Case study/Wisconsin Beef Council
Statewide appetite, lean budget
A producer-directed nonprofit behind a $2.1 billion state beef industry needed maximum awareness without the budget to buy it outright. We built the engine that earned it.
- Greater time-on-site
- 35X
- New social followers
- 22,283
- Higher click-through rate
- 2X
- Email click-to-open
- 10.85%
The challenge
Maximum awareness on a strict budget
The Wisconsin Beef Council is a producer-directed nonprofit supporting a $2.1 billion state beef industry, and it needed the widest possible awareness and engagement without the budget to buy it outright.
The existing presence worked against that goal: infrequent posting, low social engagement, and a high website bounce rate meant the traffic that did arrive rarely stayed.
- 2,000 followers
- The whole social following after more than a decade online, in a state of six million people.
- Two seconds
- How long most visitors stayed before leaving the site.
- No fixed cadence
- Posting was irregular, and little of it was built to be shared.
- Overstated CTR
- The previous agency’s reporting inflated click-through rate, so nobody could tell what was working.
The strategy
A coordinated, budget-efficient awareness engine
A regular recipe-and-humor posting cadence to rebuild engagement, paired with a Share the Recipe campaign that grew the following efficiently.
Programmatic display targeting built to drive visitors who actually spent time on the site, not just clicks.
Segmented email marketing, with social and ad messaging matched to the landing pages they pointed to.
The execution
Two objectives, run in parallel
Objective 01
Grow the following, and the engagement with it
- Audit and revamp
- Every existing social channel reviewed, then rebuilt around consistent, high-quality content.
- Share the Recipe
- A recipe-sharing campaign that gave the audience something practical to pass along.
- Humor plus substance
- Lighter visuals mixed with informative beef content, so feeds stayed worth following.
- Paid social growth
- Hyper-targeted ads to bring new followers in and widen organic reach.
Objective 02
Turn traffic into time on site
- Message match
- Social traffic pointed at the pages that actually answered what the post promised.
- Programmatic whitelisting
- Display inventory hand-picked for high-intent visitors instead of cheap impressions.
- Retargeting
- Follow-up campaigns for people who had already engaged with beef content.
- Segmented email
- Lists split so each send earned its open, which is where the 10.85% click-to-open came from.
Before any of it
The first fix was the reporting. The previous agency had been overstating click-through rate, so every decision was being made against numbers that were not real. We rebuilt measurement first, then optimized against figures the Council could verify. Everything below is measured that way.
The creative
Content people wanted in their feed
Recipes, sizzle, and lighter posts on a steady cadence. The Share the Recipe campaign made the audience do the distribution.
The results
Statewide reach out of a lean budget
- Greater time-on-site via programmatic
- 35x
Visitors driven by programmatic display stayed dramatically longer than the prior baseline.
- New social followers
- 22,283
Grown through the Share the Recipe campaign and a steady posting cadence.
- Higher click-through rate
- 2x
Messaging matched to landing pages lifted engagement across paid.
- Email click-to-open rate
- 10.85%
Segmented email turned awareness into repeat engagement.
The program exceeded its primary KPI in the first month and hit every annual goal within the year.
Hear it from the team
The team behind the campaign, on camera
The strategy and the performance factors, straight from the people who ran the program: 12,342 reactions, 5,671 shares, and 1,007 comments along the way.
What it proves
Five things that carried the result
- 01
Content people want to pass on
Share the Recipe grew the following because the audience did the distribution.
- 02
Message match keeps people there
Aligning social and ad copy with the landing page doubled click-through rate.
- 03
Reporting has to be true first
Correcting the inherited CTR inflation is what made every later decision trustworthy.
- 04
Whitelisted display earns attention
Hand-picked programmatic inventory drove the 35x lift in time on site.
- 05
Cadence compounds
A steady posting rhythm across platforms is what turned a decade-flat following into growth.
Past the primary KPI in month one. Every annual goal hit within the year.
The challenge
Maximum awareness on a strict budget
The Wisconsin Beef Council is a producer-directed nonprofit supporting a $2.1 billion state beef industry, and it needed the widest possible awareness and engagement without the budget to buy it outright.
The existing presence worked against that goal: infrequent posting, low social engagement, and a high website bounce rate meant the traffic that did arrive rarely stayed.
The strategy
A coordinated, budget-efficient awareness engine
- Regular recipe and humor posting cadenceA consistent social calendar mixing recipes and lighter content to rebuild engagement.
- A Share the Recipe campaignLike-Page CTA ads paired with shareable recipe content to grow the following efficiently.
- Programmatic display for engaged trafficDisplay targeting built to drive visitors who actually spent time on the site.
- Targeted email marketingSegmented email to turn awareness into repeat engagement.
- Messaging aligned to landing pagesSocial and ad messaging matched the pages they pointed to, reducing bounce.
The results
Statewide reach out of a lean budget
- Greater time-on-site via programmatic
- 35x
Visitors driven by programmatic display stayed dramatically longer than the prior baseline.
- New social followers
- 22,283
Grown through the Share the Recipe campaign and a steady posting cadence.
- Higher click-through rate
- 2x
Messaging matched to landing pages lifted engagement across paid.
- Email click-to-open rate
- 10.85%
Segmented email turned awareness into repeat engagement.
The program exceeded its primary KPI in the first month and hit every annual goal within the year.
The result
Past the KPI in month one
The program exceeded its primary KPI in the first month and hit every annual goal within a year, turning a lean budget into statewide reach.
Before anything else
The reporting had to be corrected first
The Council came to the program without a reliable baseline. Click-through rates in the previous agency's reporting had been overstated for years, which meant every decision built on them started from the wrong place.
Restoring an accurate measurement framework was the first deliverable, before a single new campaign went live. Everything that follows is measured against real numbers, not inherited ones.
The brief
Two objectives, run together
- Objective A: grow social following and engagementA full audit of existing content and strategy, a Share the Recipe campaign built for practical engagement, a content mix of humor and education, and paid social targeted hyper-locally to Wisconsin.
- Objective B: drive quality traffic and longer sessionsWebsite messaging refined to match the intent of incoming social traffic, programmatic display whitelisting for high-intent visitors, retargeting for people who had already engaged with beef content, and traffic pointed at the most relevant pages.
Content strategy
Community first, performance second
- Share the RecipeA recipe-sharing campaign that gave Wisconsin audiences something genuinely useful and shareable. Practical beef recipes drove the organic reach, comments, and saves that brand content alone does not generate.
- Humor meets educationLighthearted, relatable visuals mixed with informative beef-industry content produced a feed people followed because they wanted to, and organic sharing compounded the paid reach.
- Hyper-targeted amplificationPaid social aimed precisely at the Wisconsin audiences most likely to engage with beef content, turning organic momentum into a repeatable follower acquisition engine.
What carried the result
Four things worth taking from this program
- Content strategy is the engine, not ad spendShare the Recipe worked because it gave the audience something useful. Organic sharing extended paid reach well past what the budget bought.
- Traffic quality beats traffic volumeAligning social creative with landing page messaging and using whitelisted programmatic to attract high-intent visitors is what turned a two-second bounce problem into a 35x session duration gain.
- Accurate reporting is a client rightYears of inflated click-through reporting had eroded the Council's ability to make decisions from data. Correcting it was the foundation the rest of the program was built on.
- Constraint produces prioritizationEvery tactic had to justify its cost against a nonprofit budget. That pressure produced a leaner strategy, not a smaller result.
