Screening Campaign with a Small Budget and Offline Conversion Goal
ClearView Health Coalition is a nonprofit with a $10,000 social budget for an eight-week campaign to increase colorectal cancer screening appointments in two counties. The target audience is adults aged 45 to 60 and their caregivers. The coalition has Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok accounts, two community health partners, and a phone line staffed by three navigators. The goal is 300 booked screening appointments. A previous campaign generated 40,000 impressions and 2,800 likes but could not show whether anyone booked. Leadership is proud of the engagement numbers and wants a similar "awareness-first" approach. The partners can share content organically but have small followings. The coalition has no CRM integration and limited landing-page support. The campaign must avoid stigmatizing language and cannot imply that screening is free for everyone.
1. What should be the primary campaign KPI, and how would you explain to leadership why engagement metrics are insufficient?
Read the worked answer
The primary KPI should be booked screening appointments, with appointment requests or navigator calls as the immediate conversion event. The campaign exists to change health behavior, not to accumulate likes. Engagement metrics can help diagnose whether the creative is resonating, but 2,800 likes across 40,000 impressions did not reveal whether anyone moved from awareness to action.
Explain that likes are cheap and can be driven by emotionally resonant content that does not prompt screening. A person may like a post and never call. The coalition needs a measurable handoff: a dedicated landing page with a booking form, a unique phone number or extension for the campaign, and a way for navigators to record source. If a full CRM is unavailable, use a simple shared spreadsheet with date, county, source code, and appointment status, reviewed weekly.
Keep reach and engagement as secondary indicators, and add message comprehension or intent measures through a short post-click survey. This gives leadership a clear chain from exposure to action without overclaiming attribution. The 300-appointment goal should be reviewed against realistic conversion assumptions after the first two weeks.
2. How would you allocate the $10,000 across platforms and partners, given the audience and the offline conversion goal?
Read the worked answer
Put most paid budget where the 45-to-60 audience can be targeted efficiently and where a click can lead to a booking. Meta platforms - Facebook and Instagram - should receive the majority, for example $7,000, split between geographically targeted feed and Reels placements. Use age and caregiver-interest targeting, but avoid overly narrow layers that inflate frequency. Reserve roughly $1,500 for creative testing in the first two weeks, then shift spend to the best-performing message.
TikTok should get a smaller test, perhaps $1,000, focused on caregiver stories and short explainers, because the core 45-to-60 audience is less concentrated there and the coalition has limited production capacity. Do not spread the budget evenly across three platforms just for appearances.
Allocate about $1,500 to partner amplification and community trust: small paid boosts behind partner posts, co-branded creative, and navigator scripts. Partners' organic reach is small, so treat their role as credibility and referral rather than mass reach. Hold back a contingency for the final two weeks to extend the best-performing ad set and to address any county-level underperformance.
3. Design a measurement plan that connects social exposure to appointments without a CRM integration.
Read the worked answer
Use three linked layers. First, platform metrics: reach, frequency, video completion, and cost per landing-page click, reviewed weekly to optimize creative and placement. Second, click-to-action data: a dedicated campaign landing page with a booking form and UTMs, plus a campaign-specific phone number or extension so navigators can log social as the source. Third, appointment confirmation: navigators update a shared tracker with source, county, date, and whether the appointment was kept.
Add a short post-click survey asking where the person heard about the campaign, because some people will see a post and later call without clicking. Compare the two counties if spend or timing differs, but avoid claiming causality from a simple before-and-after comparison. Where feasible, run a small geo holdout or delayed launch in one area to estimate lift.
Report cost per appointment request and cost per kept appointment, not just cost per click. If appointment requests are strong but kept appointments are low, investigate navigator follow-up and scheduling barriers rather than blaming the ads. This plan gives leadership an honest view of what social contributed.