How Rain Ready Ottawa grew program-page traffic 800%

The situation

Rain Ready Ottawa is the City of Ottawa's stormwater and rain-on-property program: how residents keep rain on their lots instead of sending it into the sewer. EnviroCentre brought us in to run the paid search. The official page already existed on ottawa.ca. The job was not a redesign. It was getting residents who were already searching — rain barrels, downspout disconnection, rain gardens — onto that page instead of a third-party summary of the program.

Municipal comms and digital teams know this gap well. The program is real. The page is official. Search still sends people elsewhere.

What we did

In partnership with EnviroCentre, we ran Google Ads against local intent and sent every click to the official Rain Ready page. We did not rebuild ottawa.ca, and we did not stand up a campaign microsite. Residents landed on the City's own URL.

• Paid search mapped to how Ottawa residents actually query the program
• The official .ca page as the only destination
• Tight query control so spend stayed on local, program-relevant intent
• Reporting a comms or environment lead can defend: traffic to the program page, clicks, and cost

The result

Program-page traffic rose 800%. The account delivered 12.2K clicks from 270K impressions at $0.19 average CPC — about a 4.5% click-through rate. Residents who searched the program landed on ottawa.ca.

If you run a municipal environment or communications program and need residents on the official page, not a directory write-up of it, let's talk. The first conversation is by email.