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Our Work Osteosarcoma Institute

Rallying a Community Around a Rare Childhood Cancer

To help the Osteosarcoma Institute raise awareness of — and funding for — efforts that advance research for an aggressive childhood cancer, C/A jumped in as an extension of the OSI team to lead powerful digital and content marketing initiatives.

A young child wearing a light blue headscarf smiles warmly while hugging a brown teddy bear. The background is softly blurred, highlighting the child's joyful expression and the plush toy.

Challenge: The Osteosarcoma Institute is a small-but-mighty nonprofit with a mission of increasing treatment options and survival rates for osteosarcoma, a rare but aggressive bone cancer that primarily affects children and adolescents.

As a relatively new organization focused on finding a cure for a rare disease, the OSI needed high-impact strategies to broaden awareness with its core audiences: patients, caregivers, researchers and donors.

Solution: The OSI team partnered with C/A to create a comprehensive nonprofit digital marketing program that would support fundraising efforts and raise national awareness of osteosarcoma. Our strategy:

  1. A content hub focused on core audience needs. C/A began by creating foundational content and a digital marketing strategy to determine the best ways to reach each audience. This work informed our design for a new content hub, The Frontline, which shares “stories of progress, inspiration and information in overcoming osteosarcoma.”
  2. Ongoing data-driven editorial direction. C/A’s work continues with our team developing the organization’s annual editorial calendar, informed by keyword research to ensure it reaches key audiences and covers each of the OSI’s strategic pillars.
  3. Galvanizing advocacy with targeted campaigns. Each year, we develop and execute a series of campaigns to help fundraising and awareness. One campaign served to publicize an osteosarcoma survivor’s charity golf tournament; another helped turn followers into advocates. With precise targeting on each of these campaigns, we help to ensure that we make the most of every dollar spent.

Browse The Frontline.

2022 Results

113% Increase in total contributions, compared to the year prior
173% Increase in organic search traffic year over year
24% Increase in newsletter subscribers


FROM OUR CLIENT
“The OSI has come such a long way over the past few years, and I have personally seen our organization’s remarkable growth over this past year. We value marketing and the awareness that it generates as well as the connections and community that it helps to facilitate. Thank you for all that you do to help further the OSI’s mission.”
Vanessa Peterson, Development Manager, the Osteosarcoma Institute

A tablet and smartphone display a website and social media post advocating for osteosarcoma awareness. The tablet shows images and text describing the advocacy, along with cancer statistics. The smartphone shows a related social media post with similar imagery.

Maximizing Google’s Ad Grant Program

C/A spearheaded the OSI’s participation in Google’s Ad Grant program, which provides nonprofits with a free $10,000 search ad budget per month. (Note: If you’re with a nonprofit and aren’t taking advantage of this program, we should talk!)

First, we developed a comprehensive content marketing strategy for the Google Grant that analyzed the current organic positioning of the OSI’s pages and pinpointed high-intent search terms that were already driving impressions and organic clicks. From there, C/A strategically leveraged the Google Ad Grant to boost Search Engine Results Page (SERP) visibility and drive organic traffic to relevant editorial content.

2022 Digital Marketing Results

635% Increase in paid search clicks, year over year
573% Increase in paid search impressions, year over year
8.44% Google Display retargeting click-through rate (industry average is 0.59%)
$12,429 Free Google media spend accessed through Ad Grant program

Rethinking (& Rebranding) an Invaluable Resource for Families

Imagine receiving a life-changing cancer diagnosis about your child. Where do you turn?

OSI Connect is a resource that provides patients and caregivers with the opportunity to consult live with an osteosarcoma expert. In its former iteration, it was termed a “hotline,” which created some confusion since the service offered a scheduled video call rather than an on-demand phone line. With C/A’s help, the OSI rebranded the service to OSI Connect and created a strategy to increase engagement, which included recommendations for website, email and social media messaging as well as paid promotions. C/A also consulted on the intake process to identify efficiencies and automate elements of the communications.

Content Hub Redesign

The OSI partnered with C/A to refresh the design and provide a more intuitive interface for The Frontline, OSI’s content hub. C/A mapped out a new tagging and filtering structure for The Frontline blog categories based on user behavior, allowing site visitors to navigate through content more easily and removing content dead ends. Using the nonprofit’s existing brand guidelines, we modernized the design of the homepage and content templates to improve the user experience.

A laptop displaying a website titled "The Frontline" is on the left. To the right, there are three informational graphics explaining the effects of immune interventions on cancer cells, using blue and grey color schemes. The backdrop is a solid light blue color.

Fundraising Campaigns

As the OSI’s digital marketing agency of record, C/A manages digital marketing for the organization’s nonprofit initiatives, which include multiple fundraising campaigns throughout the year. C/A’s media approach identifies target audiences and optimizes multiple channels to drive as much qualified traffic to campaign landing pages as possible. For each fundraising campaign, we create a unique landing page and dynamic, often animated, social media and display assets. Donors receive an automated thank you email and are looped into the OSI’s monthly newsletter to encourage continued engagement and future donations.

A composite image showing a golf charity event’s website on a computer screen. The main page displays information about the "Team Lydia Give Kids a Shot Charity Golf Tournament", alongside a thank-you page, event details, and an advertisement featuring a young girl.

We never take a one-size-fits-all approach. Let’s chat about a strategy that meets your needs.

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