Benenden Health

Benenden Health is a not-for-profit organisation, founded in 1905 with the purpose of people joining together to help pay for medical care. It is one of the UK’s longest-serving and most respected mutual healthcare societies, offering an affordable alternative to health insurance to more than 800,000 members.

Definition’s healthcare PR team was appointed by Benenden Health in 2019 to create and deliver campaigns to help build brand awareness, attract new members and deliver value to its existing membership base. Definition devised and executed a number of multi-channel campaigns – along with day-to-day profile-raising activity – to promote Benenden Health’s messaging and its mission to deliver ‘Affordable Healthcare for All’, against a backdrop of continued uncertainty around public health.

To achieve the objectives and communicate effectively to a range of target audiences, activity has included:

• Day-to-day press office activity, generating coverage through proactive comment, news hijacking and medical advice around key medical issues and health awareness days to raise brand awareness
• National senior leadership profile raising to cement messaging around the relationship with NHS and benefits for members as part of a mutual
• Targeted link-building campaigns to drive web traffic and increase lead-generation opportunities
• Quarterly campaigns on themes including the impact of COVID-19 on the NHS, the menopause, perinatal mental health, workplace wellbeing and diet and nutrition
• Support around regular social media activity allowing medical experts to speak directly to society members and members of the public on relevant healthcare topics

In 2020, the PR activity generated more than 500 pieces of coverage and more than one billion opportunities to see, significantly raising the profile of Benenden Health across target B2C and B2B audiences while providing value to members and the wider public.

The challenge was to build on this in 2021. By creating a campaign that would directly support sales activity, Definition was able to help Benenden Health recruit 63,000 new members, delivering the highest levels of recruitment on record.

More than 200 pieces of targeted media coverage were secured over the course of the year, with more than a billion opportunities to see or hear about Benenden Health recorded for the second year running.

Through this activity, spontaneous brand awareness increased by 3% and consideration by 5%, whilst link ‘earning’ activity secured a significant number of followed links, helping to support increased digital visibility and web traffic, contributing to the 68% of sales that were generated online.

• More than one billion opportunities to see or hear about Benenden Health were recorded in both 2020 and 2021
• Activity supported record sales with 63,000 new members recruited in 2021
• 35% of online coverage in 2021 featured a follow link to the Benenden Health website, with an average domain authority of 58

“Definition’s strategic PR and thought leadership campaigns, targeting a range of diverse audiences across a range of platforms, has helped the society build trust with members and customers, showing increased engagement through positive net losses, increased brand awareness and record sales results.”

Natalie Walker, Head of Marketing at Benenden Health