Smile Direct Content Strategy

“Covid doesn’t change anything about the e-commerce thesis—it just accelerates [adoption] by years,” Mr. Wiener said. “Even when this pandemic is over, things are not going back to the old normal.”

— Bryan Wiener, CEO, Profitero | Tues 4/21 Wall Street Journal

Background: Think back to the Summer of 2020. The country was experiencing peak COVID-19, routines had been upended and people were finding new ways to do everyday things like work, shop, entertain themselves and of course receive healthcare. Smile Direct was established as a competitor to traditional braces and clear alignment companies. They were perfectly placed to take advantage of the trend at the time to replace in-person health care treatment with virtual appointments, as they were already providing exactly this type of service. One major limitation on this type of service was it was often not covered under health insurance programs. All that changed during COVID-19 when insurance companies allowed for remote sessions for many services not just COVID-19 related, as did Medicaid.

The Task: This change represented a great opportunity for Smile Direct, however, consumers still had concerns about receiving treatment virtually and had many questions around how it worked. This is a perfect use case for content marketing, the client needed a strategy to act as the North Star for a new program they wanted to launch.

The Result: I created a content marketing strategy that helped to contextualize, simplify and provide consumers with clear answers to their questions and concerns they have around telehealth.  The strategy identifed the customer groups who were most likely to take advantage of telehealth services, what gaps in their current knowledge were and therefore messaging that would most likely appeal to them. Smile Direct used my strategy to create multiple pieces of content that worked across owned, earned and paid channels. It can help transform marketing messages into videos, articles and infographics that drive business value, for a wide variety of audiences Smile Direct serves.

The Strategy Included:

• Research insights from third party reports, social listening and MRI data

• Competitive audit

• Development of editorial mission, tone and voice statements

• Content pillars

• Design / UX recommendations for the placement and development of a content blog

• Initial editorial line up

MRI Data used for audience segmentation

Explainer Video