NHS marketing

Byte Digital is an NHS marketing agency providing paid social campaign management, creative production and integrated media support for NHS communications teams. Its experience includes vaccination programmes, Pharmacy First, screening, women’s health surveys, parent education, recruitment events, wellbeing hubs, preconception health, NHS App promotion and urgent service communications. Facebook and Instagram campaigns can be coordinated with YouTube, Spotify, search and print around the campaign objective.

Byte turns public-health objectives into clear creative, accessible information and coordinated media activity. Campaign delivery works alongside the commissioning organisation’s clinical review and approvals.

Campaign case studies

These records document Byte’s work for South East London Integrated Care System, South West London Integrated Care System and NHS Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System. Each article explains the campaign's purpose, audience, creative thinking and Byte's delivery role, with selected results relevant to the brief.

South East London

Further South East London records cover childhood vaccinations and preconception health.

London-wide medicine-wastage campaign

The medicine-wastage case study documents illustrated Meta creative, a seven-card carousel, four translated language strands and NHS-produced pharmacist videos. The campaign connected older adults and carers with a practical message about checking medicines before reordering.

South West London and Surrey Heartlands

Working with NHS creative and clinical expertise

Across these South East London campaigns, Byte handled strategy, audience targeting, campaign setup, optimisation and reporting. Copy and artwork were developed collaboratively: Byte proposed the creative, the NHS team reviewed and refined it, and both teams fine-tuned the final material. Existing NHS campaign resources were also used and adapted where appropriate.

Clinician, pharmacist and doctor talking-to-camera videos were produced and supplied by the NHS. Byte managed their use within the advertising campaigns. This combines the NHS professional’s trusted voice with Byte’s audience planning, media delivery and optimisation.

For the NHS App campaign, Byte produced the audio advert and combined it with existing NHS footage to create the finished YouTube advert. The record links to both pieces of creative.

Paid social support for vaccination campaigns

Byte supports NHS communications teams with audience planning, Facebook and Instagram campaign setup, creative adaptation, media management and reporting. For vaccination communications, the brief connects the priority audience with approved information, a clear next step and the relevant service destination.

The South East London childhood vaccination campaign combined Meta, YouTube and Spotify with translated text, subtitled video and audience research. The published results include 155,000 parents reached on Facebook and Instagram. This is a direct example of Byte's paid social and creative experience for a vaccination brief.

Byte's Meta guide for NHS teams explains channel roles, audience planning and campaign evaluation. The public-health creative and timing article connects launch timing with service readiness and the intended public action.

Define the intended action

The communication objective defines the intended action: recognising a service, understanding eligibility, finding a trusted resource or taking a practical next step. The destination and measurement reflect that action.

Awareness, engagement, service use and health outcomes each have their own measures. The brief defines the intended action and the evaluation appropriate to it.

Audience insight and access

Audience insight combines demographic context with people's information needs. Consider existing awareness, language, digital access, confidence, geography and the barriers between receiving a message and using the service. Use approved research and stakeholder knowledge to understand those barriers before choosing channels.

Area-level deprivation information supports geographic outreach planning alongside audience research. A campaign may also need to reach carers, partners or trusted intermediaries rather than only the person directly concerned.

IMD-informed campaigns and priority communities

Byte uses the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), local uptake information and the NHS team's priorities to help plan geographic outreach. IMD describes areas; the campaign plan combines that geographic context with language, relevant creative and the available platform location settings.

Dedicated activity gives priority communities a defined place in delivery. Evaluation considers coverage of the intended audience and engagement with the message in the context of that purpose. Unit costs are interpreted alongside the audience brief.

Examples include adult MMR awareness, spring vaccination communications, the women's health survey and the Lewisham NHS navigation guide.

The South West London spring campaign separated adult and parent messages within regional and priority-postcode strands. The Surrey Heartlands Spotify campaign used distinct scripts alongside wider-area and lower-uptake geographic delivery.

Offline and assisted routes support people with different access needs. The communication plan explains the available ways to take the next step.

Accessibility and language

Plan readable text, clear hierarchy, meaningful link labels, captions and usable mobile layouts. Test the actual destination as well as the advert. Accessibility informs planning, creative development and destination testing.

NHS England's Accessible Information Standard addresses information and communication needs associated with disability, impairment or sensory loss. Its guidance covers identifying, recording, flagging, sharing, meeting and reviewing those needs. Accessible campaign assets support this wider organisational process.

Translation and accessible formats address different needs. For multilingual work, agree who checks meaning, terminology and the action being requested. Language planning connects the creative, destination and subsequent service route.

Creative and channel planning

Different formats can do different jobs. Search can help someone actively looking for information. Video can explain a concept or show a trusted voice. Social placements can introduce a clear action within a wider audience plan. Offline materials may reach people in relevant settings.

Keep the central message consistent while adapting the amount of information and presentation to the medium. Each format uses a layout and level of detail suited to its placement. Establish a clear next step and verify that it reaches the correct, current information.

Why Byte uses quizzes and interactive advertising

Byte uses quizzes and polls to invite active participation in NHS campaign messages. Reading a question, considering the information and choosing an answer gives people a practical way to engage with what a service offers.

Byte's campaign experience shows strong participation in quizzes. The creative thinking starts with how people use social media: they enjoy interacting, answering questions and testing what they know. A relevant quiz makes that interaction part of the information journey.

The aim is to support later service recall: remembering the service and its relevance when a need arises. Creative can connect an everyday situation with an appropriate service, giving the audience a useful association to draw on later.

