Digital PR Archives - No Brainer Agency https://www.nobraineragency.com/category/digital-pr/ Search-driven Content Agency Mon, 23 Jun 2025 15:25:28 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 https://www.nobraineragency.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/cropped-nobrainer-favicon.png Digital PR Archives - No Brainer Agency https://www.nobraineragency.com/category/digital-pr/ 32 32 The best digital PR campaigns for ecommerce brands https://www.nobraineragency.com/digital-pr/the-best-digital-pr-campaigns/ Tue, 29 Apr 2025 09:06:35 +0000 https://www.nobraineragency.com/?p=24518 In such a competitive sector as ecommerce, standing out requires more than just quality products and a user-friendly website – brands need authority, trust and reputation, and Digital PR is a great way to get it.  Ecommerce brands need to be showing up where their customers are living online, which means breathing topics customers care […]

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In such a competitive sector as ecommerce, standing out requires more than just quality products and a user-friendly website – brands need authority, trust and reputation, and Digital PR is a great way to get it. 

Ecommerce brands need to be showing up where their customers are living online, which means breathing topics customers care about, creating content that resonates and being a part of trending conversations, all of which can be achieved through great campaign activity.

In this article, we explore some of the best digital PR campaigns of recent times and the ecommerce digital PR tactics that have propelled brands to new heights, by making them found, first and famous.

 

Why Digital PR Matters for Ecommerce

So why are we harping on about Digital PR strategies for ecommerce brands? Because it drives measurable ROI by driving SEO objectives.

Digital PR is not just about gaining media coverage; it’s a strategic approach that intertwines with SEO, driving more traffic and ultimately sales, for ecommerce brands. 

Here’s why it’s indispensable for ecommerce brands:

  • Enhances SEO Performance: By securing high-quality backlinks from reputable sources, digital PR boosts search engine rankings, leading to increased organic traffic.It also reinforces the Google E-E-A-T principles of building trust, topic expertise, authority and experience.
  • Drives Product Demand: Creative campaigns can spark interest in products, leading to heightened search demand and sales.
  • Increases Traffic to Commercial Pages: Effective DPR strategies direct potential customers to product pages, enhancing conversion opportunities.

     

Types of Digital PR Campaigns That Work

We love championing great creative work when it comes to Digital PR campaigns, and there’s tonnes of brands that are doing great things in this space. 

Here are some of our favourites: 

1. Data-Driven Campaigns

If you’ve been anywhere near a Digital PR strategist in the past five years, then we’re sure you’ve probably heard them talking about data campaigns. 

A data-driven digital PR campaign uses unique or exclusive data as the foundation for a story or piece of content that is designed to attract media attention and backlinks. These campaigns are especially effective for ecommerce brands because they provide journalists with credible, insight-rich content that is anchored in a product whilst also feeling newsworthy and shareable.

The data used can come from a variety of sources, including:

  • Internal sales or customer data (e.g. purchase trends, seasonal spikes, customer preferences)
  • Survey data gathered via polling platforms
  • Public datasets re-analysed or visualised in a new way

Because the content is rooted in real numbers or behavioural trends, it gives the campaign credibility and makes it more appealing to publishers. If the data reveals surprising insights or speaks to something culturally relevant, it’s even more likely to land top-tier media coverage and natural backlinks. 

Many successful campaigns also regionalise their data (e.g. breaking it down by city or region), which increases outreach potential across national, local and niche publications.

Digital PR data campaign examples:

Lovehoney’s Sex Map

By analysing internal sales data, Lovehoney created an interactive map showcasing sexual preferences across UK regions. It’s such a simple idea that not only makes use of their exclusive customer data, but also has a personal angle to pique the reader’s interest – as naturally, people want to find out what’s popular in their area. This campaign garnered extensive media coverage and backlinks, helping to enhance their organic visibility.

Preply’s Swearing Cities Study 

Preply swearing cities map graphic

Language learning platform Preply conducted a study to identify cities with the most profanity usage. Again, it has mapped content based on data, but the simple visuals give readers a way to compare their location to others across the US.

2. Social-First and TikTok Campaigns

TikTok has made it so much easier for PRs to ‘sell in’ campaign content, without hefty production costs. 

Social-first digital PR campaigns often centre on timely or trending topics, using short-form video to engage audiences organically.

For ecommerce brands, this can mean amplifying an in-house expert, showcasing how a product solves a problem, or responding to viral moments in your niche. The key is to create content that feels authentic to the platform while offering a valuable or expert-led perspective.

TikTok campaigns can also double as PR assets – journalists often pick up social-first content that ties into broader consumer trends or showcases real human stories.

Digital PR social first campaign example:

Levitex’s Sleep Expert Series: 

We worked with Levitex to amplify their in-house expert, Founder and CEO James Leinhardt, to create informative TikTok videos about sleep health. By tapping into viral TikTok trends, we were able to create newsworthy videos for next-to-nothing cost-wise, and then ‘sell in’ the videos to press to generate media citations and links

 

@levitex 3 signs you should stop sleeping on your stomach #sleep #sleepposture #sleeptips #stomachsleeper ♬ original sound – Levitex

3. Interactive Tools and Evergreen Assets

Interactive tools used to be the bread and butter of digital PR campaigns, and whilst they’re not as popular now due to long turnaround times and development/production costs, a well-thought out interactive tool can still reap wonders for DPR – and for customer engagement. 

Interactive assets are pieces of content hosted on your website that readers can interact with in some way, such as filling in some of their details to reveal personalised stats, filtering content by their location or calculating figures based on what readers input.

This type of campaign includes things like calculators, quizzes, or visual guides that solve a common problem or personalise a user’s experience. They’re ideal for ecommerce brands because they often sit close to conversion points – helping customers make better decisions while driving traffic to commercial pages.

The evergreen nature of these tools means they can continue to generate backlinks and SEO value long after launch.

Examples we love: 

Pinrose’s Scent Analyser

This quiz helps users discover fragrances tailored to their preferences, making the shopping experience personalized and engaging. There’s also some great newslines that could be taken from this, such as which is the best perfume for each star sign or age, based on the data readers input.

 

Secret Linen Store’s Clean Sheets Calculator

secretlinenstore clean sheets calculator screengrab

Everyone is probably guilty of letting their laundry routine slip every now and again, but Secret Linen Store’s clean sheets calculator assesses whether your laundry routine is really up to scratch based on your lifestyle and behaviours – and how you compare to other people. Not only is it a useful tool for readers, it also offers some great news hooks, such as people not washing their sheets enough. 

4. Community-Driven Campaigns

Community-driven campaigns tap into the shared experiences, struggles, or needs of a specific audience. By offering genuinely useful content or support that speaks to a defined group, such as small businesses, parents, or specific lifestyle segments, brands can build long-term loyalty and position themselves as a trusted voice.

Rather than going for mass appeal, these campaigns often aim for depth over breadth. They might include curated toolkits, expert-led advice hubs, or interactive content that solves specific pain points.

What makes these campaigns effective is their authenticity. When you build for a community, you invite engagement and word-of-mouth sharing – creating a feedback loop of content, PR coverage, and audience trust.

Examples of campaigns we love: 

TakingCare’s #HaveTheTalk campaign 

Okay, so this is one of ours, but we love it! We worked with a personal alarm retailer to tackle the stigma around aging and independence, helping Brits have the talk about elderly care through psychologist-led advice, data, influencer conversations and hosting conversations with real families. With 2 million older people having unmet care needs in the UK, our campaign aimed to break down barriers around conversations about care through emotive videos, social content and PR reports. 

Find out more about this healthcare marketing campaign.

MedExpress “Come On You Blues”

We love online pharmacy MedExpress’s campaign to tackle erectile dysfunction through the lens of football culture through the “Come On You Blues” campaign. By blending humour with real talk, the campaign reframed ED as something normal and treatable, using fan-favourite football references to speak directly to men who might otherwise avoid the topic. The creative was seeded across social and sports media, sparking conversation and driving coverage in both mainstream and niche press. It’s a brilliant example of a community-driven digital PR campaign that built awareness, encouraged action, and broke taboos, all while staying deeply relevant to its audience.

Conclusion

The best digital PR campaigns for ecommerce brands are those that combine creativity with strategic objectives. By employing diverse digital PR tactics, ranging from data-driven studies to interactive tools and community engagement, brands can achieve enhanced visibility, improved ecommerce SEO performance, and increased sales. 

If you’d like some support with your ecommerce PR strategy, we’d love to talk! Get in touch using the form below. 

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Digital PR metrics to track in 2025 https://www.nobraineragency.com/seo/digital-pr-metrics/ Mon, 03 Feb 2025 15:24:48 +0000 https://www.nobraineragency.com/?p=23880 Digital PR faces increasing challenges when it comes to measurement. As a hybrid of PR, content, SEO, and social media, it can often be difficult for clients to determine where digital PR budgets should come from within in-house teams. This can often result in Digital PR teams having several different stakeholders engaged in activity, meaning […]

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Digital PR faces increasing challenges when it comes to measurement. As a hybrid of PR, content, SEO, and social media, it can often be difficult for clients to determine where digital PR budgets should come from within in-house teams. This can often result in Digital PR teams having several different stakeholders engaged in activity, meaning that the ‘success’ of work can mean very different things to each stakeholder. 

This makes it crucial for Digital PR professionals to demonstrate meaningful ROI that aligns with the goals of different stakeholders. 

Despite Google stating that the nofollow tag is a “hint, not a directive” (Search Engine Land) – and Rand Fishkin’s analysis of the 2024 Google leak revealing that Google assesses link value through numerous factors beyond the follow/nofollow attribute (read the write-up here) – many Digital PR professionals still battle outdated notions that only followed links matter.

In this blog, we explore the key metrics Digital PRs can report on to ensure they demonstrate value and ROI, no matter who the stakeholder is. 

