Digital Marketing
Revolutionizing how we track, communicate, and understand chronic pain.
I joined MoxyTech in the midst of their new product launch, GeoPain - a chronic pain management app. My work involved the development of the social media marketing strategy for their new app. I was directly responsible for creating, monitoring, and designing Instagram content, and assisting with identifying market positioning for GeoPain.
Impact: As a result of my contributions, GeoPain’s user base increased impressions 1,855%, conversion rate 891%, and increased downloads 1,506%.
Client
MoxyTech
Located in Ann Arbor, MoxyTech is a small start-up company with the primary goal of improving the quality of life for patients in pain. Their product, GeoPain, is a chronic pain management app that is revolutionizing the 0-10 pain scale by providing holistic insights on their pain, triggers, and other symptoms to improve treatment for chronic pain.
Duration
June - August, 2021
Role and responsibilities
Digital Marketing Specialist
Lead designer of Instagram content (individual, carousel, story, and highlight posts)
Curate content alongside co-intern to plan out weekly content, write captions, and research social media best practices
Report to CEO for weekly updates to discuss weekly analytics and trends
Problem
The MoxyTech team recently launched their new version of their app - GeoPain - and are ready to expand their following. As a local Ann Arbor start-up, their budget is limited, and therefore rely on social media to grow the userbase. Their current outlets, Twitter and Facebook had some following but have been inactive for some time. On the heels of their launch, the company’s goal was to increase their userbase and increase engagement with their app.
Contents
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My first immersion into the medical field, in my first few weeks I spent time familiarizing myself with MoxyTech, and the chronic pain community that makes up the userbase of GeoPain.
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I joined the team to visualize the social media marketing strategy involving platform choice, visual aesthetic, observing competitors, and research social media best practices.
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I worked with a co-intern to map out posts for the future weeks and worked closely with the CEO to design a set of posts that’d serve as an anchor to the brand identity.
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I worked closely with my client to create a series of anchor posts that communicated the vision for future GeoPain content.
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I transitioned to the lead designer for social media content where I was fully responsible for the design of all Instagram posts.
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A slideshow of finalized carousel posts
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An overview of the effect Instagram had on GeoPain’s App Store analytics.
The app underwent a significant increase in engagement across impressions, conversion rate, and a total number of app units downloaded.
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A summary of my experience working on the GeoPain app.
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A reflection of the struggles I faced when working on GeoPain and insight into what I would’ve done differently if my internship was extended.
Onboarding and background research
In my first few weeks with the MoxyTech team, I spent my time sitting in on meetings to learn more about GeoPain’s target audience, the chronic pain community, and to get a high-level understanding of how big pharma operates. I came into this role not knowing much about chronic pain nor the medical industry however, I saw this as an opportunity for me to test my ability to adapt to an uncomfortable situation and make the best of it.
Of course, I’ve been in pain before, but chronic pain patients experience a variety of unique circumstances that alter their daily life. I was fortunate that the CEO of MoxyTech is a chronic pain patient himself so it was helpful to get some insight on such conditions. Even still, everyone has a different experience with their pain so my learning of this community was ongoing throughout my summer experience.
Marketing Strategy
Once I was caught up to speed, I joined weekly marketing calls with my co-intern and CEO to assist with planning marketing strategy. We established that Instagram’s visual-based platform and subcommunities accessible through hashtags would be the best outlet to prioritize marketing efforts. These calls also helped me clarify our target audience: chronic pain patients of ages from 20s - 40s. We were also aware that family, friends, or caretakers would be viewing our content and operating the app on behalf of the chronic pain patient.
We also spent time identifying the look and feel of Instagram itself. To capture the attention of our middle-aged audience, bold graphics, relatable imagery, and minimalistic text were some of our guiding principles.
Establishing brand identity
After getting familiar with the chronic pain community and understanding our target audience, I went through previous marketing materials to get a sense of what we were working with. Since they hadn’t been able to focus on marketing efforts in the past, they were lacking a brand identity guide. As a solution to this problem, I worked closely with the CEO to create three anchor posts that visually captured the company’s vision for future posts. We called these posts “anchors” because they demonstrate the values and mission of GeoPain while using a bold, minimalistic design. After going through a few rounds of feedback, I was able to get an idea for the visual styling and wording that accurately represents the GeoPain brand. Future posts are intended to capture the same look and feel as these anchors.