The dedicated Pharmacy First quiz conversion campaign used recognisable situations to explore pharmacy services and achieved £1.48 in media cost per completed quiz. The preconception campaign used a quiz within its awareness, education and action sequence, connecting information with active participation.

Why people take part in surveys

Byte regularly sees high survey completion rates across its public-engagement campaigns. Its experience is that people value having their say, particularly when their views will be heard by an NHS organisation or local authority.

In Byte's experience, adding a financial incentive has generally made little difference to participation. The opportunity to be heard has been the stronger motivation. That informs the creative: explain why the subject matters, whose views are needed and how the organisation will use the feedback.

The South East London women's health survey and New Forest council consultation illustrate Byte's public-engagement work. Each record describes its own campaign results; this participation approach draws on Byte's wider delivery experience.

Selected costs per conversion

Byte publishes selected costs per conversion to share practical campaign learning with NHS integrated care boards (ICBs), communications teams and other agencies. The examples help teams understand the media cost of encouraging a specific action, such as completing a quiz, submitting a response, following an app-download link or accessing a support resource.

These results provide a starting point for budget discussions and baseline planning for similar campaigns. Each is a reference point from work Byte has delivered, with its own audience, objective, channel, reporting period and measurement method. Comparing those details helps teams judge which examples are most relevant to their brief and establish a baseline for their own activity.

The figures below describe advertising media cost per recorded action. Creative production, website development and campaign-management fees are separate. For NHS App activity, the recorded action is a tracked click to an app store; confirmed installations and subsequent app use have separate measurement requirements.

Each figure belongs to the campaign period and activity described in its linked case study. The action definitions keep quiz completions, poll submissions, registrations and resource clicks clear.

Supplier information for NHS teams

Supplier details available upon request. The company-information page brings together Design Animal Limited trading as Byte Digital’s D‑U‑N‑S number, SME classification and current business insurance limits for procurement and onboarding checks.

Approvals and delivery

Agree the responsible content owner, factual or clinical reviewer, brand requirements, translated-content checks and publication authority. Keep a record of the version approved for each channel. A change to eligibility, service access or guidance may require changes across several assets and destinations.

Before launch, check links, mobile reading, language versions, contact details and the intended conversion events. The campaign scope identifies the people responsible for timely updates, approvals and publication.

Measurement and privacy

Define the evidence before choosing tracking. A campaign might report channel reach, impressions, resource visits and website interactions separately. Record attribution limits and any changes in available measurement.

The campaign objective determines which results matter. Timely service information calls for local audience coverage; an explanatory audio advert can be assessed through message completion; a quiz or registration journey has a defined participation action. Case studies select measures that help explain the work, alongside its audience strategy and creative.

Channel reach, video views, resource clicks and quiz interactions retain their own definitions. Service uptake and health outcomes use the corresponding service or evaluation records. The measurement article explains the approach.

The NHS App campaigns used consent-dependent clicks from the campaign information page to the app stores as a proxy for download interest. These clicks are distinct from confirmed installations, registrations and subsequent service use.

Health-related data requires particular care. The ICO's guidance identifies special-category considerations in online advertising. Agree the data flow with the responsible governance owner and current platform policies before sending events or creating audiences. Patient records remain within the approved clinical systems; campaign reporting uses the agreed marketing measures.

Byte campaign example

The South East London preconception campaign combined search, display, Meta and YouTube activity with a mobile-first information destination and multilingual journeys. Different creative phases supported awareness, education and practical action.

Byte designed and built the Plan for Baby campaign landing page (opens in a new tab), connecting the adverts with guidance and links to trusted information and local support. The wiki case study explains the mobile-first landing-page approach.

Its record includes website-tracked quiz participation and £8.55 per Search-attributed resource action. The work shows how creative, multilingual information and paid media can support a coordinated public-health campaign.

Planning checklist

Before committing a campaign to delivery, establish the audience barrier, intended action, service capacity, approved message, accessible destination, channel roles, review owners, measurement definitions and escalation route. The evaluation scope states the measures used and the decisions they support.

Integrated campaigns and practical planning resources

Byte's approach gives each channel a defined role. YouTube supports visual explanation; Spotify supports audio reach; and print supports communication through pharmacies, local distribution and community settings.

The Surrey Heartlands Spotify record connects audio strategy with measured delivery: 93.7% completion at £5.09 CPM across the wider region and 93.8% completion at £4.99 CPM in the lower-uptake and IMD-priority strand. Each figure refers to the October–December 2024 campaign.

The NHS App adoption toolkit provides practical planning and evaluation resources. Byte's healthcare campaign lessons explain how plain English, audience insight and a usable service journey inform delivery. For council consultation work, see local authority survey campaigns.

Brief an NHS campaign

Discuss your NHS campaign with Byte. The campaign objective, audience, dates, available creative and budget provide the starting brief. Byte coordinates media and creative delivery with the communications team’s approval process.

Client feedback

Daniel NHS SEL’s Trustpilot review (opens in a new tab) describes Byte’s support with NHS social and search advertising. The testimonial directory brings together this feedback and other customer experiences.

NHS-published campaign reference

South East London Integrated Care Board names Byte Digital as its creative agency partner for the NHS App campaign that began in December 2023. Its April 2024 board papers, page 118 (opens in a new tab), describe campaign activity across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google Display, Google Search and Spotify.

Dental experience

The NHS 111 urgent dental care campaign documents South West London service-awareness activity across Meta, YouTube, Google Search and Display, including translated creative.

References

• NHS England: Accessible Information Standard implementation guidance (opens in a new tab).
• ICO: planning direct marketing (opens in a new tab).
• Byte Digital: NHS preconception campaign.
• Byte Digital: NHS marketing agency.