Jump to:

Is there a one-size-fits-all approach to Digital PR metrics?

No, unfortunately, there isn’t a magic master template when it comes to Digital PR metrics that agencies should be reporting on in 2025. But don’t panic, this is a good thing. 

Because of the hybrid nature of Digital PR, agencies often work with different stakeholders within the same client organisation, each with unique goals and reporting requirements. This means that Digital PR metrics should be tailored to reflect what is most valuable to the client’s objectives.

Campaign activity can often intersect multiple divisions within client organisations, spanning SEO, brand, PR & Comms, social media and content, and so with many Digital PRs working across multichannel briefs, it’s natural that each brief will pose its own challenges and requirements when it comes to Digital PR metrics and reporting. 

To make Digital PR’s impact more visible and valuable, reporting should focus on the specific goals of the stakeholders involved. Whilst this needs to be tailored to the brief in question, we’ve shared some key metrics to consider when determining how to measure the success of your Digital PR activity. 

If your stakeholder is an SEO Lead Explore audiences for content marketing

Every time a client insists on only followed links, a Digital PR person somewhere dies inside. Okay, so this might be a bit dramatic, but the principle still stands; Digital PRs have been battling with the follow/nofollow conversation with clients for years. 

Even though in 2019, Google announced that the nofollow tag would be treated as a hint, not a directive, meaning that even nofollow links can pass authority.

And even though Google’s leaked API documentation in 2024 highlighted that there are lots of different metrics that impact PageRank (check out Rand Fishkin’s analysis of this here), we still battle with the follow/nofollow request.

Despite this, many SEOs are still fixated by follows.  

We’ve seen time and time again, client websites rank for competitive terms when the majority of the links built to client pages are no-follow. 

If your client is fixated by follows, then whilst you’re educating them on the other important metrics of followed links, consider reporting followed links but supplementing them with additional insights, such as:

  • Where your links point to: Links to category pages, product pages, or editorial pages help boost rankings.
  • Internal linking strategy: The leaked Google API documents suggest that Google understands relationships between indirect links. If a high-authority website links to your campaign page, and that page links to a product page, Google may pass authority through to the product page. So having an internal linking strategy, and aligning this to your reporting metrics, will help to demonstrate this value to the client. Whilst this won’t be new to lots of DPR’s who are used to internally linking campaign pages to transactional pages, it’s important information for reinforcing the importance of this with clients.
    • Relevancy and authority of links: Again, the leaked API documentation suggested that backlinks from relevant and high-quality sources carry more SEO weight, so reporting on domain authority is a great way to showcase this to clients.
    • Contextual anchor text: The leaked documentation also suggests Google considers the terms surrounding anchor text, meaning even if exact-match anchor text isn’t possible, relevant surrounding text can still influence rankings. Tools like Ahrefs already pull through the text surrounding the anchor text, so DPRs can analyse the key messaging that’s included here.

      Any Digital PR knows that it can be tricky to get an exact match anchor text and that it’s down to the journalist’s discretion which links they decide to include in the coverage – or in even trickier circumstances, the editorial guidelines of the website in question (meaning it’s even out of the journalist’s control).

      However, it’s good news for DPRs, as the leaked Google API documentation suggests that Google can understand “the hash of terms surrounding the anchor” and that these are factored into ranking decisions. So, whilst DPRs may struggle to get an exact match anchor text for clients, the surrounding terms of the anchor text will still be included in the ranking decision. The easiest way to influence this is by including brand references alongside anchor texts, for example for our electricals client AO.com, we use the phrase “the UK’s leading electricals retailer” alongside branded anchor text, or for our client TakingCare, we used the anchor text “TakingCare Personal Alarms” or “TakingCare, leading personal alarms retailer”.  
      • Page ranking improvements: Monitor keyword rankings for pages you’re building links to. If you’re working closely with the SEO team, you should have a clear objective of trying to improve the rankings of the page that you’re building links into, so monitor the page for keyword improvements.
      • Referral traffic: Track traffic coming from media placements.
      • Clicks and impressions from Google: Use Google Search Console to monitor search performance for targeted URLs.
      • Traffic to campaign pages: Measure overall visits and engagement on campaign content.

If your stakeholder is an Ecommerce Lead

For ecommerce brands that are building their SEO strategy, Digital PR can be a powerful tool for driving increases to organic revenue, product visibility and website traffic. 

Key ecommerce Digital PR metrics to consider in your reporting include:

      • Organic revenue from target URLs and product pages: If your campaign promotes specific products, check for revenue increases from organic and referral traffic.
      • SEO performance improvements: Track increases in organic traffic and conversions for category and product pages that your PR campaign supports.
      • Referral traffic spikes: Identify referral-driven traffic increases aligned with outreach activity.

If your stakeholder is in the Brand, PR, or Communications Team

For brand, PR, and comms teams, Digital PR success is often tied to reputation and visibility. These teams are likely more engaged in metrics that reflect an overall uplift in brand awareness and trust.

Key Digital PR metrics to consider including in your reporting include:

      • Increase in brand search volume: If your campaign improves brand awareness, you should see an uptick in search interest. Check the search volumes for brand terms that are relevant to your campaign. For example, if your campaign is focused on washing machines, then check for improvements to terms around “[client name] washing machine”, as well as general brand searches.
      • Increase in clicks for brand terms: Higher engagement with branded search queries can indicate growing consumer interest. Use Google Search Console (GSC) to monitor these.
      • Media profile alignment: Assess whether media coverage aligns with your target audience and customer demographics. For example, have you targeted your outreach to media placements in locations where your target customers live? Report on this.
      • Media reach: Track the total potential audience for your media placements. This one can be a bit hit-and-miss with clients, as some teams think reach figures, which essentially calculate how many readers may have seen your article, are inflated or simply vanity metrics. However, brand teams who engage in lots of advertising practices may value seeing the potential reach of coverage.
      • Sentiment analysis: Measure positive, neutral, or negative sentiment in media coverage to assess brand perception. 

If your stakeholder is in the Content Team

An agency team meeting

Content teams focus on maximising the impact of campaign assets across multiple channels, spanning website content, social media, influencers, email marketing and more.

Useful Digital PR metrics for content-focused stakeholders include:

      • Clicks to campaign pages from SERPs: Track search engine performance for campaign-related pages.
      • Website views and traffic: Measure traffic spikes on content assets created for the campaign.
      • Social media reach and engagement: Monitor interactions, shares, and engagement rates on social media posts featuring Digital PR content.
      • Influencer reach and engagement: If influencer collaborations are part of your strategy, track audience engagement with their content.
      • Maximised content use: influencer agreements are costly for brands, so DPRs can help teams to maximise these arrangements by working across departments to best use the content, for example: 
        • Working with SEO teams to leverage influencer bios on the website to improve E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) signals.
        • Ensuring influencer-generated content is repurposed into high-ranking how-to guides or tips pieces, and integrated into Digital PR campaign landing pages.
        • Using influencer insights to earn additional media links and citations through outreaching influencer content to target publications.

Final thoughts: Tailoring Digital PR metrics for maximum impact

Digital PR measurement is not one-size-fits-all. Digital PR activity often intersects with SEO, content marketing, brand teams and ecommerce leads, so the best way to demonstrate success is by aligning Digital PR reporting metrics with client goals.

While traditional PR metrics like media placements and reach remain important, modern Digital PR reporting should incorporate SEO impact, content performance, and revenue contribution to provide a holistic view of success. 

By using tailored metrics that resonate with different stakeholders, Digital PR professionals can prove their value across different departments and secure the budget and buy-in needed to continue delivering impactful campaigns in 2025 and beyond.

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How to land Digital PR coverage for clients in any niche https://www.nobraineragency.com/digital-pr/how-to-land-digital-pr-coverage/ Sat, 14 Sep 2024 08:42:37 +0000 https://www.nobraineragency.com/seo/https-www-nobraineragency-co-uk-blog-blog-how-to-land-digital-pr-coverage/ If you’re anywhere near the SEO industry at the moment, then you’ll know that Digital PR is a hot topic. From landing high-quality links to key pages on your website to boosting brand reputation and visibility, Digital PR coverage can work wonders for your brand when it’s aligned to a well-thought-out SEO strategy – so, […]

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If you’re anywhere near the SEO industry at the moment, then you’ll know that Digital PR is a hot topic. From landing high-quality links to key pages on your website to boosting brand reputation and visibility, Digital PR coverage can work wonders for your brand when it’s aligned to a well-thought-out SEO strategy – so, how do brands go about landing coverage?

We take a look at some tried and tested techniques, as well as digital PR examples that showcase these tips in action.

What are the best digital PR strategies to use for clients?

The media landscape is constantly evolving and a big news headline can throw your digital pr strategy off track (think of all the beautiful campaigns PRs had planned for March 2020 before Covid). So, in order to create a media-resilient digital PR strategy, it’s crucial to plan an approach that provides enough planned activity and reactive stories to keep the momentum of coverage.

The best digital PR strategies use a blend of:

  • Planned campaign activity
  • Reactive newsjacking
  • Proactive newsjacking
  • Thought leadership
  • Media monitoring
  • Expert-lead comments
  • ‘Business as usual’ updates

A strong digital PR strategy also places your target audience at the centre of your activity, ensuring that you are targeting the media outlets, communities and platforms that your customer reads, engages with and loves.

3 tips to land digital PR coverage – and real-life examples

How can you bring a digital PR strategy to life? Take a look at our three tips below.

1. Monitor the news for trending opportunities

Tapping into the news agenda is crucial for successful digital PR strategies; and you can’t do that if you’re not regularly consuming and monitoring the news.

It sounds so simple, but often brands can get consumed with a great idea first, without thinking about which publications will be interested in the piece. Regular news monitoring and trendwatching means your idea will be sparked by in-demand news topics, because after all, PR stories should be led by the news agenda.

