The PR landscape is constantly evolving, making it essential to stay on top of marketing trends, SEO considerations and algorithm updates, and the specific sector relevant to your brand or your clients.

Your digital PR strategy should always be challenged and open to scrutiny and adaptation in response to shifts in the media and the wider industry. Even if your current digital PR approach is delivering strong results, scheduling quarterly strategy reviews can help you navigate the fast-changing world of PR.

As you look ahead to 2025, take time to reflect on what has worked well – and what hasn’t – over the past year, this should be the focus of your strategy planning. Ask yourself why certain tactics fell short and what factors contributed to the success (or lack thereof) of others. Have there been changes in how journalists create content? What was your most successful tactic? These are the kinds of questions that can refine and future-proof your approach.

So, where should you start?

Reintroduce yourself to your target media

Journalists often move roles or publications, so keeping your media lists updated with the most relevant contacts is essential. This ensures your pitches and press releases reach the right people and maximise their impact. Regularly reviewing and refreshing these lists can save time and boost the effectiveness of your outreach efforts.

It’s equally important to reassess your brand’s positioning, the experts you collaborate with, and the topics you cover. These may have evolved over time, so providing a clear, updated overview helps journalists understand how you fit into their stories in the new year. A concise yet compelling summary can set you apart from competitors and strengthen your media relationships.

Focus on seasonal trends that align with your brand and ditch the others

If your seasonal, trend-led content has been falling flat, consider focusing on evergreen content instead. This type of content remains relevant year-round, providing consistent value and appeal over time. It’s a great way to build long-term engagement and strengthen your brand’s presence.

If you have content that has performed well in the past, it’s worth updating it, especially if it’s a topic that tends to get picked up annually. For example, if you work in the beauty industry you will find success with end of year content such as “the biggest beauty trends of the year” or seasonal skincare tips and tricks, particularly when tied to forecasts of extreme cold or heat, aligning with timely press trends and consumer needs. Timing is crucial as popular subjects will likely attract competition, so aim to pitch early to secure coverage.

If trends align well with your brand, you can explore fresh, trend-led ideas but ensure you stand out from the crowd. Identify seasonal events that are relevant and resonate strongly with your audience and tailor your content accordingly, for example interior brands can focus on refreshing your home and ‘spring cleaning’ when Spring is approaching. To spark creativity, plan a fun brainstorming session – a collaborative approach can inspire innovative ideas and give your campaigns a unique edge.

For example, getting the team together in person in a new environment is a simple yet effective way to spark creativity. If the weather permits, plan an outdoor brainstorm or walking discussion.

Use events, experiences and creative campaigns to support your digital PR strategy

Integrating your digital PR efforts with things like events, experiences and creative campaigns can elevate your strategy. According to Brandwatch, over 60% of marketers predict that bold, creative live experiences will be a defining trend in 2025. Events like pop-up shops or exclusive workout classes can generate excitement, scarcity and urgency, making them ideal for social media buzz.

These visually engaging, interactive activations encourage user-generated content (UGC), with features like 360-spin selfie booths or Instagram-worthy settings that are hard to resist. Don’t work in silos, collaborate with your social and influencer teams to maximise impact.

You can leverage their successful campaigns to inform your PR strategy, and if influencers have interviews or content commitments in their contracts, use these opportunities to align and integrate efforts. In the fashion industry, brands like Gymshark amplify their reach by featuring testimonials and workout tips from fitness influencers, seamlessly blending UGC with their campaigns. Sharing these insights across teams can uncover new angles, amplify reach, and create cohesive, high-performing campaigns that resonate with audiences.

However, executing these ideas requires buy-in from internal teams/clients who have the capacity and vision for larger-scale campaigns. When feasible, they can bridge the gap between offline and online engagement, amplifying brand visibility and impact.

Want to chat about refreshing your PR strategy in 2025? Drop us an email today.

There’s often a lack of understanding around the importance of creative briefs. You’ll sometimes find, particularly in agencies, that there’s a limited relationship between the people creating the product and the people who manage the marketing. Messages become skewed and unnecessary problems arise.

A clear and concise creative brief can be fundamental to avoiding these issues and the success of a campaign; more often than not, without a brief, your design team could experience a total lack of insight into the message being put across and the audience being spoken to, or lack knowledge of the things that have and haven’t worked well in past campaigns.

