Anatomy of a Campaign is a Freshpaint series that takes you inside real healthcare marketing campaigns – breaking down the strategy, execution, and measurement behind what made them work. In each edition, we deconstruct a real-world campaign so you can:

• Understand the strategic thinking behind it
• See how it was activated 
• Learn how performance was measured
• Walk away with practical, transferable insights for your own campaigns

Oar Health operates in one of the most challenging growth segments in healthcare: alcohol use disorder (AUD). 

While more than half of U.S. adults say someone in their family has faced alcohol use disorder, Oar Health’s target audience, primarily adults 35+ with high income and education levels, generally has low awareness of treatment options and inconsistent motivation to seek help.

For Oar Health, the business problem was real: growth had plateaued for more than six months, with heavy reliance on paid search. There simply wasn’t enough existing demand to scale further. Further, the treatment itself (an FDA-approved prescription tablet) was widely unknown, meaning traditional intent-based channels like Google Ads could only capture a limited ceiling of demand.

The core challenge facing Neil Walker, Oar’s VP of Growth, was: How do you grow when your audience isn’t actively searching for your solution, and may not even know it exists?

What followed for Neil was a deliberate shift from capturing to creating demand, using TV, radio, and SMS as a coordinated growth engine that boosted brand search from 20% to 70% of total search volume and secured a 150% volume lift in members, month over month.

This Anatomy of a Campaign shows exactly how Oar Health successfully pivoted from search dependency in what appeared to be a stagnant growth market, and how you can replicate it.

Want to hear the story in Neil’s words? Check out his episode on our Marketing Rounds podcast, hosted by Freshpaint CEO Ray Mina. 

The Market Context

Category: Alcohol use disorder (AUD) treatment
Business Model: Direct-to-consumer telehealth
Challenge: Sustainable member growth without significantly increasing CAC or relying further on paid search

By the time Oar Health began rethinking its growth strategy, paid search had reached a plateau. 

• Volume was consistent, but no longer increasing
• Incremental gains were harder to unlock
• Efficiency was tightening as competition increased

There was a clear ceiling on how much growth search alone could produce, in part because of the category itself. Alcohol use disorder is widely underdiagnosed and under-treated, and awareness of medication-based treatment remains low, even among healthcare providers.

Neil, who joined Oar Health from Ro (previously Roman), saw the available pool of demand was finite, and largely already captured. He assessed that:

• Few people were actively searching for Oar Health or the medication
• Most queries focused on symptoms or general help
• High-intent, solution-aware demand was limited

Yet at the same time, the team didn’t have access to the typical next channel for expansion. Early on, Oar Health was unable to use Meta, removing a common path for increasing reach and introducing the product to new audiences.

Nonetheless, growth targets required increased member volume while maintaining efficient customer acquisition costs.

Within those constraints, the opportunity became clear: reach people earlier, before they begin searching, and build awareness for a treatment option they may not yet know exists.

1. Campaign Objective: Increase Member Volume While Maintaining CAC

At its core, the objective was simple: Introduce a new growth lever that could expand total demand and drive immediate, measurable business outcomes.

For Oar Health, that meant:

• Restarting sustainable member growth beyond the limits of paid search
• Driving incremental volume, not just shifting existing demand
• Maintaining or improving blended CAC
• Generating measurable impact within the first month

Because Oar Health has a small, early-stage team, there was no extended testing runway. The campaign needed to produce a measurable signal quickly, both to validate the approach and to justify continued investment.

The team evaluated success based on overall system impact, versus channel-level performance. That meant analyzing whether the marketing investment translated into real, incremental members while preserving unit economics.

2. Audience Strategy: Target Moments, Beyond Demographics

Oar Health’s audience was clearly defined demographically, but what mattered most was understanding how and when motivation their shows up.

Their members tend to be:

• In their mid-life (mean and median age of 43)
• Higher income and higher education
• Managing demanding, high-stress lives

This wasn’t a hard-to-reach audience in terms of access; they regularly consume traditional media like TV and radio. The complexity came from behavior.

Motivation to seek treatment isn’t constant. It fluctuates throughout the day and week, month, and year, often peaking at specific moments:

• Mornings, when people are more clear-headed and open to change
• Early in the week, particularly Mondays
• After moments of friction, like overconsumption, holidays, or major events

These patterns became a core input into the campaign design.

