Community First Health Plans: Making Health Care Easy to Understand

Business Situation

With the October 2013 Open Enrollment of the Health Insurance Marketplace, Community First Health Plans was looking for a way to generate awareness of their plans and provide the local community with resources to explain the process and procedures in a simpler way. Given a short timeline, they needed an effective strategy developed and executed very quickly. The major challenges included:

• The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Health Insurance Marketplace were difficult to understand
• CFHP, a local and non-profit company, was competing with other big for-profit brands like BlueCross Blue Shield, Aetna, etc.
• The presence on social media, the primary channel of communication, was almost non-existent

Solution

With the launch of the Marketplace less than a month away, esd began to promote Community First Health Plans by building a microsite to boost awareness. This microsite focused on the major concerns and important facts regarding the enrollment process. This useful and easy-to-navigate site gave members and the local community a platform to assist them with the enrollment process.
In promoting and directing traffic to the microsite, esd conducted a focus group and identified the most profitable target audiences for both online and offline marketing. Identifying these audiences allowed esd to develop an effective communications strategy via social media advertising, blogging, as well as PR and event marketing.