A poor brief can waste valuable time and money, which, when working in a fast-paced agency, is something you need to be avoiding wherever possible.

Developing an effective creative brief template might seem daunting, and to some people pointless at first, but once a brief has been perfected, it serves as the bedrock for a never-ending reward of successful campaigns over and over again.

What is a creative brief?

A creative brief is a document that ensures everyone has the same understanding of a campaign’s ultimate goals. It ensures all involved are on the same page about the brand in question, their competitors, their audiences, what their behaviours are, and most importantly, what the key message for the campaign is and how it’s going to be achieved.

Having knowledge of all this allows everyone involved to come together to deliver the best possible cohesion between marketing strategy and creative execution, and create something really impactful.

How to write a creative brief

A good place to start when constructing a creative brief is building a template. This template can be used as the starting point for all future briefs, making the process simple and easy by prompting the creator of the document to gather all necessary materials to ensure designers have all the things they need.

For example, is the designer equipped with all the correct and up-to-date brand guidelines, asset copy, and data they need to create your digital PR campaign assets? This will change depending on the type of campaign you’re running, especially if they’re designing for social media, so you should ensure that all required materials are attached alongside the brief.

Secondly, clear communication is key when constructing a creative brief. The brief need to get across the objectives of the campaign and what the end goal is, so you should include detail about each specific design asset. This doesn’t mean writing lengthy paragraphs of information copied and pasted from ‘brand guidelines’ or ‘tone of voice’ documents, though; bullet points covering the fundamental facts and insight will do just fine. It is called a brief after all.

Other things you might want to add to a creative brief template include:

• Ideas or images from previous campaigns that you think will really help to portray what you are trying to get across to the designers.
• Anything else that you think might help the designers take the information provided and come up with the best possible creative solution.

Creative brief examples

If you’re unsure how to construct your first brief, seeking inspiration from similar creative briefs can really help to get you going. So put in some time to see what other people are doing with similar campaigns.

Whether it’s the concept, the layout, the functionality, the styling, the colours, the icons, or the UX, you can use other creative brief examples to help you work out what to include in your own.

And if you like something, add it in via a link; “Here is a link to a cool campaign I have seen. I like *this*, *this*, and *this*, and I think something similar could work really well for our campaign”. This doesn’t mean you’re asking the designer to copy it colour by colour; it simply provides context to your way of thinking in a more visual manner. Websites such as Dribbble, Designspiration, and Awwwards can be a great starting point for visual research.

Another very simple-yet-effective way of getting ideas across is through sketches. These can be as basic as stickmen or scribbles, but, if you’re struggling to explain your visions, sketch it, scan it, annotate it, and attach it to your brief. All of these tasks are simple but extremely effective in guiding your designer.

The process of learning how to write a creative brief is also a great way of identifying the things that you may not know, pushing you to do more research to fill the gaps and create a better campaign.

Ultimately, a great brief will go a long way in aiding your creative processes again and again. To ensure you can confidently hand over a creative brief, always remember to ask yourself this:

• Do is it include everything your designer need to be able to go away and generate the vision that you have in mind?
• Does your designer understand what the key messages are, and do they know exactly who they should be creating for?

Answering yes to these questions is vital, and will help you to reap the rewards of an exceptional campaign.

If you’re interested in seeing some of our own successful creative campaigns, why not look through some of the client work we’ve done. And if you want more insight into the world of content marketing, digital PR, and SEO, check out what our experts have to say over on the connective3 blog.

Germany is so much more than just Bundesliga and cars. With vibrant cities like Munich and Berlin, as well as beautiful landscapes along the alpine and black forest region, the country offers a wide range of opportunities to jump on for your Digital PR campaigns.

Know your newsjacking opportunities

Similar to most European countries, awareness days as we know them in the UK and US are rarely heard of. There are however a few important ones for your diaries which we’ve highlighted below. Religious celebrations play a much bigger role, although people leaving the church community was at a record high¹ in 2021.

During all bank holidays and Sundays, it’s important to note that in Germany, people aren’t allowed to mow their lawn or have loud renovation work done and most shops will be closed, apart from a small number of supermarkets with reduced opening hours.