Rather than targeting based purely on demographics or interests, the team focused on timing and context, reaching the right audience at the moments when they were most likely to take action.

This insight shaped everything that followed, from media buying to conversion strategy.

3. Channel & Conversion Strategy

To move beyond the limits of intent-driven channels, Neil built a system designed to create demand upstream and capture it over time. This required rethinking not just where to show up, but how to convert temporal interest into future action.

3.1: Channel Mix & Budget: Broad Scale and Reach to Inform Targeting

The team prioritized channels that could reach their audience at scale and at a low cost per impression.

• Primary channels: Linear TV and radio
• Initial investment: ~$30,000 per week in TV
• Ad format: 15-second spots to maximize testing and reach

Linear TV offered two advantages:

• Efficient reach (CPMs as low as $1)
• High testing velocity, since shorter ads allowed more placements across networks and time slots

“Immediately we saw the impact, and every day, it just built,” Neil said about the TV strategy. “So when you get it right, when you turn that channel on, you can see the oomph straight away.”

Radio complemented TV by reinforcing messaging during key moments like commuting hours.

Rather than concentrating spend in a single area, the team started broad, testing across networks, dayparts, and creative, to quickly identify high-performing tactics.

3.2: Creative Approach: A/B Testing and a Focus on Directness

Creative was intentionally simple and built for speed. The team launched with two variations for A/B testing:

• A problem-led ad, starting with the pain point
• A solution-led ad, starting with Oar’s offering

Within the first couple of weeks, the problem-led version clearly outperformed, driving ~20% better efficiency. From there, creative optimization focused on reinforcing that message.

The 15-second constraint acted as a forcing function, ensuring the message was concise and immediately understandable, and a few guiding principles shaped the approach:

1. Keep it focused: One clear message per ad
2. Prioritize clarity over polish: Animated ads can perform just as well as higher-production formats
3. Design for repetition: TV creative gains effectiveness over time, rather than fatiguing quickly

“One of the best things about TV is that it doesn't work like Facebook and TikTok; it does not need to be fed creative constantly,” Neil says. “Ads tend to get more effective over time before they get less effective.”

3.3 Conversion System: Layering in an SMS Engine to Nurture Interest

As the campaign expanded into higher-volume time slots like primetime, a new challenge emerged: strong engagement wasn’t corresponding to conversion. Traffic increased, but bottom-funnel conversions did not.

“I was scratching my head,” Neil recalls. “And of course thought about the patient … maybe it's because we were reaching them at a moment when they had a glass of wine in their hand or a beer, or at the very least they weren't suffering [at the time] from having done something that they wish they had done less of.”

Instead of forcing immediate conversion, the team introduced SMS as a bridge between interest and intent.

How it worked:

1. Viewers were prompted to text a keyword to a short code
2. They received an immediate response introducing Oar Health
3. Follow-up messages guided them to the website to begin the qualification flow

Over time, this evolved into a structured nurture sequence:

• 13 messages delivered over ~3 months
• Higher frequency early on, then gradually spaced out
• Each message reinforcing the value proposition and encouraging action

This approach aligned with how behavior actually played out:

• ~70% of conversions happened within the first month
• An additional ~30% converted over a longer window, with a tail extending up to ~4 months

By capturing early interest and layering in multiple channels, creatives, and follow-up paths, the campaign was able to meet users at different stages of readiness. 

SMS played a key role in extending the conversion window, helping convert traffic that wouldn’t have acted immediately, and ensuring that upper-funnel investment translated into measurable downstream impact.

4. Measurement & Optimization

From the outset, Oar Health approached measurement differently than a typical digital campaign. Because TV and radio don’t map cleanly to last-click attribution, the team focused on system-level impact, using blended performance as the primary source of truth.

4.1: Measurement Framework

The core KPI was blended CAC. Rather than evaluating channels in isolation, the team looked at whether total marketing spend across all channels was driving incremental members efficiently.

To understand channel-level signals, they layered in directional metrics:

• Traffic lift following ad airings
• Cost per visit (CPV) from TV and radio
• Brand search growth
• Direct and organic traffic trends

Using a TV measurement partner (Tatari), the team could analyze performance at a granular level, down to the network, program, daypart, and creative. Each ad airing was tied to a short window of post-air traffic, allowing Neil and team to identify which combinations were driving the strongest response.