Instead of trying to shoehorn a campaign or idea into the news, focus on what’s currently going on in the news agenda and what’s coming up.

To help with media monitoring, here’s some great trendwatching tools;

News monitoring

    1. Google News dashboards – monitor news from target publications in your own personalised dashboard
    2. Google alerts – set up alerts for key trends and stories you want to tap into
    3. Response Source – a live feed of journo requests that let you respond to journalist enquiries and monitor in-demand topics

Social listening

    1. Tiktok – with Google now indexing TikTok videos and big nationals covering its viral videos, staying on top of TikTok trends is crucial for landing top tier coverage
    2. Twitter – #journorequest, #prrequest are all great hashtags to follow, as well as checking out what others are doing in the digital PR community

Data & insights

    1. Google Trends – track breakout topics and trends for news stories as they happen (add the Glimpse Chrome extension to see more in-depth insights too!)
    2. Answer the public – research the questions and answers people are looking for on the web
    3. Buzzsumo – track content that has had the most shares to assess which is the best publication to outreach to and the best format for that content i.e., listicles, how-to etc.

2. Make the most of reactive and proactive newsjacking

Once you’ve gotten to grips with what the media is covering, you can make the most of newsjacking opportunities; where you tap into trending news with information from your client.

Newsjacking falls into two buckets:

Proactive newsjacking

Where you look at upcoming trends, forecasts and media opportunities to get your clients’ product, service or information in the press. Keeping an eye on the media horizon is key to identifying potential trends and opportunities.

Reactive newsjacking

When you respond to a breakout trend with information from your client. Monitoring breaking news is key.

Newsjacking is a vital part of digital PR strategies, because it allows you to position your client alongside popular news topics that are trending.

Proactive newsjacking Digital PR example

Experts reveals hacks for keeping cool in a heatwave

Extreme weather conditions are always covered by the news, whether it’s a hot spell or a snow on the horizon.

So, to make sure we were prepared to tap into this trend for our clients, we prepared a series of comments from our clients in May, ready for heatwave coverage in June and July.

By already having the comments lined up, we were best placed to react to breaking news around the heatwave. Meaning we secured a number of highly-authoritative links and coverage for different clients from this opportunity, including tips on how the elderly can stay cool in a heatwave which landed linked coverage on the Express and sleep tips from our sleep expert client which landed a gold-tier feature on LadBible and The Mirror.

Reactive newsjacking Digital PR example

Blackpool Pleasure Beach reveals the best staycation cities in the wake of airport chaos

In June 2022, the UK holiday season didn’t really get off to a flying start – media outlets were awash with news of flight cancellations, delays and airport chaos.

With the summer holiday challenges hot on the news agenda, we decided to research a piece on popular staycation getaways in UK, so Brits could avoid the costly queues and chaos.

Why this angle?

Blackpool is a go-to staycation destination, so we wanted to get the seaside resort back in our target reader’s minds as the airport chaos kicked off.

The data

Using an editorial seed list of the top 30 locations for a “staycation” in the UK, we used Google keyword data to identify which are the most Googled destinations to create a top ten list of the best staycation destinations.

With this simple reactive story, we landed 10 pieces of coverage including the Express, The Scottish Sun, The Northern Echo and In Your Area.

3. Consider Digital PR campaigns

Some people speculate whether Digital PR campaigns are still worth the time and investment. In my opinion, whilst the days of throwing together a popular campaign format and expecting it to land are long over – infographics, brain teasers and dream job adverts are popular formats that many the Digital PR has jumped on!

There’s still value in a well-planned Digital PR campaign that has been researched with the lens of keeping the target audience in mind, but also ensuring that there are enough ‘evergreen’ media hooks to make the campaign relevant.

Digital PR campaign example

TakingCare Personal Alarms reveals the best retirement cities for elderly care

Retirement destinations are always a hot topic with the press – a quick Google news search reveals over 2 million articles talking about the subject – so when TakingCare approached us with a brief of getting them in front of their target audience (65+ demographic) we knew retirement was going to be a hot topic.

With retirement destinations hot on the radars of our target media, we decided to create an in-depth index on the best retirement destinations in the UK, drawing upon a number of credible sources.

Why this angle?

TakingCare Personal Alarms wanted a way to introduce their products and services to their target customers before they had a fall; those considering their retirement options were the perfect match.

The data

We combined free data from a number of public sources, such as census data, Rightmove information, TripAdvisor activity data and NHS reports, to calculate which are the best retirement towns and cities for elderly people.

We also broke the data down into different focus areas, such as the best cities for care, the best for outdoor activities and cost.

The results

There were so many angles to use from the data, meaning we secured over 25+ pieces of coverage for the campaign including, what we call, “gold tier” hits on The Express, The Financial Times and regional coverage on The Daily Echo.

Wrapping things up

Digital PR is a crucial part of overall digital strategy, and when aligned to your SEO strategy goals, it can work wonders for your business. By keeping on top of trending news, making the most of reactive newsjacking opportunities and using data-lead campaigns to create content, brands can develop a digital PR strategy that lands top tier coverage.

If you’re interested in leveraging digital PR to boost your brand, increase organic search visibility, build quality links for your website – or all of the above, we can help. Get in touch with us using the form below (we’d love to chat!).

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5 steps to create a digital PR strategy https://www.nobraineragency.com/digital-pr/5-steps-to-create-a-digital-pr-strategy/ Mon, 11 Mar 2024 17:25:21 +0000 https://www.nobraineragency.com/seo/https-www-nobraineragency-co-uk-blog-blog-5-steps-to-create-a-digital-pr-strategy/ A few weeks back, we shared a blog talking about why your business needs digital PR and how it could be game-changing for you. To briefly recap… “Digital PR campaigns combine the creative element of content marketing and traditional PR, supplemented by the data brought about from careful Search Engine Optimisation and target audience analysis […]

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A few weeks back, we shared a blog talking about why your business needs digital PR and how it could be game-changing for you. To briefly recap…

“Digital PR campaigns combine the creative element of content marketing and traditional PR, supplemented by the data brought about from careful Search Engine Optimisation and target audience analysis to create engaging campaigns with demonstrable ROI.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re an accountancy firm, a travel agent or a clothing retailer, there’s a digital PR campaign that’s right for you.

What is digital PR strategy?

Digital PR strategy is an overarching plan, which any online PR campaigns or digital PR activity undertaken will contribute to, in order to achieve the strategy objectives, such as brand building and improving SEO performance.

So now that we know what the hell it is, it’s time to start thinking about how to put it into practice. Here’s how to create a digital PR strategy…

How do you create a digital PR strategy?

1. Get to know your audience with personas

For any PR person, getting great media exposure for a client is one of the most gratifying parts of our jobs. However, the pivotal element of any effective PR strategy is knowing your audience.

Before you get started on the first step, be sure you have:

  • At least a basic understanding of your ideal target audience
  • Completed some competitor research to help you understand who they are (we recommend trying Sparktoro – it delivers great insights into your competitors’ audiences)

So, with your target audience info at hand, the first thing to do is start mapping out:

  • Where they go for their news?
  • Where they go for the content they love?
  • What you think their pain-points are?
  • What interests them (this spans everything from Netflix to food)?
  • Do they listen to any podcasts in-particular?
  • What hashtags they most engage with?
  • What themes and topics most interest them?

By analysing where your customer is and why, you can ensure you remain front and centre, sharing your expert views on trending topics and staying relevant.

One of the best ways of really getting under the skin of your target audience is creating personas. It’s something we do for all of our clients at No Brainer and they enable us to get to know your audience on an almost personal level – even allowing us to map out what their daily life is like, so we can intersect a clients brand at the right moments of their day.

Source: Smart Insights

Now you have lots of information and detail, let’s start thinking about how you can shape that into a document! Here’s a guideline structure for creating your target personas for Digital PR:

  • Give them a name – they’re people after all!
  • Add a picture of them (a stock image or icon will work!)
  • Basic demographic information i.e. age range, gender etc.
  • The competitors they interact with (so you can monitor them)
  • The topics they care about – you can create alerts for this on BuzzSumo and even use Google Alerts to help identify newsjacking opportunities
  • Outline their pain-points (that you can help resolve better than anyone else)
  • The media/news sites they visit most frequently – there’s a good starter for ten on your media list!
  • Are there any other digital touchpoints they love? Think Podcasts, YouTube etc.
  • Are there any influencers they follow, or even celebrities – that’ll also help you scope your broadcast opportunities
  • How do they speak? What language do they use? Is it concise and business-like, or are they bubbling with personality? That’ll help you craft the right tone of voice for each of your channels to best engage with them
  • Which channels are they most active on? Is it Instagram, Facebook or maybe Pinterest? You’ll then be able to focus on the right channels for your audience!
  • Which devices are they most likely to use?

There’s so much more you can do, but that should give you enough information to really start driving engagement, awareness and, ultimately, content that delivers measurable results. But, by transforming that info into a tangible document, you’ll have something you can share with your team – and also to treat as a bit of a bible for your overall marketing activity to make sure things are kept on track for every channel e.g. SEO as well as PR activity. Understanding the wider context of online PR in digital marketing for your business can help benefit all of the marketing channels you use.

2. Create the right content based on your insights

Through your personas, you’ll soon have a pretty good idea of what sort of content will most interest future customers, which can then be incorporated into your digital public relations strategy.

Tools such as SEMrush, BuzzSumo and ExplodingTopics.com will help you unlock key topics of interest to refine a relevant content strategy. You can then start thinking about the right types of content, for example:

  • Articles and helpful guides
  • Listicles
  • Infographics and data-driven visualisations
  • Gamification
  • Videos and GIFs
  • Podcasts

Whatever route you choose, data will remain at the centre of your campaign; the fun part comes in how you choose to communicate this to your audience. There are plenty of options, but a good place to start is by asking yourself “would I give a s**t about this?”. If the answer is no, we’d recommend you head back to the drawing board! 