The main days to keep in mind for your Digital PR campaigns are:

Ostermontag (Easter Monday)

One of the most popular bank holidays to celebrate the end of fast, with people focusing on getting together with their family, having a typical Easter brunch and don’t forget the Easter egg hunt! The preparation leading up to Easter is often based around family activities such as Easter egg painting or planning a trip away for the long weekend.

The Easter period is great for any campaigns around family and food. If the weather forecast is looking good, then this is a good time to start outreaching outdoorsy campaigns, such as Ikea’s Seedballs campaign. You can make use of people’s time off work during this period to motivate them to spend time improving their garden or maybe simply having a picnic at a nearby park!

Weihnachten (Christmas) – 24^th December

Alongside many northern European countries, Christmas is celebrated on the 24^th of December, not the 25^th. Presents are typically opened in the evening of the 24^th, with most families having a simple meal, such as sausages and potato salad, traditionally to remember the sparse meal Mary and Joseph would have had. The two days after most families will then have a beautiful traditional roast. Offices are usually closed between Christmas and the new year.

The lead up to Christmas is used for all types of campaigns and the period after Christmas is often disregarded with the thought that people have simply consumed too much over the past few weeks, however, this does not have to be true! With a lot of people spending large amounts of money during the Christmas period, the time before and after Christmas can be ideal to run campaigns on finance and money-saving tips as well as tips on how to track spending can work a treat.

International Women’s Day

This is one of the few awareness days widely celebrated all over Germany and in Berlin this is even an official bank holiday. Gender inequality is a huge topic in Germany with people all over the country using this day to raise awareness, which can be used to get people to talk about your brand. One brilliant campaign that looked at gender stereotypes was “Wir haben nie gesagt, dass es einfach ist” (English: We never said it was easy) by Hornbach, a German home improvement store.

Summer Holidays

The summer holidays differentiate between the 16 federal states to ensure not everyone is off school at the same time, but all Bundesländer will have around six weeks off school. Often families will plan a longer holiday, teens may go on so-called “Zeltlager” trips, where a large group goes camping, usually accompanied by younger adults who will plan their activities and tasks.

This is the perfect time to run campaigns on outdoor-related topics, kids’ activities, and travel. Deutsche Bahn ran a campaign (“Spar dir den Flug”) comparing different famous landmarks from all over the world with similar-looking spots in Germany, comparing the train fares to the cost of flying abroad.

Oktoberfest

Last but not least, Oktoberfest! Although primarily celebrated in Bavaria, most other parts of Germany have taken on the tradition and even in smaller towns, you’ll find Oktoberfest celebrations. But don’t be fooled, even though the name indicates it may be in October, it’s actually celebrated in September.

Oktoberfest can be used for different types of campaigns – anything garden or party related and even travel. You could for example share tips on how to prepare your own Oktoberfest at home for friends and family.

How to contact journalists

Now that you know which days you want to use for your upcoming PR activities, it’s time to look at how best to reach out to German press. Getting in contact with people in Germany is much more formal compared to the UK, especially if you haven’t been in contact with the person before. Don’t ask how someone is doing or how their day has been, it’s often seen as too invasive and therefore rude.

Most people still prefer being approached as Mr or Mrs and it’s important to think about what type of topic you’re looking to cover – if it’s a serious one you should consider using a more formal way to approach someone. In-person or even in an email, you may ask a person if they’re happy for you to use their first name instead of last, but don’t be discouraged if they say no – it’s simply a formality.

When you’re contacting someone ensure to mention why you’re contacting them and often it’s best to explain in what way they can help, rather than simply sending over a press release or comment. The more clarity the better. Also, don’t hesitate to contact outlets and ask for the best person to get in touch with, most journalists will be happy to redirect you.

You’re now ready to start your PR campaign in Germany – happy link building and viel Erfolg!

For more digital PR tips head over to our blog and you can find out about connective3’s international growth here.

Sources

• https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/kirchenaustritte-129.html#:~:text=4145%20Kirchenaustritte%20bedeuten%20einen%20neuen,2020%20waren%20es%20insgesamt%202809.

As our media landscapes rapidly evolve to keep up with the volume and breadth of information being shared around the world, organisations are trying to find new ways to keep their audience engaged and attract new ones.

