April 14, 2022
As a Senior Manager at a content performance and digital PR agency, there are few things better than watching your team secure results in their dream publications.
Without sounding too much like a fossil, seeing the team secure links in the likes of Women’s Health, Metro, The Mirror and yes, even Stylist reminds me of the buzz I used to get when the majority of my day was spent outreaching and I saw my client’s name flash up in my favourite publication.
March was an incredible month for the team at NORTH, collectively the team built 169 links for our clients across national, lifestyle, regional and international online titles. Whilst the numbers are impressive, the work that went into securing these results is even more so.
Digital PR is having a ‘moment’ right now, the buzz that followed the boom of digital PR a few years ago hasn’t really gone away, and because of this it’s a really exciting industry to work in, but though the buzz hasn’t died down – this comes hand in hand with building links becoming more and more difficult, with more agencies than ever before all trying to do the same thing. But this challenge is definitely something the digital PR team here at NORTH thrive on.
Yes it’s getting trickier, but we are thinking more tactically than ever before and it shows in our results. With 169 links on publications with an average DA of 58 built in March alone, the team well and truly smashed it last month. I’m a huge believer in reflecting and looking back on our successes and, equally importantly, our failures. Learning what we can repeat and what we can avoid next time. For March there isn’t really much to avoid! But so much to build on as we continue through the year.
My favourite March campaigns and the lessons we learnt from these:
Bedtime stories and pivoting
In March we secured 30 links in the likes of Wales Online, Belfast Live and Essex Live for our bed client’s campaign on the most-loved children’s bedtime stories campaign that we outreached earlier in the year. We didn’t get the results we expected or wanted when we first pitched the campaign but when we saw the awareness day, World Book Day approaching we knew it was the perfect time to pivot and re-pitch and this time we nailed it! Keeping up to date with awareness day and always reminding yourself of the relevant campaigns you have tucked away in your locker is a fantastic way of adding oxygen to a campaign and securing the results it deserves.
Ready, steady, journo request!
Us NORTHies, as we like to call ourselves here at NORTH, pride ourselves in being fully immersed in our clients. When we first start working with a new client we make sure we know them inside out, so that when a perfect #journorequest comes up for our client, we can jump on it. This example is no exception. When the team spotted a #journorequest looking for comment on the latest 12-3-30 workout, we knew our wellness and supplement client had the authority and experience to comment on this, so we did and secured a stunning link in Women’s Health as a result. When it comes to a journo request, speed is paramount, by knowing our clients like the back of our hands we can jump on any relevant opportunities we see and put our client forward for comment, before their competitors do.
Stunning data gets stunning results
As I mentioned earlier, digital PR is getting tricker, with more agencies than ever before all offering the BEST tactics to secure results for their clients. Here at NORTH we love fresh and juicy data. With such a wide range of clients on our roster we have so much data to dig through and unearth PR gems from each month. In March, the team looked into data around the weirdest sounds people listen to as they fall asleep for our bed client’s snore campaign. Boy, the data did not disappoint! Aeroplane cabins, brushes, whispering and **ahem** massage sounds – these are the sounds us Brits love to listen to, to drown out the noise of their partners snoring. With wild data like this, of course journalists lapped it up. This campaign secured links in the likes of Huffington Post, The Sun and Yahoo. A reminder that when it comes to data, if you unearth something interesting you want to tell someone at the pub about, it’s more than likely a journalist will want to write about it.
For more insight into the tactics we use here at NORTH to secure links read The Power of Pivoting, Three ways to use digital PR to improve E-A-T and our latest thread on the power of TikTok reactive campaigns.