FirstLink is an organization near and dear to our hearts. They are a call center that answers phone calls for 2-1-1 and the National Suicide Lifeline. When someone calls these national numbers, they are directed to the closest call center to them. Recently, FirstLink expanded their reach to all of North Dakota. They wanted spread the word about their services to people in that area and asked Tellwell to help them do it.
Goals
- Connect people throughout all of North Dakota to FirstLink.
- Spread awareness of 2-1-1 and the services FirstLink offers through 2-1-1 (resources like food, shelter, and listening and support).
- Spread awareness of the Suicide Lifeline and the services FirstLink offers through the lifeline (listening and support for people who are thinking about suicide, survivors of suicide, and people who are concerned for a friend).
- Have an online presence that is user-friendly and makes it easy for people in need of services to find information and eventually make the call.
How Tellwell Empowered FirstLink
Updated FirstLink’s Website
FirstLink’s original website was difficult to navigate, and they lacked the ability to update it themselves. We worked with the team at FirstLink to discover what they needed in a website and how a streamlined user interface could make it easy for people to find resources.
Measure of Success: The number of users who access their website went from 271 users in one month to 2,073. That’s 665% by the end of the campaign. The number of pageviews went from 430 in one month to 4,193 in one month. That’s an 875% growth in pageviews. Even better, after the initial promotional campaign, numbers are slowly, yet surely growing averaging 1,600 users/month and 3,300 pageviews/month.
Infused New Energy Into FirstLink’s Brand
FirstLink’s brand assets, starting with the logo, hadn’t changed for more than a decade. The previous logo had their tagline in the logo. When it was resized for social media profiles or even for printed pieces, the tagline would be so small, it was indecipherable. The original logo used four colors, which added to the cost when they purchased t-shirts, mugs, and other giveaways – the refreshed logo has only two colors, leading to lower costs for promotional materials.
We refreshed FirstLink’s logo to preserve their existing integrity by updating the logo with a similar format. The new colors and strong foundational font infused new energy and a sense of security for their callers while making sure FirstLink’s image stayed current in a changing marketplace.
In addition, we added a background the social profile images and included photos to connect people to the services and emotions people feel when they call FirstLink.
Facebook Ad & Boosted Post Campaigns
FirstLink has a great community on Facebook. We used this as the main platform for their campaign.
We focused on three user stories/topics for 2-1-1 and three user stories for the National Suicide Lifeline. These helped us create the copy, imagery, and messages specifically targeted to the right people – ultimately making the most impact.
Each ad and organic post had a landing page on FirstLink’s new website, specific to the user story. Each landing page had more information along with the phone number to call (either 2-1-1 or the National Suicide Lifeline). Here are just a few examples of the images we used:
Measure of Success: Overall, 150,135 people in North Dakota saw the 2-1-1 and Suicide Lifeline Campaigns a total of 550,460 times. There were 6,138 clicks on the ads. The ads directed them to the topic-specific landing pages on FirstLink’s site with more information and a click-to-call feature for mobile users.
