Impact Marketing

How Up to Us increased their traffic by partnering with BCentrico

In November of 2019, BCentrico began working with Up to Us, a youth movement with the mission of supporting civic engagement and sustainable fiscal policy in the United States. Our goals were to improve their organic search, paid search, and social media marketing.

From 2019 - 2020, Up to Us and BCentrico obtained the following results: 

  • Increased overall website traffic by 367.11% (50,509 users to 235,931 users) through strategic planning, search engine optimization, organic social media content, and pay-per-click ad management.
  • Increased their organic Google traffic by 571.68% (24,950 users to 167,584 users) and their Bing traffic by 184.94% (737 users to 2,100 users) by optimizing existing pages and creating new pillar content pages. 
  • Increased traffic from paid search by over 650% (3,029 users to 22,937 users) by overhauling their Google Ad Grant. 

The Challenge: Increasing Up to Us’ Audience

Up to Us is a youth movement that encourages college students in the United States to become more civically engaged through educating peers about the national debt and fiscal sustainability. The program is administered by Net Impact, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to mobilizing emerging impact leaders who want to use their skills to make a positive impact on people and the planet.

In November of 2019, we began working with Net Impact and Up to Us on their digital marketing strategy to reach more young adults with their content. We landed on three main tactics to achieve our goals: improving their organic search, paid search, and social media marketing.

The Solution: Audience Analysis, SEO, Social Media, and Google Ads Grant Management

First, we performed keyword research and buyer persona analysis. 

We wanted to answer these questions: 

  • Who do we want to reach? 
  • What is being searched about the national debt and fiscal policy? 

Second, we identified pages on the Up to Us website that were already getting traffic from search engines and optimized them. 

Our teams identified gaps in their web content and collaborated to create new web pages to address issues or concepts with a high amount of search volume. Success didn’t happen overnight. Some articles took months to start ranking on Google search results. But the consistent efforts in content creation and optimization paid off, and we grew their organic Google traffic by 571.68% year-over-year.

Then, we built social media campaigns that promoted the Up to Us brand, participation in their campus competition, and participation in the 2020 national election.

We built targeted audiences using Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat to ensure we were reaching the right people. We tested imagery, copy, and ad formats, to craft the perfect message and consistently improve each campaign. We set up conversion tracking so that, for the first time, the Up to Us team was able to consistently invest in digital ads and understand their results. 

Finally, we overhauled their Google Ad Grant.

Net Impact had used their Google Ad Grant in the past, but only on a very limited basis. We combined what we learned from keyword research with our knowledge of their goals, and began to use the grant to drive traffic to pages where users could learn more about topics related to the national debt and fiscal policy.  

Deep Dive: Google Ad Grant Management

The Google Ad Grant platform became a key component to drive traffic to the Up to Us website. It targeted individuals who are especially interested in the content Up to Us was producing. This helped us increase website traffic while maintaining a high CTR and low bounce rate. 

For Up to Us, the Google Ads Grant platform:

  • Contributed to a 10% conversion rate for all website traffic throughout 2020 through various campaigns focused on blogs.
  • Compounded 95% of paid traffic with a goal conversion rate of 60%. 
  • Contributed to a 33% traffic conversion rate for a new “Voter Education” campaign we ran to promote participation in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. 
  • Maximized conversions for the $7,783 USD budget spent on their top 2020 campaign, “National Debt”.