A fundamental part of digital PR is driving measurable value through quality, relevant backlinks. But it’s important to ensure you’re creating content assets that only “live” on your website – so whatever digital PR campaign you’re doing, has a clear objective and place to go.

Besides creating great content on your website, social media is also an integral part of any Digital PR campaign and can be used to amplify engagement around your chosen topic. Social posts on the platforms your target audience loves can quickly increase reach around specific content, ensuring the right people are reading and reacting to your content.

Even better, if your content sparks debate, divide’s opinion or makes people want to share their view, all of this will help expand reach and spread the word of your brand or products and services.

Top tip: Overlay your content with the topics and themes you know your audience loves for the best levels of engagement. This is your opportunity to be reactive and get creative! Seen an image that’s gone viral? Or a news article that will have a direct impact on your customer base? Respond creatively and see how your audience reacts and engages with your content. Draw inspiration from brands outside of your industry too – if something works well, maybe you can evolve that!

3. Creating your media list and a pitch that journalists can’t refuse

Now we all know there would be no media without the media so identifying who you want to cover your story is vital. This is where Digital PR and traditional PR really come together to make great things happen.

We know that many journalists receive hundreds of emails in their inbox every day, so it’s important to ensure that they read yours and are immediately interested in what you have to say.

  • Research your journalists – don’t just send any old crap as this can be damaging to future relationships. Check what they’ve written about previously and make sure that your story is relevant to them.
  • Make it personal – reference an article of theirs that you have read or enjoyed or even an article that your story could complement or act as a follow up to. You have to show them why covering this is beneficial to them and their readership.
  • Grab their attention – this covers everything from the subject line of your email through to the headline of the article; different outlets write differently, so don’t go for a one size fits all approach. Research into how they talk to their audience and do your best to emulate this.
  • Make content they can’t refuse – your research and wonderful content that sits on your website should fundamentally entice the journalist. Attach teaser imagery to your pitch email that they can include, but be very clear on the benefits to their audience if they visit your website. For example, an infographic is great to give to a journalist, but if your website hosts a fully interactive version with loads more detail to it (like a personality quiz) – then they’ll likely include a link because it’s something their audience would expect to see. That’s a win.

Lastly, don’t be put off if you don’t have success the first time! If you’re confident in your story and know that it will spark conversation, be persistent and keep revisiting your approach.

4. Continue building your credibility and brand awareness

Authenticity and trust are essential for consumers (it’s also a search engine ranking signal!), which is why it’s vital to continually work on building this with your audience. Through strategic analysis and audience profiling, your digital PR and content strategy will ensure you’re working with news outlets that you know your audience trusts.

Think about what makes your brand an authority; what are the subject areas where you have expert commentators? Are you passionate about a particular topic that you could take ownership of?

Being subject matter experts in your industry will help drive media coverage in relevant outlets as well as important backlinks, you’ll boost your share of voice on key topics while simultaneously establishing yourself as an industry-leading expert, which all helps in building confidence and credibility in your brand.

Digital PR holds you accountable for consistently building on and improving your overall brand awareness. You’ll keep your finger on the pulse of the topics your audience is reading about, reacting and responding and building up credibility.

Twitter is a great resource to keep your finger on the pulse and get yourself out there. Journalists will often put out a rallying call for subject matter experts, specifying topics they’re looking for a comment on – so get following!

5. Measure your success by setting clear objectives and KPIs

Objectives, KPIs and goals are a huge part of implementing a great digital PR campaign. Everyone needs to know what they are aiming for and also have a clear understanding of what ‘good’ looks like.

Do you want to raise general brand awareness? Increase sales of a specific product? Or maybe your focus is on bringing people to your website. Is your digital PR part of a wider strategy to support ecommerce SEO for example?

How do you measure digital PR success?

No matter your overall objective, it’s important to measure success to help you learn from previous experience and continually evolve your strategy. The objectives and PR activity will help decide the best metrics and KPIs to use, these might include:

Checking your Google Analytics, it will show you how and from where your web traffic is coming, how long they’re staying and what pages they’re visiting most. Has your coverage provided any referral traffic?

For example, if your goal is an increase in brand awareness, an uplift in web traffic, visitors to your social media pages and followers will also provide a decent indication of how well your campaign has performed. A sustained increase in brand search visibility shown in Google Search Console can also correlate with digital PR activity and indicate how well a campaign has performed on that front.

Check your online coverage for any new links from authoritative websites. Does this correlate with any ranking changes, traffic increases or more visibility shown in Search Console?

Were there any social media elements to your campaign that can show how many people you’ve reached or engaged with on these platforms?

Track any links used in the campaign using UTM parameters. What have users who have visited the site via these links done? Have they engaged with your site in any meaningful way?

Whatever your objective, make sure you know how you’re going to measure your success before you launch any online PR campaign so that you can make the most of your activity and take important learnings into the next phase of your strategy!

Key takeaways 

Digital PR strategies unlock bigger and better opportunities for your brand, ensuring you’re reaching the right audience rather than your existing customer base. Don’t fall into the trap of producing content that will only relate to your ‘ideal’ customer, because the likelihood is that your customers are always evolving – which is why continually assessing data and implementing learnings based on this is vital.

By sharing your expert views with the right journalists at the right titles, you can work on providing them with demonstrable value (imagine positioning yourself as a knowledgeable resource for them). In giving them on-site assets that they have no choice but to link to, you’ll be helping to make sure your brand is in front of the right people.

By truly getting to know your audience, creating content you know will resonate well with them and building links in the right publications, you’ll be well on your way to firmly establishing yourself as a credible source of information.

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How digital PR can help you grow brand awareness and online visibility https://www.nobraineragency.com/digital-pr/how-digital-pr-can-help-you-grow-brand-awareness-and-online-visibility/ Mon, 19 Feb 2024 15:56:26 +0000 https://www.nobraineragency.com/?p=21924 Digital PR (DPR) is the lovechild of SEO and PR; it helps brands to build high-authority links to their websites, which improves SEO performance, using PR tactics. However, whilst Digital PR has its roots in SEO, it’s so much more than just a vehicle for generating links to your website.  From generating spikes in brand […]

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Digital PR (DPR) is the lovechild of SEO and PR; it helps brands to build high-authority links to their websites, which improves SEO performance, using PR tactics. However, whilst Digital PR has its roots in SEO, it’s so much more than just a vehicle for generating links to your website. 

From generating spikes in brand search behaviour to helping brands go viral on socials, our Digital PR Director Tori Attwood, shares how the revamped technique can not only work wonders for SEO, it can also grow brand awareness and online visibility and offer tangible and trackable ROI during the process.   

Coverage in online news publications offers exposure to huge readership numbers  

One of the biggest benefits of Digital PR is that it helps businesses generate media coverage online. This is often done with the intention of creating links from high authority websites to the business’ website, which is a gold-star tactic for improving SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). High-authority links are considered a vote of confidence by search engines.

As a result, your website’s rankings can improve, making it easier for potential customers to find your content or products.  

However, media coverage online offers so much more than just a link for SEO.

Online readership from news publications provides a huge platform to showcase your content to a vast and diverse audience. This exposure significantly contributes to brand awareness as your articles, features, or advertisements reach national, international or even global audiences, making your brand more recognisable and memorable. 

The coverage a business secures is often referred to as a ‘media profile’ and there are plenty of tools available that allow business leaders to track their own profile against direct competitors or other businesses of interest, which is incredibly valuable for benchmarking your brand awareness against competitors from a media perspective.  

Great content creates social media engagement, which amplifies your brand awareness 

Exceptional content is content that resonates with your audience, and there’s no better indicator of whether they enjoy your content than if they share and engage with it on social media 

So, a great DPR strategy will integrate social media, as it serves as a powerful tool for expanding your brand’s organic reach, and massively increases brand awareness. This might be through activating stories through social media first, or using customer stories or influencers as part of the news story about your brand. 

News outlets also often have engaged audiences on social media, and great stories that land on news titles are often amplified across socials with users sharing them organically, so the opportunities to reach target customers can extend even further than the coverage itself.  

To leverage social media for Digital PR and brand awareness, it’s essential to first measure the effectiveness of different types of content on socials, so you know which is the best type of content to create. Tools like Brandwatch are great for this, as they provide valuable insights on metrics like shares and engagement to help you understand how your content performs on these channels.

Great Digital PR stories will drive an increase in website traffic

A great measure for increase in brand awareness is an increase in new users to your website – and DPR can do just that. 

New users to your website means new people have discovered your brand, so an increase in the number of people who are aware of your product or service. 

As campaigns are often activated online and are created with the purpose of driving people to your website, DPR can help to generate fresh traffic and potential customers in this way. 

Activation activity can include launching reports or interactive assets on your website that users are encouraged to interact with as part of the campaign. It could be a competition that customers can enter to share their experience of a topic that’s important to them and the brand, a report that offers important insights they need that they can download, or even a game that they can interact with. Ultimately, the campaigns do two things; reinforce the brand message and that the brand ‘gets’ the customer, all while driving traffic to the website. 

Brand-related traffic and ‘search’ is a great measure for brand awareness and trust

 PR’s always struggle to measure brand trust, as naturally it’s hard to pin a metric onto how a customer feels about a brand. 

However, it’s worth exploring any impacts to brand-related clicks and brand traffic during campaign periods, as this can be an indication of increases in brand trust and awareness.  

If your Digital PR campaign is resonating with customers and the media, then this should create an increase in brand traffic and brand search – i.e. people who are searching for your brand online. 

This is often overlooked by marketers but is worth monitoring during peak campaign periods. 

