Paid Search & Analytics Case Study
A Case Study Of Rapid Growth
With a Google Grant-funded international search campaign and better engagement tracking, Two Octobers helped the Davis Phinney Foundation grow web traffic by more than 300% and reach more people with Parkinson's worldwide.
The Challenge
The foundation wanted to grow internationally on limited funds but couldn't measure its website's impact beyond traffic.
The Solution
Two Octobers built and scaled an international search campaign and replaced traffic-only reporting with automated tracking of the actions that matter most to the Foundation.
The Result
Traffic grew more than 300%, with international search driving over 30% of visits and hundreds of signups and donations.
The Challenge
Davis Phinney Foundation knew that search was important to its mission: nearly half its website visitors came from paid and organic search. As their focus broadened to how to help people internationally, we suggested they also broaden their search campaigns.
The Solution
First, we built a proof-of-concept search advertising campaign in Google Ads to demonstrate interest and traffic in a single international country. Next, we won a coveted Google GrantPro, which funded the Foundation with $500,000 of search advertising dollars for use worldwide. This enabled us to expand the reach of their programs to six countries–vastly increasing the amount of engagement and interest in the Foundation.
As their online presence grew, the Foundation also needed a better way to communicate website value to key internal stakeholders and demonstrate to funders the website’s impact. Moving away from just “traffic” as the primary success metric was challenging. The interactive capabilities of the website (downloads, videos, donations) were handled by third-party systems that did not allow tracking.
We came up with an elegant solution to combine what’s important to the Foundation with the mountains of details being tracked. We started with an exhaustive review of the links and traffic recorded in Google Analytics to hundreds of external resources, and then collaborated with the Foundation team to narrow in on the 15 distinct conversion goals which indicate engagement.
We then automated the process of goal collection and categorization in Google Analytics so it was easy for the Foundation’s team to identify the value the website was generating every day. We were able to go from “traffic” to reports detailing the relative interest in instructional downloads, donations, email signups, event registrations, and others.
Our Results
$40,000
of search traffic provided for free
337%
increase in traffic
475
additional downloads
Traffic skyrocketed by 337% and our international expansion campaign now makes up more than 30% of Davis Phinney’s web traffic. The search campaign itself has resulted in hundreds of event signups, donations, and information requests. And the data we provide on converting search terms has helped the Foundation set priorities on content development and provide data for reporting to major donors. The best part…we are reaching more people with Parkinson’s around the world who can access free tools and resources to help them live well today.