Having a CEO, who was knowledgeable about design was extremely helpful for me when receiving feedback on iterations. We intentionally spent more time nailing these first three posts before I had full creative control. Featured below is the process I went through creating the first anchor post.
Feedback on iterations of first anchor post
Iteration 1
Pros:
Communicates accurate messaging
Cons:
Visual hierarchy makes reading confusing; i.e “track, communicate, & understand” is read before “the best way to”.
iPhone graphic is too small
Footer is jumbled and unorganzied
Poor contrast with yellow highlight
Iteration 2
Pros:
Step design makes visual hierarchy easier to read
Communicates accurate messaging
Cons:
“The best way to” text feels cramped
iPhone graphic is still small
Footer is jumbled
Poor contrast with yellow highlight
Iteration 3
Pros:
Visual hierarchy makes content easier to read
Communicates accurate messaging
iPhone graphic is larger and more visible
Cons:
Footer is improved but can still use better sizing and positioning to better balance each element
Final Design
Key Improvements:
Larger “GeoPain” header
Improved visual hierarchy with re-imagined step design
Maximized size of iPhone graphic showcasing the GeoPain product
Replaced yellow highlight with an increased font-size and introduced a more personalized typeface to emphasize that GeoPain is “your” companion
Redesigned footer to evenly balance icons and url
Final anchor post collection
Promotion
After going through this iterative process and demonstrating understanding of the messaging and visual style the client was after, I was promoted to having full control over future Instagram designs. There was an emphasis placed on pushing out consistent content to catalyze growth and engagement on the platform.
As a result of this, my workflow changed from getting direct feedback from my CEO to designing and running concepts by my co-intern for feedback. Due to the time crunch, I prioritized creating the messaging first before introducing complementary visuals to capture the attention of viewers.
In this role, I made it a priority to design efficiently by creating and saving necessary templates, icons, and layouts for posts that could be reused in the future. While I didn’t have time to create complete brand identity guidelines, I combined pre-existing GeoPain icons and branding with my own custom templates and icons to make for a more organized design process.
Posts
Featured below are some of the carousels I built!
To view more of my work, visit GeoPain’s Instagram page and view posts from July 9th - August 20th
Impact
Since the inception of the Instagram page, engagement numbers have increased significantly. I specifically identified three data points to measure success.
Impressions: This stat reflects the number of times users view GeoPain on the App store and is significant to understand how effective social media is for growth visibility.
Conversion rate: This stat reflects the number of downloads divided by the number of impressions and is significant because it reflects the rate at which new users saw the app decided to download it.
App units: This stat reflects the number of downloads of the GeoPain app from the App store and was significant to understand how many users adopted it.
App Store engagement before Instagram
January 1st - June 3rd, 2021
Impressions
491
Conversion Rate
1.2%
App Units
44
App Store engagement after Instagram
June 4th - August 20th, 2021
Impressions
9,600
(+1855%)
Conversion Rate
11.9%
(+10.7%)
App Units
707
(+1506%)
Takeaways
As my summer experience came to an end, I learned how to navigate a fast-paced environment as a designer. My weeks were made up of ideating and designing 3-4 posts per week. With Instagram as the medium, I initially felt limited as far as design area and content I was physically able to include. In the end, these limitations were helpful for me to practice minimalistic design and encouraged me to only include the most necessary information in regards to each post.
I also benefitted from the start-up environment as I was able to get exposure to different roles within the start-up. I had my hand in marketing and design meetings as well as having a voice in all-hands meetings where all members of the company report their progress and discuss new updates.
Challenges & next steps
Joining the MoxyTech team with little experience in the medical industry, I spent time having to get well versed with industry terminology that was used spontaneously throughout meetings. This slowed my design process because of the background research I’d have to do to ensure that the information on each post was accurate. If I had the capacity, I would’ve increased our posting rate from 3-4 posts a week to a daily system to further boost engagement.
When it came to designing specifically, defining brand guidelines while simultaneously creating weekly content was a tedious process. On a weekly basis, I was busy planning the upcoming content early in the week, designing in the middle of the week, and being ready to post larger carousels by the end of the week with a few smaller posts in between all of this. Occasionally, posts required me to create icons, research topics, and redesign complete posts due to company pivots. Given more time with MoxyTech, I would’ve worked to further build out complete brand identity guidelines to make the design process easier with all the content in the same place.