An effective DPR campaign sparks conversations and, most crucially, drives increased searches for your brand on Google. Great DPR campaigns prioritise themes that align with your audience’s interests and resonate with your ideal customers, fostering trust and validity with your target customers. 

Brand-related clicks are clicks from Google search results that mention your brand, so the customer has searched for your brand on Google and then visited your website. 

It’s important to factor in other marketing promotion alongside this analysis, as lots of offline activity can also impact brand search, such as TV advertising, print advertising etc. 

 Google Search Console offers valuable insights by allowing you to monitor and analyse spikes in brand-related searches, helping you measure the impact and effectiveness of your DPR campaigns and inform future strategies. 

For example, you can monitor spikes in brand-related searches and traffic around key campaign launch dates, such as when a campaign went live on socials or when you secured a piece of national coverage.  

To summarise

In summary, Digital PR is a great technique for enhancing SEO, and should absolutely form part of any robust SEO strategy. However, it’s also a crucial part of the wider marketing mix and important for overall brand awareness and customer engagement. Digital PR is so much more than building links for SEO, and it’s only when brands recognise this that they can truly reap the rewards of this type of activity.  

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Tips for using data-driven PR in ecommerce marketing https://www.nobraineragency.com/digital-pr/using-data-driven-pr-ecommerce-marketing/ Wed, 26 Apr 2023 15:56:17 +0000 https://www.nobraineragency.com/seo/https-www-nobraineragency-co-uk-blog-digital-pr-using-data-driven-pr-in-ecommerce-marketing/ The benefits of PR as part of the mix in ecommerce marketing are one of the reasons why it’s a great fit for retailers. Effective PR can: Get your ecommerce brand in front of new and relevant audiences Help build consumer trust and confidence in your brand Help generate sales Help with your website’s SEO […]

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The benefits of PR as part of the mix in ecommerce marketing are one of the reasons why it’s a great fit for retailers. Effective PR can:
  • Get your ecommerce brand in front of new and relevant audiences
  • Help build consumer trust and confidence in your brand
  • Help generate sales
  • Help with your website’s SEO performance
However, getting your ecommerce PR strategy right can be a challenge. In what is often a very crowded marketplace, getting your PR stories heard and covered can be difficult. How can you help ensure that your stories stand out and gain the kinds of coverage that will make a real difference to your business? That’s where data-driven PR can come in. In this blog, we look at what data driven PR is, why it can be a game-changer for your digital PR and ecommerce marketing results and give some tips on generating ideas, making data more visual and pitching your data stories effectively to journalists.

What is data-driven PR?

One side of data-driven PR is when data is used as a basis for PR stories that are then pushed out to relevant journalists, editors and publications with the aim of achieving coverage. The other side to data-driven PR is analysing relevant marketing and performance data and discovering insights to help shape your future PR strategy. In this blog, we’re focusing primarily on the use of data to tell stories as part of an ecommerce marketing strategy.

The benefits of data-driven PR for ecommerce marketing

We’ve previously extensively covered why digital PR is great for businesses, but incorporating data-driven storytelling into the strategy can help take things to the next level for online retailers. So, what additional benefits does data-driven PR activity bring to ecommerce brands, on top of all of the other positives of a good digital PR strategy?
  • Unique data with a strong narrative helps your stories stand out to journalists
  • Useful and relevant data helps you display your expertise and build reputation – essential trust factors for today’s consumers
  • Robust statistics can add credibility to stories, which is a positive for consumers and journalists and can give potential customers more brand confidence

Why data-driven PR is great for SEO

Search engines seem to love stats! Mainly because people love stats and the search engines want to deliver results that people are looking for. Even more so when the stats being used are unique and not found elsewhere. When taking Google’s E-E-A-T into account, which is how the search engine evaluates the quality and usefulness of online content, useful and reliable data plays nicely into that, which means that Google attributes value to content that is making good use of relevant data, along with following their other guidelines. By making sure that your data-driven PR stories have a place on your website as well as being sent to journalists, you can make the most of the opportunity to drive organic traffic to your website, as well as visitors referred by online coverage of the story. For example, uploading the full dataset or more in-depth details to a landing page on your website means that even people reading the story being covered elsewhere can access even more useful information when they click through to your site. A good example of this in action is a campaign we worked on with our client, TakingCare, who provide personal alarms for the elderly and vulnerable. We used data from multiple sources to rank towns and cities across the UK for their elderly-friendly statistics, features and facilities, bringing everything together to determine the best places to retire. The full data, an infographic and useful content about the top retirement locations was all presented on a landing page, which was provided to journalists with the pitch.  One of the great SEO benefits of digital PR activity is in earning backlinks through coverage by authoritative websites such as media outlets. Backlinks can benefit the specific page being linked to, as well as the website as a whole, with each link essentially giving a vote of confidence to the site that it’s a useful and worthwhile place to find information. When statistics and other kinds of data are involved, especially if exclusive, content tends to earn links above and beyond the coverage that the story earns, which is great for ecommerce SEO. People find the page when researching a topic and credit the source online, which adds a whole different dimension to link building over time.

Tips for coming up with data-driven ecommerce campaign ideas

All of this sounds great, right? But where do the ideas and data come from in the first place? There can be various sources of data that you can utilise for a data PR story, and the real key is turning figures into a story that is interesting to your target audience. This can be somewhat of a chicken and egg situation – does the data come first, or the campaign idea? In our experience, it can work either way at different times. Sometimes, you have an idea or topic and can find or generate data that supports it and sometimes it’s by analysing data that ideas start to form. Using and referencing multiple data sources can also strengthen your story further. Some of the kinds of data to consider include:

Your own internal ecommerce/customer data

The great thing about using your own database information is that no one else has these figures and therefore your data is unique and exclusive to your brand. Digging into anonymised data about your customers, such as demographics, general location, purchase journey, products bought etc, can sometimes reveal a relevant story, especially if the data changes over a period of time. For example, if you sell vitamin supplements and your data tells you that the number of people under the age of 30 buying your products has tripled in the last five years, this data could lend itself to a story about how younger people are increasingly savvy about their health and wellbeing. When using your own data, your story will usually be strengthened by including other third-party data sources too, to back up your narrative and add more credibility to your take on the topic.

Customer survey data

It’s likely that you’ll already have an idea for a campaign before surveying customers, so that will help to guide your questions. Be aware that although this data is always useful, your own customers will be considered to have biases and the sample size is likely to be fairly small, so you’ll likely need other sources of third-party data to correlate with your findings in order for the data to stand up to scrutiny as part of a data-driven PR campaign.

Publicly available data

Data that is already in the public domain can be a great source to build a narrative around but it’s important to ensure that you’re doing something different with the data than what’s been done before so that you’re offering journalists a new angle. Whether it’s data from the NHS, Office for National Statistics (ONS), Data.gov.uk, local authorities, data.police.uk or even other people’s YouGov surveys etc, as long as you cite and credit sources appropriately, you can utilise these figures in your own story. Government and public body sources often release new figures on the same metrics annually (and sometimes more frequently), so familiarising yourself with these release dates can mean you can get a jump on the data before others use it. Google search and trend data can also be a useful source to help craft your own story. An example of this in action includes a piece we wrote about the most popular Christmas TV ads in 2022, based on the number of people searching for the various ads in the lead up to the festive season.  A simple list of the most-searched brand ads, along with embedded videos so people could watch them right there in the article, was an approach that worked in this instance to gain coverage for the story.

Generate your own new data

If you have a campaign idea, you can generate your own data and build your narrative around that. This often has an associated cost, or a significant amount of time may be required, depending on the route you choose. For example, many successful data-driven PR campaigns use Freedom of Information (FOI) requests from various public bodies or institutions, but this can take a significant investment of time, especially if lots of separate requests need to be made e.g. to individual local authorities. Commissioning surveys that include a good sample size i.e. several thousand people, through a third party agency, enables you to choose your own questions carefully. However, it’s always worth bearing in mind that sometimes the actual data that comes back from self-generation can conflict with your preferred narrative or be inconclusive. Take a look at our blog on generating creative digital PR ideas for ecommerce to help with your ideation process for your next data PR project.

Tips for visualising data in digital PR campaigns

How you display the data used in your PR story can sometimes make or break whether it’s picked up by your target journalists or not. It needs to be a visual format that works both for the website that will run the story and also the audience who read it. Depending on the context, you can consider formats such as:
  • Charts and graphs
  • Tables
  • Maps
  • Infographics
  • Bubble clouds
  • Text video or animation
Bear in mind that any format you send to a journalist needs to be easily implemented on their website i.e. something they can copy and paste and that won’t need any tweaks on different page widths etc. If it’s complicated to do, the chances are that they just won’t include it. Often, a simple list is enough, especially if the story is a ‘top 10’ type angle, but take a look at data stories published in the past by your key media targets to see what visualisations have been successfully used in the past to get some ideas of what could work in your context. You can also try looking at sites like Information is Beautiful for some inspiration, although complicated charts and graphs may be better suited to your story’s landing page than your PR pitch.
Source: Informationisbeautiful.net

Tips for pitching data-driven PR campaigns

The specifics of the pitch for your data story will depend on the nature and context of your story, but we’ve come up with some general tips that could help you secure more of the coverage you’re aiming for.
  • Personalise your pitch for your key target titles, especially if the contact has covered comparable data stories in the past, so they know you’ve done your homework
  • Reference the value that you feel the story will bring to the specific audience it’s aimed at – what impact will it have?
  • Don’t try to do too much with your pitch and the data. Pick the strongest angle for that audience, a few key stats and include just those, so not to confuse the message. You can always list a few other areas you have data in at the end of your pitch so that it doesn’t distract but provides more options to the recipient
  • If you have data split by region that gives strong angles, consider separate regional PR releases as well as a national or more general piece to try and maximise relevant coverage
  • Include references to where the data is from so that the recipient can assess the credibility of the stats quickly and easily
  • Don’t forget to include a link to your website. This might be to the landing page with the full data set (giving the journalist a reason to include the link).
Data can be a powerful tool in digital PR and any ecommerce marketing campaign. By incorporating data-driven PR as part of your wider PR and marketing strategy, you can boost your brand and website in more ways than one. If you’d like to include data-driven PR in your marketing strategy, we’d love to chat with you about how we can help. Use the form below to get in touch with the team.

