TED Conferences
Project: Membership Paid Media Test & End-of-Year Campaign
Industry: Non-Profit Media
Known best for TED Talks and their YouTube video content, TED Conferences collaborated with Serotonin to pilot paid media for product testing and an end-of-year Membership drive. The TED Membership and Product teams needed current and prospective insights in order to effectively prioritize and fund development.
The Project Had Two Objectives:
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Gather user insights to guide TED’s consumer revenue strategy for 2025
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Fuel future membership growth and drive immediate membership sign-ups while setting the stage for 2025 giving.
Background and Challenge
The biggest challenges to both objectives include awareness and marketing technology barriers. More than a billion people engaged with TED in some form last year – but almost none of them know TED’s mission, nonprofit status, or Membership offerings. We also quickly uncovered martech gaps that limited targeting, media buying efficiency, and results tracking.
Our Approach
Developed strategy, integrated planning process, and content creation for the concurrent campaigns.
Planned and managed Paid Social and Paid Search campaigns, including asset development and optimization.
Leverage existing look and feel and assets for speed and cost efficiency – working closely the internal Brand leadership – and supplementing past copy with campaign-specific comms priorities and test topics.
Results and Impact
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Delivered Brand, Membership, Product, and Conference learnings that helped TED narrow its focus on potential product offerings and Member benefits.
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Uncovered global messaging and audience insights totalling 5 primary and 13 secondary next steps to drive 2025 Membership, Brand, Operations, and Marketing Technology enhancements.
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Continued optimizations, including shifting the EOY Membership campaign from awareness to middle- and bottom-of-funnel nurture and conversion after initial results.
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Gained channel and format prioritization learnings, and developed Google Engaged Audiences, optimized targeting, and overall Google Ad Account architecture and approach for 2025.