Understanding the media ecosystem of the countries you want to target with campaigns is vital to international PR teams, as without this information you may find campaigns that you thought would take off remaining grounded.

Our series on the different media landscapes you might encounter is designed to help you get a clearer picture of the angles you should be taking in different countries, the media targets to keep in range, and the major players you should keep on your radar.

An overview of the media landscape in Germany

With a population of 83 million people, Germany is one of the top 10 largest countries in Europe. And with German speakers in Austria, Switzerland, parts of Belgium, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg, German media extends even beyond the borders of Germany itself.

German history has played a huge part in how the media landscape has formed. Until 1990, the country was divided into East and West Germany, each with its own media outlets. The Eastern German media was tightly controlled until the country was unified, under which the broadcasting system became centralised.

As a result, Germany’s media ecosystem remains one of the most traditional in Europe, with most of the country’s media trust being held by newspapers and radio. In 2021, 69% of Germans were using TV as their main source of news, however, online media, including social media, is quickly catching up to this, with a 13% rise in popularity since 2016.

The five most popular online news sites in Germany include:

1. ARD News online (Tagesschau is the name of their news show broadcasted several times a day)
2. Spiegel online
3. t-online
4. Focus online
5. n-tv.de

Internet coverage is 96% across the country, meaning that the vast majority of the country has access to these platforms. The most popular device to access the news is mobile phones (61%), followed by computers and laptops (49%). But how much trust do the German population put in their media outlets, either traditional or online?

Trust in the media

Over half of the people in Germany consuming news (53%) claim to trust the news that they consume. The highest trust rate for the media lies in their public service broadcasters (PSBs) and local news outlets, such as ‘ARD Tagesschau’ (70%) and ‘ZDF Heute (68%).

The most well-known ‘yellow press’ or tabloid newspaper, ‘Bild’, on the other hand, only has a trust rating of 19% from the German public. In fact, between 2013 and 2021, print media lost 40% of readers, but 26% of those interested in the news still rely on print.

A lot of this decline could be due to the rise in interest in social media as a news outlet, specifically amongst the youth of the population. The country has over 28 million active social media accounts, meaning there is a penetration of 35% of the population through this route.

As a result, PSMs have tried to keep up with the growing interest by making their content accessible through multiple social media platforms, including Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. (1)

How to create a successful international campaign in Germany

Now that we have a better view of the lay of the land, it’s time to take a look at how we would recommend preparing an international PR campaign for the German market.

Preparation

Failing to prepare is preparing to fail, especially when it comes to international PR campaigns. Before starting your outreach, it’s really important to ensure that you know that your campaign is going to be successful when you outreach, and that means doing some research and preparation beforehand.

You will need to know:

• What topics have been covered by the news and what have people been interested in – you can do this with trending topic tools like Buzzsumo. Using the feeds option, you can select Germany and find the topics that fit best with your upcoming campaigns.
• You can also use keyword research to find out what searches are prevalent in Germany currently – make sure to do this with translated keywords! Ask someone who is fluent in German (Twitter can be a huge help for finding freelancers/a generous helper!) or use online dictionaries such as linguee or leo.org
• What your competitors have been up to in Germany – scan backlinks that competitors have generated and see what content has performed well.
• Think outside the box – you may have to get a bit more creative to find topics that will generate the results you’re looking for, as certain content may perform much better culturally in the UK than it would in Germany.

Now that you have an idea of what to look out for and you’ve got a solid base of ideas and concepts, you can begin to build out your campaign further.

Picking the right tone and topic for your brand

Whether it’s for one of your clients or your own brand that you’d like to introduce in Germany, picking the right tone is vital to ensuring that a campaign lands well in a country that you may be less familiar with.

Culturally, there are formal and informal ways to address people in Germany, so making sure that you find the culturally correct form of address will be essential. Speak to your team to find out if a more formal approach would be better suitable for your topic.

For example, if you’re covering finance or business-related topics, consider using the address ‘höfliche Anrede’. To address someone directly when using more formal speech, you’d use ‘Sehr geehrte/r Frau/Herr (last name)’ or ‘Guten Tag Herr/Frau (last name)’. That translates to ‘Dear Mr/Mrs…’  Using correct terminology in your content, is essential. If you are using a translator, include this in your brief.