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What ecommerce brands can expect from UK online shopping behaviour in 2023 https://www.nobraineragency.com/content/online-shopping-behaviour-in-2023/ Mon, 21 Nov 2022 10:47:04 +0000 https://www.nobraineragency.com/seo/https-www-nobraineragency-co-uk-blog-blog-uk-online-shopping-behaviour-in-2023/ Ecommerce has certainly had an interesting time of it over the last few years: A boom during the pandemic lockdowns, a steady decline since restrictions ended, huge supply chain and logistics challenges, and now soaring bills and inflation for businesses and their customers to deal with. No one can say that it’s not been eventful! […]

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Ecommerce has certainly had an interesting time of it over the last few years: A boom during the pandemic lockdowns, a steady decline since restrictions ended, huge supply chain and logistics challenges, and now soaring bills and inflation for businesses and their customers to deal with. No one can say that it’s not been eventful! We’ve taken a look at current UK shopper behaviour when buying online and what kinds of changes ecommerce brands can expect in 2023, as well as tips on how to be prepared for them!

Shoppers turn back to online purchases in the search for better value for money

Browsing and shopping online using mobile device and paying by credit card Research released as recently as August 2022 indicated that despite many people struggling with the increases in living costs, significant numbers of UK shoppers are anticipating that they’ll shop online more frequently in the future, and that 47% carry out at least one online transaction a week. The survey found that 29% of online shoppers thought it was easier to track prices online and the same percentage of respondents said that cheaper products was the driver for choosing ecommerce over visiting physical stores.

How can ecommerce brands prepare for this?

If price tracking is increasingly important for shoppers, setting up a free product feed on Google Shopping is a no-brainer if you don’t already have one so that people can find your online store when searching for products, especially if you are cheaper than some other retailers. You can also share product feeds with other comparison sites such as Pricerunner, to hopefully reach more people who might not otherwise come across your site. If you don’t currently offer free delivery, this could be another avenue to explore, with 48% of UK shoppers stating in a recent survey that free or cheaper delivery for their online purchases would help with the cost of living.

Brand loyalty can’t be taken for granted

Brand loyalty - rewards card Research from Forbes indicates that 82% of UK shoppers have swapped their usual brands for cheaper substitutes over recent months when grocery shopping, showing that brand loyalty only goes so far when budgets are increasingly stretched. Ecommerce brands outside of the food and drink sector might need to take note, especially because a recent study by DMA found that more than half of shoppers say that deals or offers make them change their minds about what brand to buy.

What action can online retailers take to prepare?

What this might mean is that many ecommerce brands will have to work a bit harder, even with existing customers, in order to get more repeat visits and sales, as well as dealing with the challenges of attracting new business. One option for retailers is to plan in lots of different deals and offers to try and tempt shoppers to spend with them rather than their usual brands. This may well be successful, but better deals for shoppers generally means slimmer margins for ecommerce brands, so a careful balance needs to be struck to make sure it’s a sustainable approach for businesses. You can also try using exclusive deals to tempt previous customers and email subscribers back through email marketing, although it’s important to consider your messaging carefully at a time when many people are really struggling financially.

Will social media play a vital role in its success?

One of the most important things to consider is the marketing of your online services/offering across social media. With more than 4.62 billion social media users globally, totalling a whopping 60% of the world’s population, there’s no question about the positive impact this could have on your ROI. The proof is in the numbers, with 77% of social media marketing experts claiming this form of marketing across key social channels (based on their own audience insights) is a “very effective” way of promoting brands and reaching their target demographic. However, building a ‘fool proof’ social media marketing strategy is all in the insights (whilst understanding the consumers needs and behaviours online) to ensure top level results. It’s estimated smaller campaigns can range from a few hundred to a few thousand pounds, while larger campaigns can require over £15,000 a month. Consider your end goal and how this might look so you can invest in the areas of marketing that will see your campaigns as the most profitable.

Shoppers value being offered flexible payment options

Purchasing with Buy Now Pay Later on mobile Research indicates that around 12% of UK adults have used Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) payment solutions in the last 12 months, and 36% of consumers say that this kind of payment option has become more appealing since inflation started to climb. However, grocery giant Iceland have recently had a mixed response to the launch of their own BNPL scheme so that shoppers can buy essentials on credit. While BNPL can be a short-term way for shoppers to spread the cost of purchasing products online, it’s something that many consumers and retailers are rightly cautious about, as with any form of credit. However, it’s not the only kind of payment flexibility that ecommerce brands can offer to their customers. Online retailers can give options such as paying for purchases via PayPal, Google Wallet or Apple Pay as well as standard debit or credit card payments.

How can ecommerce brands prepare for this?

It’s important to look at the online payment methods that you currently use and analyse how well they are meeting customer needs now, as well as considering new options – perhaps reviewing what your competition are offering? Looking at the usage stats for your existing payment types (and checkout abandonment rate, which may be payment type related) you may also want to consider surveying some of your customers or those in the right audience to get information about their preferences before you commit to new offerings, such as BNPL. It’s important that you make the right decisions for your specific audience and take into consideration the type and price point of what you sell, as this can help determine the most effective payment solutions for your business into the future.

Shoppers will do more research before making a purchase

Taking notes while researching products online - finding the cheapest The recent DMA survey indicates that 78% of UK shoppers said they would spend time researching products to get good value. Whilst this has often been the case in the past with higher ticket purchases, we can perhaps expect to see consumers making more considered transactions for even some lower value products when shopping online.

How can online retailers prepare for this?

Ecommerce brands can prepare for more consumers seeking detailed product information and USPs for their products by getting product pages and FAQ sections into shape as soon as possible. As well as following product page SEO best practices, online retailers can also include product user reviews (as well as retailer reviews) where possible, and give plenty of page space for reasons why shoppers should choose them over their competitors e.g. fast and free delivery, hassle-free returns, award-winning customer service, sustainability pledges etc. Getting all of this live as soon as possible means that you can benefit from future ecommerce SEO performance because people search for information on a product they’re considering, as well as simply delivering a more compelling pitch on your product pages. Infographic - Ecommerce shopping habits for 2023 Whether your ecommerce website sells everyday essentials or luxury items, the road ahead looks like it will have many challenges as consumers have to be more and more discerning over what they spend when shopping online. While none of us have a crystal ball, there are steps that can be taken to help stack the deck in your business’ favour as we move into 2023, by preparing as best as possible for evolving consumer behaviour at this time. If you’d like help from an experienced and award-winning marketing agency in 2023, we’d love to hear from you – so please use the form below to get in touch.

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The Best and Worst UK Black Friday Ideas & Campaigns https://www.nobraineragency.com/content/best-and-worst-uk-black-friday-campaigns/ Mon, 17 Oct 2022 15:29:00 +0000 https://www.nobraineragency.com/seo/https-www-nobraineragency-co-uk-blog-blog-best-and-worst-uk-black-friday-campaigns/ Black Friday is a somewhat divisive subject in the UK for ecommerce brands and marketing teams. For some, it’s an opportunity to grab a share of the pie with consumers that are primed and ready to buy. For others, it can feel like a mixed bag, with lots of preparation and resource going into marketing […]

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Black Friday is a somewhat divisive subject in the UK for ecommerce brands and marketing teams.

For some, it’s an opportunity to grab a share of the pie with consumers that are primed and ready to buy. For others, it can feel like a mixed bag, with lots of preparation and resource going into marketing for Black Friday and the returns don’t always seem to justify the means, especially when the discounts you offer cut margins right down. For others, it’s perhaps something they’ve tried in the past and no longer feel it’s worth the time or effort to get involved in Black Friday or Cyber Monday and some have moral objections to its very existence.

We believe that with the right Black Friday ideas, campaign planning and implementation, any ecommerce brand can achieve success during this event, and that will look different for every business.

We’ve delved into the marketing archives to find some of the best and worst examples of Black Friday campaigns in the UK recently and looked into why they did or didn’t work and what we can learn from them to take into future plans and activity.

Good Black Friday campaign examples:

IKEA (2021) – Buy-Back on Black Friday

IKEA approached Black Friday differently to most retailers in 2021. After having launched their buy-back service a few months earlier, they opted to make this a major focus for Black Friday alongside some product discounts for members.

The promotion worked by first getting an online estimate for the buy-back value of furniture, then the customer needed to take the piece(s) into one of their physical stores to actually receive vouchers for whatever they had brought in.

The Black Friday promotion added an additional 50% value to the pieces bought back by the store for a limited period of time.

Why it worked

IKEA aren’t daft! This scheme ensures that the ‘savings’ customers make by recycling their old IKEA furniture is spent only at IKEA – so it keeps the money very much in the family.

The offer was only available to IKEA members (either family members or part of their business scheme) which provided another incentive for people to join and carry on returning to the store regularly once this specific event had ended.

They also understand the value of in-store visits at IKEA, where it’s rare that people come out of their maze-like store layouts with only the item(s) they went in for! Picking up a few unplanned purchases and potentially staying for some food at the same time means that most customers probably ended up spending far more than the value of the vouchers they got for selling back their original furniture.

There are lots of positive vibes along with the shopping trip too; that good feeling you get when you recycle something, along with probably a replenished stash of meatballs and Daim Bars, make this a strong win for both the retailer and for customers.

