Prostate Cancer UK

A full-funnel strategy to drive sign-ups for a major fundraising event.

Prostate Cancer UK implemented a full-funnel strategy to drive sign-ups with advertising for their biggest fundraising event of the year: Run the Month: Marathon edition. For the awareness and the conversion campaigns, they developed mobile-optimised videos, reels and an AR filter along with static assets.

Challenge

Prostate Cancer UK is a prostate cancer research, awareness and support organisation based in the United Kingdom. The charity launched Run the Month in 2021 – a virtual running challenge for runners and fundraisers to take on 26.2 miles over January to help beat prostate cancer. In 2023, for the Marathon edition, Prostate Cancer UK wanted to find out if they could cut through the noise in driving sign-ups for Run The Month in January and engage new audiences.

Solution

To drive incremental sign ups, Prostate Cancer UK partnered with Meta to develop mobile-optimised creative and developed a full-funnel strategy: launching an awareness campaign along with the conversion campaign across Facebook and Instagram. They developed a series of assets: static ads along with mobile-optimised videos, reels and an AR filter while also testing different messaging strategies: from ads focusing on the event to insight-led ads based on the audience motivations to sign up and showcasing the inclusivity of the virtual event.

Results

To understand whether they cut through the noise and managed to reach the new audience, Prostate Cancer UK decided to measure the impact with a brand-lift study. The full-funnel campaign's strategy and messaging mechanic proved effective with a lift for the 4 Brand Lift Study questions, driving more than 2,400 sign-ups. This campaign really cut through the noise:

• Standard ad recall +7.8 pts* – twice the vertical norm
• Unaided ad recall +8.3 pts* – higher than vertical norm
• Campaign awareness +5.5 pts* – more than twice the vertical norm
• Action intent +3.4 pts* – more than three times the vertical norm

Learnings

• Reach a new audience and test different messaging strategies by leveraging audience insights.
• Follow Meta's core mobile video best practices for your campaign: leverage short videos (15 sec or less) and a mix of square and vertical formats across Facebook and Instagram.
• Make the most of existing content and use UGC to create new engaging formats such as reels and AR filters.
• Leverage measurement solutions such as our brand-lift test to understand the incremental impact on new audiences.