Using Social Media Marketing to Improve Retention of Children in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children: Implementation Study

Background: Many eligible infants and children do not participate in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); coverage declines throughout the preschool period of eligibility. National and state-level social marketing campaigns promote the value of WIC and increase enrollment and participation. Local contextualization and targeting of materials may increase effectiveness, considering the diversity of families eligible for the program. However, there are few examples of such approaches and their impact. Objective: This study evaluated the impact on child retention of a locally contextualized and targeted social media marketing campaign directed to WIC-eligible families living in the minority-majority population of Miami-Dade County, Florida. Methods: The digital marketing campaign geographically targeted low-income families with young children with customized static image and video advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, and a bilingual Google Ads campaign. It was implemented in 2 of 15 clinics operated by the Miami-Dade WIC local agency from May 2020 through April 2021. A before and after evaluation used program administrative data to compare the outcomes for infants and children in 2 innovation clinics (n=6162) with 11 comparison clinics (n=41,074) during a baseline period (2019 calendar year) and the implementation period (n=5636 and n=38,241, respectively). Outcome measures included recertification (re-enrollment during a period), retention (active in the program at the end of a period), and participation (household continuous benefit issuance defined as 11 out of 12 mo). Impact was assessed following cluster-adjusted propensity score weighting and difference-in-difference modeling. Household continuous benefit issuance was estimated in households with only an infant or a child. Results: Overall, 1,994,170 people were exposed to the campaign advertisements; 16.68% engaged with an advertisement. There were 22,983 unique visits to the local program website, 69.6% of which were acquired directly from the campaign. Four of the 5 top-performing advertisements were locally tailored messages and in Spanish. The change in recertification over time was 5.2% points (95% CI 3.4%-7.1%), greater for those in the innovation group than those in the comparison group. For retention and continuous benefit issuance, the absolute difference in change was 5.5% points (95% CI 3.7%-7.3%), and 6.6% points (95% CI 3.5%-9.7%), respectively. Differences in change over time associated with the innovation were qualitatively stronger for infants than for children; the difference in change for recertification was 7.6% points (95% CI 5.1%-10.1%) for infants and 4.0% points (95% CI 2.2%-5.9%) for children. Conclusions: Engaging low-income families with young children through a locally contextualized targeted media marketing campaign can improve retention of children in WIC.

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