In general, Germans are more interested in more serious topics or topics that they can personally relate to, such as finance and business, current and traditional lifestyle topics, and particularly sustainability. Here are some angles you could consider:

• Finance and business: consider a topic surrounding personal finance and keep up to date with the news – maybe a new law has been put into place and you have an expert who could comment.
• Lifestyle: Think about tips that are relevant to Germans, make sure you’re aware of traditions and look out for any newsworthy awareness days – as long as they apply to Germany! A ‘fluffier’ topic may not perform as well as a topic Germans can relate to – campaigns like tips on where to travel to in Germany or the most visited tourist hotspots in Germany are less likely to land for example.
• Sustainability: This is a great topic to pick up, using the seasons for different angles on how to be more sustainable in day-to-day life, sustainable travel, or maybe for tips on how to raise a child more sustainably.

Reaching the right journalists

Finding the correct journalists can be critical to your international campaigns. Finding exactly the right journalist will help your campaign and content to land in exactly the right inbox, so doing the research beforehand will help you immensely.

Don’t shy away from emailing or even calling one journalist from a certain publication and asking for the contact details of the person who may be interested in your content! If you’re not sure what publications to reach out to, see who has previously covered similar topics.

A little tip – if you’re not located in Germany, change your location in your Google setting and more relevant results will show in your search feed.

Finally, find creative ways to include your statistics from your release, either with a well-organised table or a creative illustration. This ensures that the journalists you reach out to are entertained by your content and not overwhelmed by a page of numbers.

Ensure you introduce your content and explain in a short sentence why you are contacting the journalists. Some journalists may have further questions, so offer your help and assistance in your pitch so they know who to get in touch with to keep your campaign in the running for outreach.

Understanding the culture, traditions, and landscape of the country you want to target for international PR campaigns is crucial for success. For further insights into the media landscapes of various countries around the world, check out the international section of the c3 website.

You can also find insights into different industries and PR campaign concepts here, as well as contact details for our native in-house speakers.

• Source: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022

2021 was a record year for iGaming, one of the most popular forms of gambling right now, especially in the United States. Numerous states posted all-time-high revenues, leading to total industry-wide revenue of $53 billion, and these numbers only seem to be going up in 2022 as well.

With more and more states legalising online gambling, it’s becoming one of the hottest commodities to market in the PR world. And as it continues to grow and develop in line with numerous regulations, traditional marketing and marketing strategies need to evolve to deliver a killer Digital PR approach that can have an incredible effect on visibility, trustworthiness, and traffic.

So where do you begin with running a digital PR campaign for iGaming brands?

In this guide, we’re going to take you through how to complete a top-tier digital PR campaign – from conception to delivery to outreach, and cover all the bases you need to drop the best international PR campaign for your clients.

1. Research and competitor analysis

Before you start, it’s important to understand the current landscape by running some competitor analysis to find out:

• What your competitors are doing? What stories are doing well and how are they illustrating assets on site?
• Why are they doing it? Does the campaign fit in with the current news agenda?
• Is their content working for them? Are they seeing good results – are backlinks strong and is visibility increasing?

To do this, you can use sites like BuzzSumo to see which content is currently trending and popular and is getting people talking. You can use some of the keywords that you find to run keyword research to find out not only which keywords are trending, but associated keywords that your competitors might not be jumping onto.

You can also scan the backlinks of your competitor’s campaigns using tools such as AHRefs, to see which campaigns are most successful and which publications and journalists you can pitch to during outreach. Once you have these findings you can call for ideation sessions based on the keywords and concepts you’ve found.

2. Ideation and brainstorming

Content ideation and brainstorming with your team is one of the most effective ways to come up with new and exciting ideas for your clients, especially when it comes to iGaming. iGaming clients are fantastic for Digital PR as you can create campaigns which focus on three major sectors:

• Sports: Sports betting is one of the biggest areas you can cash ideas on, as it’s one of the most popular forms of betting. This gives you the freedom to explore different sports from around the world and allows the targeting of big sports publications, such as Sports Illustrated and individual team fan sites.
• Gaming: Gaming and casino betting is another key area to target with iGaming brands – you can explore lots of different gaming keywords and niches, which allows you to target more niche publications and sites, such as GameRant and NintendoLife.
• Lifestyle: An area that can be targeted with most brands, lifestyle is another great area to generate ideas for, as you can angle a lot of lifestyle campaigns to have a gaming, sports, or competitive element in keeping with your client’s brand – for example: “In which US state are you most likely to win the lottery?”.

