Hospitality See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Insurance See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Live Events See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> News & Media See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Non-Profit See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Pets & Animals See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Pharma & Healthcare See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Real Estate See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Restaurants See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Retail & E-Commerce See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Social Activism See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Sports See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Technology See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Television See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Travel & Tourism See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Wine, Beer & Spirits

Strategy & Engagement

See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Brand Partnership See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Call to Action See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Community Management See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Creative Use of Technology See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> CTV/OTT See previous winners and honorees for Insights and Trends here.</a> <a href=https://shortyawards.com/17th/"https://shortyawards.com/category/16th/data-visualization">See previous winners and honorees for Data Visualization here.</a>"> Data & Insights See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Earned Media See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Event & Experiential See previous winners and honorees here.</a>""> Gamification See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Humor See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Innovative Media Buying Strategy See previous winners and honorees here.</a>""> Integration with Traditional Media See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Internal Communications See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> LGBTQ Community Engagement See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Micro-Influencer Strategy See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Multicultural Community Engagement See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Music & Dance See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> On a Shoestring See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Organic Promotion See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Paid & Amplification See previous winner and honorees here.</a>"> Physical and Digital Convergence See previous winner and honorees here.</a>"> Public Service Announcement See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Real Time Response See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> SEO & SEM See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Social Commerce See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Storytelling

For whatever makes you smile

Finalist in SEO & SEM

Objective

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.

Strategy

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.

Results

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:

Media

Unable to display PDF. Download instead.

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Delta Dental

Entry Credits