Year Two of Running Start Proved the Model
Running Start lets Yakima Valley high schoolers earn college credit before they graduate. In year two of the partnership, we grew total engagement 46% to 13,820 clicks and swipes, stood up conversion tracking for the first time in the program's history, and recorded 1,967 key events in a single quarter.
CHALLENGE
THE
Running Start is one of the highest-value programs Yakima Valley College offers, and the families who benefit most from it are often the ones least likely to hear about it. After a first year that proved the program could be marketed digitally, the 2026 campaign faced a harder question. Year one had reach but no measurement. Nobody could say what the campaign actually produced, only that it ran. YVC needed a second year that generated more engagement than the first and, for the first time, proved it downstream. That meant rebuilding the targeting and the tracking at the same time, inside a three-month window.
We rebuilt the campaign around intentional bidding, tighter audience targeting, and a working measurement layer, then assigned each of three platforms a job it was actually good at.
OUR
APPROACH
Higher-Quality Traffic
Engagement Through Student Video
Measurement Built From Scratch
Shifted Google Ads toward search intent, away from the year-one mix of video, Performance Max, and demand generation
363,140 impressions and 5,798 clicks, plus 266 view-through conversions the prior year could not produce
The 25 to 34 age group emerged as the strongest segment with 2,242 clicks and 113 view-through conversions
1,980 landing page views driven through Meta
4,750 clicks on Meta at a 5.33% click-through rate, against an industry norm of 1% to 3%
The Brianna 30-second creative reached a 6.63% CTR
Snapchat produced 3,272 swipes, a 234% increase over year one, at a 3.57% swipe-up rate against a 1.5% to 2.5% benchmark
11,593 video views with 668 completions, and the Marley creative leading at a 3.76% swipe-up rate
Implemented GA4 conversion tracking mid-flight, the first time the program had any
Recorded 1,967 key events, establishing a baseline that did not previously exist
Engagement rate on the landing page climbed to 83.56% by March, up from 11.45% in January
Bounce rate fell to 16.44% by March, down from 88.55% at the start of the flight
RESULTS
THE
Year two beat year one on every measure that mattered:
Grew total clicks and swipes 46%, from 9,469 to 13,820
Recorded 1,967 GA4 key events, the first conversion data ever captured for the program
Grew Snapchat swipes 234% and nearly doubled Meta clicks year over year
Drove landing page engagement rate to 83.56% by March, up from 11.45% in January
Held a 5.33% Meta CTR and a 3.57% Snapchat swipe-up rate, both well above platform benchmarks
STATS SHOW
WE DELIVER IMPACT
%
Total Engagement
83%
Snapchat Swipes
234%
Conversion Rate
46%
OUR
STORY
Two years into this partnership, the Running Start campaign has stopped being an experiment. Year one answered whether paid media could reach Yakima Valley families at all. Year two answered something more useful: what happens when you stop chasing raw reach and start chasing people who will actually act?
The answer showed up across every platform. Total engagement grew 46% to 13,820 clicks and swipes. Snapchat swipes grew 234%. Meta nearly doubled its clicks and held a 5.33% click-through rate against an industry norm of one to three percent. The video creative carried it, with the Brianna 30-second spot hitting 6.63% and the Marley cut leading Snapchat at 3.76%. Real students, talking about a real program, in the vertical formats their peers actually watch.
The most revealing month was March. Session volume was the lowest of the quarter, and yet every single tracked conversion happened then. Engagement rate hit 83.56%, up from 11.45% in January. Bounce rate collapsed to 16.44%, down from 88.55%. That is what a campaign looks like when the algorithms have finally learned who to talk to, and it happened in the last four weeks before the flight ended.
That timing is the whole story. Both years, the campaign found its stride right as it ran out of runway. The strategy is not the limiting factor and neither is the creative. It is the calendar. Running Start enrollment decisions start in the fall, and a campaign that launches in January arrives after families have already begun deciding. Extending the window and scaling the channels that have already proven themselves is the next unlock, and after two years the data exists to make that case with confidence.
WORK
GALLERY