All three sectors are massive and have specialised journalists who talk about each topic individually, which increases your outreach opportunities. Consider all three segments of the iGaming pie as they’re a fantastic way to diversify the client’s link portfolio while sticking with the theme of gambling.

3. Create a calendar to ensure campaigns are newsworthy

Campaigns have to be newsworthy for journalists to have any incentive to cover them – this means ensuring that your campaigns are up to date, in keeping with current events and trends, and likely to get your clients a big boost in visibility. Here are some examples of things to keep in mind when it comes to newsworthy angles you can take:

• What big events are coming up? Is it the Super Bowl, World Cup, or even the Olympics?
• Are there any gaming competitions coming up or any big game releases on the horizon?
• Are certain things going on in the media which can be jumped on? Are there some awareness days coming up which would make for a strong news angle?

Knowing what’s coming up is essential to ensure that you stay on top of the game, keeping your client’s name and branding at the forefront of the public’s awareness.

4. Using an ‘always on’ approach

IGaming clients need to maintain consistency when it comes to their PR activity. Here at c3, we use a three-pronged ‘always on’ approach to ensure we stay on the ball at all times:

• Planned – These are your planned Digital PR campaigns with design and content assets, which sit on your client’s site to gain backlinks. These are created and developed ahead of big newsworthy events, such as the Super Bowl/March Madness.
• Proactive – This is the reangling of a relevant post onsite which would fit with the current news agenda and can be pushed out quickly.
• Reactive – This is when we look at newsjacking and jumping on stories that are hitting the headlines. There is always something new trending on Twitter or being talked about in gaming and gambling communities and being the first one on it can give you strong results. For example, some sports areas that always give good results:
  • Players retiring/changing teams.
  • Performances of teams, players, referees etc.
  • Overall results from a season/year.

From our experience, iGaming clients are great for signing ideas off quickly – which is why this approach of combining planned, proactive, and reactive PR is so important.

5. Creation of quality content and design assets

Now that you have your incredible ideas signed off, it’s time to create the content and assets for your campaign. Your PR campaign is not going to take off if you don’t have engaging content and eye-catching design assets to showcase all your hard work.

A campaign about the hiring of a new wonder kid in the NBA is not going to take off if your tone of voice is boring or lacklustre – your content needs to be exciting, attention-grabbing and most of all, entertaining, to even make it past the inbox of the journalists you reach out to.

One of the best ways to capture your reader’s attention is with design assets that ‘pop’ and stand out. Keeping your assets on brand is important, so you can ensure that your brand can be easily identified wherever your assets end up online.#]

Ensuring the quality of your content and assets is as sleek and professional as possible also gives your readers the impression that your client is trustworthy and an expert in the field.

6. Outreach and media relationships

Once you have your content and assets perfected and live on the client’s site, it’s time to find relevant journalists and publications to reach out to boost your content for you. Finding relevant journalists and publications is essential – especially those who are happy to cover content from gambling brands.

Looking at the three leading sectors – sports, gaming, and lifestyle – it’s important to create killer media lists you can keep going back to them and adding new contacts as you go.

With sports journalists, you must ensure all your contacts are tagged appropriately with their favoured sectors/teams, as these journalists rarely just talk about general sports. With gaming journalists, make sure to reach out to those talking about topics related to gaming as well as just specific gaming journalists.

Using media databases, like Vuelio, are great, but they often only just scratch the surface of people you could, and should, be reaching out to. Scour the web to find more journalists – use Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Reddit, to find those talking about your chosen topic and reach out to them on those platforms to make new connections.

However – it’s important to note with the nature of iGaming, that you will usually find out quickly who is (and isn’t) happy to receive pitches. It’s important to make a note of these people for your company’s database and avoid those who aren’t open to it.

Remember that not all states in America have legalised sports gambling, so think twice before outreaching to them.

You now have the structure to take all your great gaming and sports gambling ideas and turn them into incredible international PR campaigns that will get people talking about your clients! For more support with international clients and work, check out our international section for more blogs, updates, and insights from our international PR team.

