Bringing a Campaign to Life with Production Sprints: BetterUp

BetterUp is a coaching platform that helps employees become better teams. They wanted to reach more folks, so they partnered with us to refine their messaging strategy. We helped them drive awareness of their platform with messaging that engaged current and potential users and brought them into the sales funnel to become loyal subscribers.

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For this project, we used our sprint process—a rapid prototyping, testing, and iteration method that allowed us to get consumer feedback on campaign ideas before taking them to BetterUp’s audience. This process took two weeks, and we had a fully-validated concept when we wrapped.

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Sprint Week 1

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During our first sprint week, we ideated numerous concepts, narrowed those down to three, and created video prototypes of each. We then tested these prototypes and gathered quantitative data to determine which concept we would iterate on in week two. 

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Concept 1: “Why Stop Now?”

By reminding us that we’ve all had different people coach us through various things in life, we can remove the stigma that to be coached means you’ve failed and make the idea of professional coaches a bit more approachable.

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“Why Stop Now” generated a good engagement rate and click-through rate, but watch time for this video dropped off more dramatically compared to the other two videos.

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Concept 2: “Small Sparks”

Here we want to position coaching in a more approachable way—by showing that small relatable choices can add up to real change.

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“Small Sparks” best accomplished our goal of compelling action and generated the highest click-through rate and number of shares.

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Concept 3: “Goals”

A bit more aspirational and energetic in tone—we introduce BetterUp by relating to our audience’s desire to want to improve and be more.

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While “Goals” had the lowest click-through rate, it had a high number of impressions and video starts.

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Sprint Week 2 

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With the data we collected, it was clear that “Small Sparks” was our top performer. For our second sprint week, we zeroed in on this concept and created three iterations.

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Variation 1: From This to That

The first variation is designed to paint the picture of a typical day—speaking directly to the challenge of finding that work-life balance between office life and home/family life. It drives home the idea that the choices you can make today directly impact tomorrow.

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Variation 1 had the highest click-through rate of all three videos, but the watch time dropped off more compared to the other two videos.

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Variation 2: A Clearer Picture of Tomorrow

This variation mimics the internal struggles and questions we ask ourselves to highlight areas where a coach can help. It touches on the needs of the audience for coaching in their professional and personal lives. And it centers on realism—a coach can’t change your life overnight but can help the next steps become clearer. 

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Variation 2 had the most impressions, highest total video starts and completions, most meaningful engagement, and second highest click-through rate.

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Variation 3: Simple Choices

Simple choices can have a big payoff, and this video positions BetterUp as a tool that empowers the user to take action. In this version, we only see the BetterUp user in an excited, happy exchange with the coach, helping to set an “empowered” tone. 

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Variation three had the highest number of video starts.

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Results and Recommendations

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Variation 2 outperformed both of the other videos and drove traffic to the landing page.

Although variation 3 did not perform as well as the others, it did a better job retaining people’s attention with the initial static image. We also learned that a :15 format outperformed the :30 in terms of completion and was identical in terms of average click-through rate.

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Armed with this data, we recommended that BetterUp launch a campaign with the second video variation of the “Small Sparks” concept. 

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Final Takeaways

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During these highly collaborative sprints, we were able to align with the client every step of the way while quickly delivering tested results. By the end of these two weeks, BetterUp had a solid campaign concept that was ready to be taken to market—and was proven to check all the boxes. 

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