March 27, 2023
Our Digital PR team built 77 links and brand mentions in 10 weeks, by simply pivoting our campaigns – here’s how:
Pivoting digital PR campaigns has been a very fruitful link building method for the NORTH team over the last few years, but since the start of 2023 we’ve ramped up our efforts even further. Now, we treat pivoting as its own digital PR tactic within our SEO services, rather than something to fall back on when a campaign doesn’t get the results we hoped for. That way, we’re able to get even more out of our campaigns, no matter how successful they were originally.
As a result we’ve got some fantastic links and brand mentions, supporting the overall objective of boosting SEO and increasing brand awareness for our clients.
Pivoting a campaign for digital PR is pretty simple. It doesn’t require a lot of time or budget and if done properly, it can get results with just a few extra hours of work.
Pivoting is the art of updating a part of the campaign, such as the data, pulling out a different angle or hooking the campaign onto something new that’s getting traction in the news cycle and re-outreaching it out to journalists.
Because digital PRs create multiple campaigns throughout the year, it’s easy to forget about them once launched and reported on – especially those that perform well. But, you can’t pivot a campaign if it’s been forgotten about.
Create a simple campaign catalogue that’s easily accessible by everyone in the outreach team. Ensure that each campaign listed has a brief summary, the date it was originally outreached and the headline. Also, make sure the data or visuals used for the campaign are easily accessible. Ensure outreach teams are re-visiting the catalogue regularly and cross referencing during reactive or news jacking meetings.
When creating and outreaching a campaign you’re excited about, it’s easy to include everything in the first press release and initial round of outreach. But when creating a campaign, especially a data-led campaign, it’s important not to include every single data set.
Firstly, bombarding a journalist with figures can be confusing and dilute the story you are telling. Secondly, having extra data in your back pocket to use next time around gives you two campaigns for the price of one! Whether it’s a survey or search data – ring fence one or two pieces of data for the pivot – you’ll be grateful when your pivot outperforms the original campaign!
Creating content based on awareness days and in reaction to the news agenda is an effective way to get results to put your brand at the centre of topical discussion. But, creating timely content is best used for reactive campaigns.
When it comes to a bigger budget creative campaign, ensuring they are evergreen results in more pivot opportunities and more chances to push the keywords the campaign has been built around up the SERPs.
At the ideation stage, ask yourself – will this campaign make sense in a year OR can I push this campaign out this time next year? If you can’t, this idea is best for a reactive op.
When pivoting a campaign, one of the most effective ways to pivot is to create different angles for different audiences. For example, if creating a campaign which looks at the best cities to visit based on restaurant reviews i.e.
“The best cities to visit if you’re a foodie”
You could launch the initial campaign and then pivot it with more detailed data from your data collection based on the following key audiences:
“The best cities to visit if you’re a veggie”
“The best cities to visit if you’re gluten free”
“The best cities to visit if you’re pescatarian”
These different key audiences will have different media outlets targeted to them which widens your outreach list significantly. Pivoting a campaign opens you up to lots more outreach opportunities and the more niche your pivot is – the more titles you can create tailored outreach emails for.
After you have launched a creative campaign it’s important to keep an eye on any news related to this campaign in order to identify pivot opportunities. For example, if you launch a campaign based on ‘The best pumpkin patches to visit in the UK’, set up alerts based on this campaign in a tracker such as Google Alerts. Set up alerts for phrases such as:
“Pumpkin patches UK”
“Family days out in October”
“Things to do this Halloween”
As soon as you see similar stories trending, you can revisit your campaign, refresh it with new data and re-outreach.
One of the best ways to pivot a campaign is to re-outreach it when the topic of your campaign is trending, and make this fact the news hook.
For example, if you’re a fashion brand and create a campaign based on a specific theme or idea such as:
“How wearing yellow can improve your mood according to experts”
It’s essential to keep a close eye on when the key element of this campaign, in this instance ‘yellow clothes’ is trending. Keep this campaign in mind every day, using the aforementioned campaign catalogue, and use tools such as Google Trends, your sites Google Analytics, Pinterest, TikTok to monitor if ‘yellow fashion’ is trending.
If a member of the Royal Family is seen wearing yellow, this often creates a surge in Google searches – the campaign can then be pivoted based on this data:
“Kate Middleton’s new coat leads to a surge in searches for ‘yellow fashion’ and according to experts, it can boost your mood.”
For more tips and tricks on Digital PR, content and SEO, check out the rest of the NORTH blog and our latest case studies.