When working in digital PR, we all know that feeling of seeing a piece of coverage with a link… only to find out it’s an affiliate link.

An affiliate link is essentially a tag that allows publications to make a commission from any sales made through that link.

To check whether an affiliate link has been added, right-click on the page > select view page source > ctrl+f to search for your URL, and then check to see if anything has been added to the front of it. For example, the highlighted part of the link here shows the affiliate:

https://go.skimresources.com?id=76202X1526515&xs=1&xcust=Mirror—23753012-&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cartwrightandbutler.co.uk%2Fhappy-easter-gift-box

Although affiliate links can still drive traffic and awareness, they don’t pass any SEO value from the linking site. Google ‘neutralises’ the link, which means they won’t be recognised from an SEO perspective and therefore won’t have any effect on SERP positioning or brand visibility.

Affiliate links also tend to go through a series of redirects which devalues them even further so if your KPIs are to build links to increase site authority, affiliates aren’t going to do what you need them to do in the long run.

Building links when your brand has a list of affiliate programmes with news sites can feel frustrating, but the good news is that there are multiple tactics you can implement to help get around them, so you can still diversify your backlink profile and broaden your visibility scope against competitors.

Try the following strategies to avoid affiliate links in your outreach:

1. Understand the sites you and in an affiliate programme with

Have a list of all the titles that you are in an affiliate programme with, and make sure this is regularly updated, so you know exactly where to focus your time when it comes to pitching stories.

2. Find new journalists in different news teams

Whether affiliate links are added or not can depend on the journalist so try and find other journalists from different news teams. For instance, if the consumer news team is giving affiliates, is there a story you can shape that might be more suited to lifestyle journalists at the same publication?

3. Broaden your stories to focus on niche news titles

Broaden out your stories so you can reach out to niche publications that won’t typically give you affiliate links. For example, if you’re an e-commerce brand that sells anything from food and drinks to home furnishings, create media lists and ideas that target publications in those sectors. Diversifying your backlink profile will also have a positive effect on your SEO strategy, just make sure the sites are still relevant.

4. Think outside of the box

Alternative Publications

Think of other sites outside of the news publishing world that you can target. Can you share internal business achievements with business, HR, and relevant industry sites? Or interview expert members of your team and send the commentary to industry publications to give them the latest insights on fresh news.

If you’re running a story on the best cities for students, could you look to send the top areas to corresponding university blogs? Or if you have a study on cooking, you could look to send this to local cookery schools or bakers that have news sections on site.

Link Reclamation

It’s important to remember that any page on the internet can provide a link, not just publications. So, for example, if you work with a list of brands, try link reclamation on their sites, asking them if they will include a link back to your website so customers can get more information about the brand.

For further information, check out our guide to technical link reclamation.

5. They aren’t all doom and gloom

Affiliate links aren’t all doom and gloom. Yes, they don’t pass the SEO authority from one site to another, but they can still bring in other results for your brand. If you find you’re building a lot of affiliate links but want to show the value they have, here are some things to look out for:

• The readership of the news site to understand the potential number of people you’re putting your brand in front of, as well as the fact that, if the link goes to your site, those people can still click through.
• On that, you can also look at the number of people coming through to your site from certain links using Google Analytics. You can use this number to show that, although the affiliate link doesn’t pass SEO value, it’s providing site traffic. You can also track to see if any sales were made through this link as well using analytics.
• Having an affiliate programme can help in getting mentioned in important product roundups such as Christmas gift guides, some affiliate journalists may be more tempted to include your products if they know they can potentially make some money off the back of the link.

Ultimately, affiliate links can be frustrating but there are multiple tweaks we make to PR strategies to try to get around them and although they’re not passing value, affiliate links do still contribute to increasing brand awareness and viewership of PR content.

c3’s Content Marketing Director, David White, shares his top three tips for building affiliate links:

For more of our digital marketing insight, check out the rest of our blog, or get in touch with any questions.

We may be living through turbulent times, but one thing that has remained a top priority to UK consumers is staying on top of the latest interior trends.

Image source: Unsplash

Now that spring has officially sprung, many people across the nation will be embracing the longer days and warmer weather as a sign to start refreshing their homes. In fact, Google Trends data shows a spike in searches for the term ‘decorating’ during the months of March and April each year – so it’s clear that we’re ready to start the season with décor tweaks, and a touch of feng shui to transform your space for spring.