4.2: Leading Indicators

Before conversions fully materialized, a few signals helped validate that the campaign was working:

• Immediate spikes in site traffic following TV spots
• Increases in brand search volume within weeks
• Growth in direct traffic, indicating rising awareness

Over time, brand search became a particularly strong indicator. It grew from a relatively small share of total search volume to the majority, signaling that more users were actively seeking out Oar Health by name.

4.3: Optimization Levers

With enough data flowing in, the team continuously refined the campaign across three main dimensions:

• Dayparting: Shifting spend toward higher-converting windows, particularly mornings
• Creative: Scaling the problem-led messaging that outperformed early tests
• Channel allocation: Expanding into new inventory (e.g., additional networks, time slots) while maintaining efficiency

Neil’s global approach to measurement and optimization relied on a shift in how performance was evaluated. By aligning measurement with how the campaign worked, the team was able to scale confidently, without relying on traditional click-based attribution. Guiding philosophies were:

• Less emphasis on channel-level attribution
• Greater focus on blended outcomes and directional signals
• Willingness to make decisions with imperfect, but consistent, data

5. Results: Growth Resumes After a Prolonged Plateau and Brand Recognition Expands

The impact of the campaign was immediate and measurable, with consistent increases in new members.

Within the first month of launching TV, Oar Health saw a clear step change in performance:

• 150% month-over-month increase in member volume
• 20% reduction in CAC

The campaign also reshaped how demand showed up across channels:

• Brand search grew from ~20% to ~70% of total search volume
• Direct and organic traffic increased, signaling stronger awareness
• Oar’s brand began to show early signs of becoming synonymous with the category

These shifts reflected a broader expansion in demand and stronger brand recognition. Performance remained efficient as volume scaled. By evaluating results at the blended level and optimizing across the full system, the team sustained strong unit economics while increasing growth.

What Made This Work

Neil orchestrated several factors together and created a system that could generate demand, capture it over time, and translate it into efficient growth.

1. Committing enough budget to generate signal.‍

The team invested at a level that allowed them to test meaningfully across networks, dayparts, and creatives. With ~$30K per week in TV spend, they were able to gather statistically useful data within the first few weeks and quickly identify what was working.

2. Matching channels to real audience behavior.‍

Linear TV and radio aligned well with how their audience consumes media. More importantly, dayparting allowed them to reach people during moments when they were more likely to take action, particularly in the mornings and early in the week.

3. Keeping creative simple and focused.‍

The campaign prioritized clarity over complexity. Short, 15-second ads with a single, problem-led message proved effective and scalable. Creative was built to be repeatable and durable, rather than constantly refreshed.

4. Designing for delayed conversion.‍

Not every user was ready to act immediately. The introduction of SMS created a structured way to capture early interest and nurture it over time, aligning with how motivation evolves for this audience.

5. Measuring at the system level.‍

Blended CAC served as the primary metric, supported by directional indicators like traffic lift and brand search. This approach allowed the team to understand the full impact of the campaign and make confident optimization decisions.

Each of these decisions reinforced the others, turning what could have been a channel test into a repeatable growth model that consistently converted awareness into measurable, scalable member growth.

Now It’s Your Turn

Oar Health unlocked growth by moving beyond intent-driven channels and investing in demand creation. By combining TV, radio, and SMS into a coordinated system, Oar expanded reach, increased brand demand, and drove measurable member growth, without increasing CAC.

For healthcare marketers who are hitting the limits of paid search, this is the next frontier.

Go deeper on how to build a scalable, multi-channel growth engine to improve marketing performance, increase revenue growth, and prove impact:

• Get the step-by-step framework to go beyond search in our ebook, Beyond Google: The Multi-Channel Playbook for Healthcare Marketers.‍

• Check out our Anatomy of a Campaign on how a dental practice more than doubled new patient growth with a geographic disruption campaign

• See how OrthoCarolina dropped its cost per lead by 80% and has compliantly unified performance data across Google, Meta, Bing, Trade Desk, and call tracking, so that marketing data intelligently influences decisions across revenue strategy.

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