This is a campaign that pretty much hits the mark on all levels – making customers feel good about what they’re doing, boosting sales, increasing the order value and driving future customer loyalty.

What we can learn

Not many retailers have the setup required for a scheme this big, which crosses over from online to offline shopping and also has experiential elements in order to work.

However, taking some inspiration from it could be the way to go for ecommerce brands. Prioritising sustainability and offering store vouchers in return for positive action could be a good focus for a future Black Friday campaign, as could making your biggest discounts only available to ‘members’ or subscribers which can help you secure further future revenue too from your expanded existing customer audience.

Raeburn (2021) – Buy Nothing New

London fashion studio Raeburn took a somewhat different approach to many retailers with 2021’s Black Friday campaign by not selling any new products at all. In fact, they actually disabled their online shop, handed over their bricks and mortar store to another brand for the weekend, and all the new Raeburn stock was removed from display.

Quite an unconventional approach to one of the biggest sales weekends in the calendar, but Raeburn had a strong message behind their Black Friday campaign.

They handed their store to Responsible, the second-life clothing platform and urged people to ‘Buy Nothing New’. Raeburn encouraged their customers to visit their store and buy preloved clothes from any brand to make better use of clothing already in circulation.

Why it worked (ish)

Research shows that consumers are putting more and more importance in the ethical and moral stances taken by brands when it comes to making buying decisions.

While it might mean that short-term sales don’t increase, having a loyal and motivated customer base is something that ecommerce brands highly value.

This campaign (along with previous activity on Black Fridays of the past that show this is a long-held stance) gives like-minded consumers an emotional connection to the brand – which is priceless.

Take a look at some sustainable marketing examples if you want to find out more about this area.

Raeburn has one physical store, in London, so it does mean that consumers not living locally would be unable to take part in the preloved fashion part of the campaign. So it did run the risk of perhaps slightly alienating some customers living elsewhere as they were unable to connect with the campaign in the same way. Perhaps if the brand had included more suggestions for non-local consumers to help support the effort, then it would feel more inclusive?

What we can learn

Some things are more important than short-term profits, and lots of consumers really care about shopping with brands that stand for causes that resonate with them. These customers are more likely to be loyal and even become brand advocates, which can bring its own financial results over the long-term.

But where this particular campaign perhaps fell short was that it didn’t give their full online audience an opportunity to actively stand with them (other than removing their ability to shop online).

Any brand selling online and using campaigns of this type should try to be as inclusive of their whole audience and customer base as possible, even if just providing them with some alternative things they can do to feel more a part of things if they can’t do so physically.

Bad examples of Black Friday campaigns

Pretty Little Thing (2021) – 100% off discount

Part of the often-criticised fast fashion Boohoo Group empire, Pretty Little Thing are renowned for offering rather hefty discounts on their clothing, which is already considered the value end of the market even before promotions.

In 2021, they went even further by offering up to 100% off some items. Essentially, you could shop some pieces for free, and many others with substantial savings, although there were limitations on orders and very restricted stock on most of the included lines to try and prevent reselling etc.

The campaign resulted in quite a strong backlash online, with some people accusing the brand of trivialising the effort that goes into making clothing. However, the biggest criticisms seemed to be from customers online disappointed with the small or non-existent price reductions on things they actually wanted to buy.

Why it didn’t work

Undoubtedly, some people will have felt that they bagged a bargain from PLT and were happy with the promotion. But it looks like previous Black Friday sales that were more successful in the past actually meant that a more restricted one left people disappointed this time.

Pretty Little Thing went hard on the PR for this campaign and as a result it was featured heavily in the press with the 100% off headline.

This potentially backfired on them because they didn’t have the stock levels to support demand and perhaps chose some of the wrong lines to discount, which resulted in quite a lot of negative brand sentiment online.

Will it stop their target audience buying from them again? Probably not. But it might mean they are less likely to bother staying up until midnight to check things out next Black Friday.

What we can learn

No one can claim that PLT don’t know their audience. When your target market is 18-24 years, then cheap and cheerful has long been the name of the game. But things are changing.

You don’t have to be into your 30s and upwards to have a social conscience and want to take environmental responsibility for your shopping habits. Ecommerce brands want to incentivise sales on Black Friday, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to go to extremes like PLT do.

Taking time to properly survey your customers would be a great use of time before planning a bit Black Friday campaign to make sure you hit the mark with what they are looking for, rather than just taking things further and further each year.

O2 (2017) – Social media flop

Mobile phone brand O2 are known for offering discounts every year, and they have undoubtedly got better at marketing this in recent years – but their 2017 efforts were pretty poor. Their social posts including special offers got little to no engagement and seemed to make no waves whatsoever.

Why it didn’t work

O2 used social media to inform people about offers, but failed to make any real use of these posts and, some may argue, that they didn’t even do the basics right.

They failed to include any hashtags, so anyone looking for deals on Black Friday would have to look pretty hard to stumble across their posts if they didn’t already follow the brand. The above post got a whole 4 engagements, even though the offer itself seems half decent.

There is no ‘save £XXX’ amount or a headline deal shown, and no link to the deal on the website (or anything to click at all) so people simply don’t have a reason to look further into it.

What we can learn

Having some good discounts or deals available is one thing, but how ecommerce brands communicate these is critical for a busy time like Black Friday.

Making deals as easy to find as possible is essential when all of your competitors are also running promotions, so getting the basics right, like social posts that use appropriate hashtags and include a compelling image, the facts of the deal, a link to where people can buy it and a CTA, is the very least you should be doing.

You have a limited time in which people are looking for deals like this, so it’s vital to get the important information across.

What does it mean for your next Black Friday campaign?

Whether you’re a brand that jumps into Black Friday planning like Tom Daley off a 10m dive board, or want to opt out totally because it doesn’t fit with your ethos, or anything in-between, it gives you an opportunity to say and do something that your specific audience will value and can get on board with.

That might be deciding on a themed promotion, specific lines that you’re going to discount or a freebie with every sale. It might be a series of social posts explaining why you’re not taking part and giving suggestions for customers who feel the same way. Either way, it will provide engagement points with your audience and ensure that you’re part of the online conversation at this important time.

Whatever your stance, you might want to take a look at our post on planning for peak selling season for some tips around ecommerce SEO services, UX and other website and marketing tips for making the most of seasonal sales.

Let’s talk about your next campaign

If you’d like to find out more about our approach to managing successful digital marketing campaigns, get in touch using the form below.

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The best and worst marketing campaigns of 2022 https://www.nobraineragency.com/content/best-worst-marketing-campaigns-2022/ Wed, 12 Oct 2022 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.nobraineragency.com/seo/https-www-nobraineragency-co-uk-blog-content-marketing-best-and-worst-marketing-campaigns-2022/ From the glorious triumph of the Women’s Euro to the sad passing of Queen Elizabeth II, 2022, (like most of the 2020s), has had its ups and downs. In the shadow of these historic events, any content marketing agency, and the marketing world, has been working overtime to keep up with so much breaking news […]

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From the glorious triumph of the Women’s Euro to the sad passing of Queen Elizabeth II, 2022, (like most of the 2020s), has had its ups and downs. In the shadow of these historic events, any content marketing agency, and the marketing world, has been working overtime to keep up with so much breaking news and so many trending topics. We’ve taken a look at some of the best and worst marketing campaigns of 2022.

The Good: Some of the best marketing examples in 2022

EE – “Hope United” 

EE Hope United Campaign Mobile network, EE, released their Hope United campaign back in July. The campaign, which was released in conjunction with the UEFA Women’s Football Championship, was launched to tackle online sexist hate while delivering powerful messages of perseverance and unity through visual imagery. Throughout the 90-second advertisement above, various players from the Women’s EURO football team are met with the line “That’s going to be a problem” when faced with obstacles such as gruesome physical injuries, parenting and menstruation. The campaign cleverly demonstrates the less glamorous side of everyday life as a professional female footballer and challenges social discourse surrounding gender biases. Premier League footballer, Jordan Henderson, concludes the advert with the evocative line; “Women face problems every day, but sexist hate, that’s not her problem. It’s ours”. Before a closing shot showing the men’s and women’s football teams united, the words ‘SEXIST HATE STOPS WITH MEN”. Example Hope United campaign social posts This was a large integrated campaign encompassing ATL adverts, digital PR services, and highly engaged influencers with social marketing services across channels. Using the hashtags #HopeUnited and #NotHerProblem, it generated (Sep-Oct ’22, measured via Brand Mentions):
  • 925 mentions
  • 45.7k interactions
  • 55.4k reach
  • 45k likes
  • 99% positive sentiment (909 positive mentions vs 3 negative mentions)

What can we learn from this campaign?

Rallying the public together for the common good can be powerful. It was a highly emotive campaign with strong values and clear relevance to current affairs – a real homerun for EE, but most importantly for the greater cause it was tackling.

CBP London – “Imagine”

CBP London's Imagine campaign CPB London leveraged vital data from a nationwide UK study to tackle unconscious biases – to #BreakTheBias. The study discovered that 39% of children surveyed believed that females (or Mummies) should do most of the housework, be the primary care giver for children, and that males (or Daddies) should go out to work. Creating posters and postcards that made people stop and imagine people based on their roles or behaviours – and what gender that conjured up. Ultimately this made people stop and address their own unconscious biases. Activated around International Women’s Day in 2022, the posters were placed OOH in cinemas, billboards and social platforms too. CPB went even further, to get to the root of the issue – children. By creating a colouring book that asks children to draw what they imagine, encouraging parents and caregivers to talk about gender roles and ensuring our children are aware of bias and believe in equality. The campaign generated:
  • 4.7M+ impressions
  • 250K+ engagement on social media
  • 10.28% organic engagement
International Women’s Day Campaign | Imagine from Crispin Porter Bogusky London on Vimeo.

