Between January and May 2024, our targeted digital PR work for leading global financial technology company, SumUp, secured 235 high-quality placements across six markets, with an average DA of 54. This approach boosted SumUp’s organic visibility and drove significant brand growth, cementing their position as the trusted partner for small businesses globally.
Placements between January 2024 to May 2024
Average DA
SumUp came to us with a brief to create campaigns that would not only achieve authoritative backlinks from relevant, new domains, but also wanted to increase brand awareness across multiple target markets through top-tier coverage. The main goal was to highlight their expertise and product offerings, to stand out as the go-to for supporting small businesses, whether this is as an already established business, or someone who is just starting out.
We developed a strategy that would resonate across six target territories: France, Germany, Switzerland, UK, Ireland, and the US, consistently aligning with SumUp’s primary focus on small businesses. Recognising the necessity of this, we prioritised the inclusion of regional data wherever feasible, and leveraged current news trends specific to each country.
With this strategic mindset, we tailored an adaptable approach that allowed us to swiftly respond to media trends in various regions. This led us to replicate similar, yet relevant campaigns tailored to each country’s media landscape.
We took a three-tiered approach to our digital PR strategy, with a larger focus on planned campaigns, proactive reangles to suit the news agenda, and reactive PR, especially in Germany whereby we responded to seasonal news trends for events such as Easter.
Our US, UK and European team collaborated on the campaign ideas, and conducted extensive research to understand the audience interests of each target market, the media landscape, and upcoming events to ensure relevancy. Based on our insights we formed cross-market campaigns, making one idea work for multiple locations.
With seasonal events for specific regions in Germany also being super relevant at the time, we also created campaigns specifically suited for the German market.
We supported each campaign with informative blog posts in the native language, and hosted these on the relevant SumUp domain. For press outreach, we created various reangles to fit different regions within each country, and various industry niches to reach our target audience.
With our knowledge of each market and our in-house experts and native speakers, we were able to drive backlinks to SumUp’s site and supporting blog content, which further increased organic visibility and traffic.
With SumUp’s key target audience being small businesses, we looked at the best cities for independent businesses in France, the UK, and Ireland.
From previous learnings, we knew that regional angles perform well, so we created angles based on the information we had for each city. For example, “X is the best city in France for independent businesses”, focusing on local results, which landed results in well-known publications, such as the Irish Examiner, The Independent, and Le Bonbon France.
As we collected data on a wide range of industries, we were also able to target industry-specific publications focusing on the relevant results, for example: “X is the best city for beauty salons”, which led to high-quality links in niche business publications.
Staycations can have a significant impact on the footfall within a city, so more tourists can result in a higher turnover for local businesses. With this in mind, we wanted to find out which cities in the US, Germany, Switzerland, France, the UK, and Ireland offer the most to tourists travelling on a budget, and what businesses can do to make their store stand out. Again, we collected hyperlocal data across all six countries, which immediately gave us a good starting point with local press.
Following reports of rising chocolate prices at the time, we investigated the effect of this on Easter bunny prices, in time for Easter. With this reactive approach, we secured relevant and unique backlinks in major German publications, such as Bild.de and Chip.de.
With confectionary stores and chocolatiers likely to see an increase in cost, they may see the need to up their prices, which could influence consumer behaviour, having an overall effect on sales and revenue for small businesses in the sector.
Placements between January 2024 to May 2024
“Working with C3 on our influencer campaign was a seamless experience, even when we faced challenges along the way. Their excellent selection of influencers aligned perfectly with our brand, and their proactive support ensured we overcame obstacles smoothly. Thanks to their strategic approach and dedication, we overachieved our KPIs and delivered outstanding results!”
Arsenia Nikolaeva
Global Head of External Communications at SumUp
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