Raising awareness of Moorfields Eye Charity's 'Tick Tock' campaign

Moorfields Eye Charity is the UK's leading charity funding eye health research and innovation, benefiting patients at Moorfields Eye Hospital and worldwide.

We began working with Moorfields Eye Charity in 2022, with support including Google Ad Grants and Paid Search. Since then, our support has broadened to include paid social management, as well as lottery campaigns, donation appeals, and promotion of their free will writing services for gifts in wills.

We recently collaborated on a multi-channel brand awareness campaign titled ‘Tick Tock’, to further raise the visibility of their vital work. Over the five-week campaign, we delivered over 3 million impressions and generated 4,195 opted-in leads, with a 37% conversion rate and a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) of £1.09. Here’s how we did it.

Ahead of their new global eye centre opening in 2027, Moorfields Eye Charity wanted to raise their profile as a leading charity supporting research and innovation in eye health. They already had a solid base of supporters but were looking for ways to reach new audiences and encourage more signups to their email database.

Having invested in creative out-of-home (OOO) marketing designed by agency Red Stone, including adverts at the nearby Old Street tube station and radio ads on the DAX network, we aimed to support and enhance their messaging and give people a tangible way to connect with the charity.

We set KPIs to measure traffic to the website, as well as ad impressions and the number of leads generated.

Central to our strategy was the emphasis on building long-term relationships with audiences, focusing on a user journey from awareness, to engagement, to potential donors.

We focused on channels where we anticipated the strongest outcomes in audience targeting. We knew that Meta’s in-platform lead gen form would be a straightforward way for people to sign up directly within the platform. We encouraged this via an immediate value exchange, giving individuals access to a piece of content with practical tips for daily eye care that could help to prevent future sight issues, in exchange for their email address.

With a primary goal of attracting new leads, we deliberately excluded warm audiences, such as the charity’s current Facebook followers who were likely already engaged. We also conducted a small experiment targeting individuals who had recently visited the website, aiming to bolster their support via social media.

When it came to reaching out to new audiences, we focused on age and gender demographics, keeping it quite broad due to sight being something that can affect anybody.

Due to the charity’s investment in OOO activity, we also included Paid Search in the strategy. We targeted branded keywords to ensure Moorfields Eye Hospital/Moorfields Eye Charity was easily discoverable and visible to those who had been prompted to search after seeing an OOO advertisement. We also tested Performance Max, a relatively new format within Google Ads that allowed us to serve impressions across Google placements such as YouTube, Gmail and Display. This helped to broaden the reach of the campaign and drive additional traffic to the website.

Lastly, we launched a multimedia campaign on Spotify to capture the attention of new and diverse audiences. The campaign featured a video along with the same voiceover from the radio ads to create a cohesive and engaging message across all platforms.

Our assets included a range of images and a video each carefully tailored to the platform on which it would appear. For example, the ad that featured on Facebook included the copy “in the time it takes for you to scroll your news feed” while the YouTube creative included the copy ”in the time it takes for you to watch this video.” This personalised approach to the creatives made the ad more relatable and effective, ensuring the key message stood out in people’s busy social feeds.

And, as you can see, the creatives were also very visually engaging and eye-catching.

Whilst the video had a high CTR, it wasn’t served as much due to Facebook’s optimisation algorithms. This trend isn't unique to this campaign; it's something we've observed with other clients as well, possibly due to the user being absorbed by the contents of the video, leading them to engage less actively. In contrast, with a single image creative, the message is quickly reinforced and encourages direct action and click-throughs.

The impact of our campaign aligned with Moorfields Eye Charity’s broader goal: to raise awareness and develop new styles of communication with supporters. Despite already having a strong base of engaged supporters, this campaign allowed them to reach new audiences and enhance their existing database.

• 37% of people who clicked on the Meta ad went on to complete the lead gen form - a particularly strong engagement rate.
• 61% of people who completed the form agreed to opt-in to ongoing email communications.
• 3 million impressions served across digital media audiences.
• A cost of £1.09 per lead on Meta, beating our anticipated cost per lead of £2.40 by £1.31 (based on benchmark results from recent client projects).
• 3.24% CTR across channels, demonstrating the effectiveness of our creatives and messaging.

In addition, the Tick Tock campaign has been shortlisted in the 'Best Health Cause Campaign' category for charity or NGO in the Purpose Awards 2024 (winner to be announced in June 2024).

With new audiences and insights from this campaign, Moorfields Eye Charity can continue building strong connections with their supporter base. We have discussed a range of tactics aimed at deepening understanding of what interests supporters.

Ours and the charity’s immediate next steps are to roll out plans to engage these new audiences with follow-up campaigns and ultimately convert them.

This collaborative campaign has encouraged Moorfields Eye Charity to develop their strategy for supporter journeys further and look at long-term communications and conversion goals. We're grateful for the chance to guide the direction and deepen the impact.