What can we learn from this campaign?

Leveraging data in your marketing is powerful, and when used right, it can make for compelling storytelling, bringing brands into important conversations, in the right way – forcing people to stop and take notice. This campaign worked so well because it’s something we can all engage with, and learn from. It’s meaningful, bold, and compelling. When brands are considering joining a sensitive conversation, like bias and equality, or even an important cause – using data that could be useful or relevant to support it, then anchoring your campaign on that data, will make for a more meaningful, relevant and successful campaign.

Virgin Media – “We’re Better Connected – Skatergirl”

In response to the Women’s EURO 2022, empowering young women was a prevalent theme in marketing over the summer. With so many brands jumping on the gender equality bandwagon, we saw our share of predictable and lacklustre adverts with no real authentic message to bring. However, Virgin Media’s “We’re Better Connected” campaign managed to avoid the latter. The advert tells the story of Aamira, a young skater befriended by a skate crew after a day at the park doesn’t quite go as planned. The ad demonstrates how technology connects us all and leaves viewers feeling confident and satisfied with both the product and the narrative of the campaign. Inclusivity and connectivity are fundamental themes that unite us, and an ability to tap into these tactfully and uniquely proved to be a storming success for Virgin Media.

The Bad: Marketing fails of 2022

UberEats – “Uber Don’t Eats”  Door-to-door delivery services have become a staple of everyday life in the 21st century, with Just Eat, Deliveroo and UberEats reigning as the UK’s most popular. “Uber Don’t Eats” was initially launched for the Superbowl back in February 2022. The campaign featured an abundance of A-List celebrities, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Coolidge and Trevor Noah. With such an impressive selection of celebs, we would expect the advert to make us laugh and cry. However, the ad was perhaps just a little too on the nose. The premise of the campaign suggests that anything delivered by UberEats is, by definition, edible. Without hesitation, the featured celebrities proceed to consume various household items, including aluminium foil, cat litter, washing-up liquid, deodorant, sun cream and more. Twitter users were both amused and disgusted by the campaign. The advert, while intended as light-hearted humour, was perceived by many as cringe-worthy nonsense, and was even considered to promote dangerous messages of harmful ingestion, leaving US authorities urging viewers to “not eat soap”. With a gleaming repertoire of Hollywood celebs lending their time to the campaign, arguably much more could have been achieved to create brand awareness. On this occasion, UberEats may have benefitted from thinking beyond the obvious.

OVO Energy – “Cuddle Your Pet”

One of Britain’s largest energy suppliers was forced to issue an apology earlier in the year after launching a tactless campaign that intended to combat the cost-of-living crisis. In January 2022, OVO Energy advised customers to eat porridge, cuddle pets and do star jumps in an attempt to keep warm and keep living costs to a minimum. Of course, these ‘solutions’, for lack of a better word, were not at all viable and left many viewers questioning whether or not the campaign was genuine. We don’t have to tell you that leaving your target audience debating whether a media campaign is serious, or a joke, is an immediate flop for the brand that created it. After overwhelming national criticism, OVO Energy later issued a public apology for the insensitive and unrealistic suggestions, with one spokesperson claiming to be “embarrassed” by the supplier’s advice.

THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY

LinkedIn – “Follow in Her Footsteps” 

The “Follow in Her Footsteps” campaign, created by LinkedIn, promotes messages of visibility for female professionals and role models. Though the heart was in the right place and this definitely wasn’t one of the worst marketing ideas ever, the narrative of the advert comes across as an underpinned afterthought. The advert follows Carol Thomas BEM, the first captain of the UEFA Women’s EURO in 1984, as she embarks on a historical 30-mile walk from Gresty Road Stadium in Crewe to Old Trafford stadium in Manchester. Unfortunately, the advert does not show any footage of Carol’s excursion, despite having a 60-second airtime window. More bizarrely, the advert encourages viewers to ‘Follow Carol’s journey’ but does not however provide any details of where or how interested football fans may do so. This feels like an extravagant concept for a campaign, (particularly for Carol Thomas having walked 30 miles), to receive virtually no screen time. Showing highlights of the journey would have acted as a hook to capture the interest of viewers and encourage them to further research Carol’s journey elsewhere. Instead, the campaign solely relies on viewers being interested enough to want to research Carol’s journey on their own accord, without the bait to lure us in. Given the incredibly powerful and emotive media campaigns centred around women’s football and gender equality at the time, this campaign from LinkedIn was a bit of a bust.

Our thoughts…

We’ve chosen what we think are some of the worst and best marketing campaigns in 2022. Following the major sporting events of the year, this summer has seen predominant themes of gender equality, empowerment, and unity. These themes, if implemented correctly, can be fantastic marketing tools to execute for any media campaign, as broadcasting to a more inclusive demographic will only broaden your target audience and ultimately market your product or service to a wider variety of people. As seen with UberEats, the most effective concept for a marketing campaign usually stretches beyond idea number one, and companies would benefit from thinking past the obvious choice. Creating an out-of-the-box advert is much more likely to leave a lasting impression on your target audience. Any advertising campaign that may cause possible offence or promote harmful ideas should be avoided at all costs. If you’d like to discuss your next marketing campaign, contact us using the form below!

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How to optimise your website for increased Christmas sales https://www.nobraineragency.com/content/how-to-optimise-website-for-increased-christmas-sales/ Mon, 10 Oct 2022 03:14:00 +0000 https://www.nobraineragency.com/seo/https-www-nobraineragency-co-uk-blog-content-marketing-how-to-optimise-your-website-for-increased-christmas-sales/ I’m not usually one to start talking about Christmas before autumn has properly arrived, but Christmas is a key time for ecommerce brands – after all, it can be make or break for a number of websites, and in some cases just one month can be over 50% of some companies’ yearly revenue. If you […]

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I’m not usually one to start talking about Christmas before autumn has properly arrived, but Christmas is a key time for ecommerce brands – after all, it can be make or break for a number of websites, and in some cases just one month can be over 50% of some companies’ yearly revenue.

If you think your website is ‘Christmas ready’, you may need to think again. From my experience in technical SEO, you wouldn’t believe the issues I find across a number of sites – even the biggest of brands with huge digital budgets have SEO/UX issues.

Let’s dive in to how you can optimise your website for increased Christmas sales…

Discover new products to sell

This is by far the least obvious thing on my list, which is why I’m putting it right at the start. If you’re in a competitive market, the best thing you can do is branch out and create multiple categories for all the products that people are searching for at Christmas.

People’s search habits change drastically during the festive season, with ‘Christmas’ becoming a core focus of their search, even when looking for mundane, typically everyday goods like new dining cutlery and accessories, household lights and clothing.

There’s five first key points to our first task:

  • Research the search volumes and trends of last year’s top selling products
  • Create your Christmas categories, sub categories and product pages
  • Optimise these pages for your primary and secondary keywords
  • Indexing isn’t immediate, get these pages live ASAP to get ahead of the competition

Fix your website speed

Brands large and small are STILL falling into the trap of not truely optimising their website speed. Pagespeed isn’t just a ranking signal, it’s an important aspect of the customer journey; influencing whether they’ll stay on your site and if they’ll convert, but it can also impact how much they’ll spend.

Walmart saw up to a 2% increase in conversions for every 1 second of improvement in load time. Every 100ms improvement also resulted in up to a 1% increase in revenue.

It’s important to check the speed of every page on your site, not just the homepage. Check each category page, product pages and even your blog/news articles; people will drop out at all stages of the journey if your website is slow.

If you’re still not convinced pagespeed is important, here’s a great read on why pagespeed is important by our Head of SEO, Laura Rudd.

Identify upselling opportunities

There are three main places that you can upsell to customers:

  1. The product Page is always a good start, making it easy for people to find similar products to the one they’re currently viewing, with a quick and easy ‘add to cart’ (or basket) button – with the ability to add additional related items to basket, without leaving their current page.
  2. In the cart/basket can be another great place to upsell products. Pro tip: use different products than what you tried to upsell on the previous product page.
  3. In the purchase journey – It’s never too late to promote an upsell, just try and focus on the smaller items in the cart, the things people really need at Christmas and always forget. If you sell gift items, think wrapping paper and wrapping tape. If you’re a clothing retailer, why not think accessories like scarves, hats and gloves?

Add product reviews to boost conversion rates

It’s never too late to generate reviews, especially if they’re product reviews. Ann Summers saw up to a 230% increase in product sales from adding Trustpilot reviews to their website. In fact, even products with just 1 star saw an increase in conversion rate over products which hadn’t yet been rated.

Reference: Trustpilot.com

Ann summers product reviews

Looking at the graph below, we can see that the lowest conversion rate observed was 1.44% on products without any reviews. Once reviews were added, this increased drastically to 2.54% for products with a 1 star rating.

Product rating impact on conversion rate

Reference: Trustpilot.com

Enable stock notifications and manage out of stock product pages

Christmas is a fluid time of year. You don’t want to purchase too much stock in fear that you won’t sell all of it; purchase too little and you run the risk of selling out too quickly. It’s not always possible to increase your stock count at the last minute, but if you do, it’s important to alert people about the increase in stock availability.

By giving people the option to sign up to stock notifications, not only do you get the chance to inform them of stock updates, but you can start to gain a picture of which products are the most popular and which products people want to see restocked.

This also gives you the opportunity to increase users to your email lists for general marketing later down the line, providing they opt in for this, of course.

When a product sells out, don’t take it off your store. Removing a product from your store altogether can reduce the amount of traffic you get through your website. A product page could be a great source of traffic to your site and even if the product is out of stock, that page can be used as a springboard for users to enter a different part of your site and make an alternative purchase.

Talk to us about your ecommerce marketing strategy

If you’d like any help with your ecommerce SEO strategy, our team would love to hear from you. Use the form below to get in touch.

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