Building a creative influencer marketing strategy with limited resources to increase the reach of public health messages

Background:

While one in six children in the U.S. has a developmental disability, many are not identified until school age, missing the opportunity for early intervention services. Parents play an important role in monitoring their children’s development regularly, identifying early signs of possible developmental problems, and acting to evaluate and access services as needed.

Program background:

CDC’s Learn the Signs. Act Early. (LTSAE) program aims to help children with developmental delay obtain the services they need as early as possible, in large part by establishing developmental monitoring of children as a social norm among parents of young children and the providers and systems that serve them. Developmental monitoring involves the completion of age-specific checklists of important developmental milestones--activities that most children can do by certain ages (i.e., how children play, learn, speak, act, and move). With limited funding and staffing, LTSAE developed a creative and cost-effective influencer marketing strategy to increase the national reach of their program’s message.

Evaluation Methods and Results:

LTSAE developed a 3-pronged influencer marketing strategy to address three target audience streams: upstream (early childhood systems), midstream (healthcare providers, early childhood educators), and downstream (parents). To address upstream audiences, LTSAE offers small grants and technical assistance to strategically connected early identification influencers, called Act Early Ambassadors, in each U.S. state and territory to advance the integration of LTSAE into statewide systems that serve children. To address midstream audiences, LTSAE facilitates relationships with programs and organizations that influence healthcare providers, early childhood educators and other providers that work with families with young children. To address downstream audiences, LTSAE developed a digital ambassador program to mobilize social media influencers to promote developmental monitoring and LTSAE resources across social media networks where parents of young children engage. At all levels, the program works to ensure that these relationships with influencers are mutually beneficial.

This presentation will share both quantitative and qualitative results to date, including systems-level impact of the Act Early Ambassadors, reach and engagement measures from social media influencers, frequency of LTSAE website visits, LTSAE Milestone Tracker app downloads, social media mentions of key words related to developmental monitoring or LTSAE resources, and more.

Conclusions:

LTSAE’s 3-pronged influencer marketing strategy is instrumental to the program’s success. Building partnerships with influencers to integrate LTSAE into systems (upstream), among early childhood providers (midstream), and throughout social media networks of parents (downstream), works as a high-reaching and cost-effective method to circumvent obstacles, such as limited resources.

Implications for research and/or practice:

Influencer marketing only works when the relationships developed are mutually beneficial. Therefore, other programs could benefit from communicating their program’s value to their targeted influencers. For LTSAE, some of the valued attributes include, but are not limited to, the CDC’s global brand name, free and engaging developmental monitoring resources, and access to a network of professional expertise.