If you’ve been working on a strategy to encourage people to donate blood and have considered paid social media campaigns, we’re excited for you! Using social media for blood donor recruitment is a great way to meet current and potential donors where they’re at in a less invasive way. When you use social media, you’re able to get in front of your target audience when they prefer in a streamlined way, such as when they’re scrolling their feed.
Launching a paid social media campaign is essential for growing your donor base and encouraging previous blood donors to return, which is why we’re so passionate about the topic. However, there are some roadblocks you’re likely to encounter when running these campaigns for donor recruitment, so in this blog we’ll cover five common problems and walk through how to combat them.
1. Campaign goals
Just like any other campaign or project, defining clear and achievable campaign goals for paid social media campaigns is essential for success. The absence of well-defined objectives can lead to a variety of problems, which can cloud the campaign's effectiveness. Without explicit goals, blood centers may find it challenging to measure success, track key performance indicators, or even tailor their content to resonate with their target donors.
Goals serve as the compass, guiding the campaign's direction and allowing for meaningful engagement with potential blood donors. Conversely, undefined or unrealistic objectives can result in a lack of focus, diminishing the campaign's impact and potentially deterring potential donors. Before you begin creating content for your social media campaign, determine what you want to get out of it.
Do you just want to bring awareness to your blood center?
Or do you want to encourage previous blood donors to donate again?
This step is crucial and not one that should be skipped over.
2. Platform restrictions
Tiktok is a great social media platform to utilize for blood donor recruitment given the amount of active users. In the US alone, there are 73.7 million active users and that number is expected to rise to 88.7 this year. With so many active users spanning several generations, you’re bound to reach a wide demographic to recruit new and previous blood donors in your area. While we have had success with TikTok for our clients, we wanted to address the roadblocks your team may encounter when trying to utilize Tiktok to attract donors.
TikTok has some challenges when it comes to advertising your business because of its Advertising Policies. For example, if you look up the words “blood donor” on TikTok, a disclaimer pops up that states “distressing content” and “the following content may be distressing to some viewers” before you can look at any of the videos, which can limit your organic reach. The platform also has a lengthy list of prohibited products and services. We’ve seen blood donor recruitment ads get approved and others get flagged as “Forbidden Industry "Medical Services" which can cause the whole campaign to be shut off. We suggest trying to be creative with ads and copy to test if your ads will be approved by its Business Manager.
While Facebook has been the easiest platform to work with, that doesn’t mean there aren’t restrictions there. Facebook doesn’t allow ads using or referencing political figures and medical procedure content. Although marijuana is legalized in certain states, ads referencing the drug even in those states get flagged and aren’t permitted to run.
3. Custom Audience Targeting
Targeting custom audiences is a great way to re-engage previous donors. Unfortunately, not every social media platform offers this feature. While ideally we’d be able to target existing donors anywhere, we are limited to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, X (formerly Twitter), etc. Tiktok offers custom audience targeting to approved accounts, however stated above, there are roadblocks to getting those ads approved there. Google Ads offers custom audience targeting to advertisers who have met certain tiers of ad spend.
4. Active Facebook Page for Ads
Currently, there are an estimated 175 million Facebook users and that number is only going to grow in the coming years. In 2022, there were over 70% of internet users that were regular Facebook users, indicating this social media platform is another great place for blood donor recruitment online.
One roadblock we encounter when clients come to us to run paid Facebook ads is having no activity on their page, or lack of a page altogether. From our experience, trying to launch ads on inactive pages doesn’t necessarily relate to the amount of time on Facebook, but rather the factor of trustworthiness. Your blood center has a higher likelihood of conversion from ads when there is history of content on your page for users to become familiar with your brand.
We recommend taking the time to set up your page with all the information about your blood center and creating posts on your feed to increase awareness and build up your brand prior to launching ads. Because Snapchat ads don’t link directly to a page or Snapchat account, there isn’t any issue with running ads on the platform if you aren’t currently active there. We’ve had clients initially turn down running ads on Snapchat for that reason, but great news - they were able to run ads, and see success too!
5. High Quality Ads
On top of the other issues mentioned, quality of ads can be a major roadblock for blood centers when launching social media campaigns. With attention spans getting shorter and more selective, it’s imperative that ads are engaging, authentic, and resonate with your target donors. This requires investing in creative and ongoing testing either with a dedicated team member in-house or externally.
Conclusion
In summary, running paid social media campaigns for blood donor recruitment is a strategic approach for blood centers seeking to expand their reach. We hope that despite these hurdles, you leverage social media's power to inspire more individuals to donate blood, strengthening your donor base and overall impact.