Gulfcoast South AHEC: A Cause Inspired Case Study

In 1971, the government developed the Area Health Education Center (AHEC) system to benefit the rural and underserved populations in each community. Gulfcoast South AHEC does this by recruiting, training, and retaining a health professions workforce committed to supporting the nation’s most vulnerable communities. Since 1995, Gulfcoast South AHEC has fostered programs that educate and improve the well-being of the communities they serve, which are Charlotte, DeSoto, Manatee, and Sarasota counties.

Gulfcoast South initially came to Cause Inspired at the end of 2020 when they recognized that their website was in need of an update in order to continue to grow as an organization. They knew their website was outdated and that an entire website redesign was one of the first changes they needed to make. The site was difficult to navigate, outdated in appearance, and was not user-friendly. The experts at Cause Inspired knew they could make the changes needed for a meaningful impact! The redesigned website incorporated the new branding created by Cause Inspired, an overhaul of the navigation structure to make it easy for any user to peruse, and increased responsiveness. On any device, whether it be a desktop or mobile phone, the site now looks clean and appealing.

Cause Inspired’s certified team working with Gulfcoast South AHEC certified team recommended that the nonprofit expand their location targeting since the organization’s services are so niche. As an added measure to try to work around those hyper-specific services, the team also suggested that Gulfcoast South AHEC add a blog to the website. The organization listened to our suggestions and has begun to write and publish blogs that are fact-based, starting with an informative tobacco blog. These suggestions were based on organic traffic of trendy topics in their target audience.

Since Gulfcoast South AHEC began publishing these informational blogs, they have allowed their dedicated team at Cause Inspired to create a campaign focused primarily on their blogs. This campaign, and the blogs it advertises, has significantly helped improve overall brand awareness and interaction with their website. In just 30 days, the overall traffic increase was more than 5,000%.

After the initial influx of traffic, some optimizations by the team were made to ensure only high-quality leads were coming to the website. Due to the success of the first blog, more content suggestions were implemented, this time with the goal to direct traffic to their upcoming events. Since the events had gone virtual, the team at Cause also suggested expanding the event advertising to the national level, allowing the health information to be seen by even more people.

These changes have been substantial enough for Gulfcoast South AHEC to notice a clear positive effect due to their new digital marketing efforts.

The support we received from Cause Inspired Media’s management of our Google for Nonprofits grant has been outstanding! Since they began managing our grant in October of 2020, we have been able to utilize over 50% of the funds that are available to us from the grant. We began the grant by only being able to use a couple hundred dollars each month, but by following Olivia’s guidance and having her manage our ads, we have been able to increase our usage to over $5,000 per month. Needless to say, hiring Cause Inspired Media to manage our grant has been an excellent decision!

A big thank you to Cause Inspired Media and Olivia Harlan for their management and support! We look forward to continuing our partnership with them!

-Erinn Yoder, B.S., TTS | Special Projects & Marketing Coordinator, Gulfcoast South AHEC, Inc.

Adding blog content to your nonprofit’s site can drastically improve traffic. Talk to your strategist about content ideas on your next scheduled call.