With this in mind, our PR team experts have pulled together their insight on the tactics and strategies we’re seeing work particularly well in the interior space right now. 

Unique and insightful expertise

It’s never been quite as difficult to cut through the noise in the media, and being able to offer useful insight that’s interesting, unique, and actionable is really going to help to elevate your story.

We’re seeing more and more demand for an authoritative voice, in both proactive and reactive content, so being able to offer this first-hand is so important. This is particularly sought-after in an industry such as home interiors, where we know journalists and content creators are always on the lookout for emerging trends and interesting cost-saving hacks.

Whether you have an expert voice in-house already, or you need to look at bringing on board an external stylist or interior designer, it’s worth considering how you can make use of their insider knowledge as part of your content and outreach and add authority to your expertise.

Reactive PR can be your superpower

Whether you’re an old-school PR or a newbie, you’ll know that media monitoring and staying on top of the news agenda is vital in this fast-paced digital world. However, knowing how and when to react can be a real game changer. 
You need to know your industry. Whether it’s bedrooms, kitchens, or flooring, being able to identify the key trends within your niche is so important. Do your research, consider whether you have any interesting sales data or strong imagery available to match a trending topic and, as always with reactive PR, make sure you’re quick to jump on the topic with something unique to offer. 

In particular, we’re seeing a spotlight on celebrity homes. With many famous faces sharing their luxurious abodes on social media, journalists are looking for interior experts to share their take on the specific décor used and reveal how to recreate a similar look in your own home. This tactic is key to ensure your experts stay relevant in the industry.  

Make it evergreen

Of course, not every piece of content can be evergreen, especially if you’re working with emerging trends, or constructing a newsjacking piece.  However, we’ve had some great success stories from content being picked up weeks or months after initial outreach and it’s likely due to journalists being busier than ever before.

If you’re not getting the pick-up you expected but you’re confident that you’re pitching to the most appropriate, relevant contact and have something unique and interesting to offer – fear not! Your story may have been stored away to be used later down the line, especially common for tip round-ups from numerous experts in one article. 

We’re finding that content featuring unusual cleaning hacks, budget-friendly jobs, storage solutions or trend predictions – longer-term rather than immediate trends – tend to perform particularly well in this context.

Be tactical when it comes to creative campaigns

There has been a lot of debate of late in the PR industry about whether creative campaigns have ‘had their day’, and this seems particularly significant in the interiors space in which journalists favour quick content. Whilst everyone is entitled to their opinion, one thing we’re finding is that being creative can absolutely work and can be a great way of generating results in the interior space. However, we need to be tactical about how and when we launch these types of campaigns. 

Creative can come in a range of formats that help tell your story; it could be creating video or photo content to accompany your story, using mood boards to visualise and bring ideas to life, or even developing a new product or range as part of a bigger, brand building tactic.  

With many looking at social media as a means of interior inspiration, using customers as case studies is a powerful way to visualise your brand. Using creative videos and images, utilise renovations or installations to showcase your unique offering, accompanied by expert quotes from interior experts. 

It might not be feasible or appropriate to launch a ‘creative’ campaign every quarter, but when done correctly and alongside other tactics, these campaigns can be hugely successful and beneficial. 

Is there a monetary element?

The cost of living is at the forefront of everyone’s minds, and that includes the media. From large-scale renovations to quick and easy decorating hacks and budget-friendly DIY jobs, if there’s potential to add a monetary value to your content, it’s worth putting some time into working out the numbers. 

If you’re able to share tangible budgeting tips or money-saving advice, such as tactics to reduce your heating bills, as part of your campaign, it can really help to enhance your story and will provide you with additional angles when it comes to outreach. 

Don’t forget the basics

Home interior content and advice should be useful, inspirational, and practical. It might sound simple, but always make sure your press release has strong imagery and, where possible, features bespoke shots that highlight your key product area, with the relevant captions and prices included. 

Try to feature additional brands or voices too so that the story isn’t too promotional or one-sided. If you feel like you’re trying to shoe-horn a brand into the story, it probably isn’t going to work, but creating a naturally flowing piece with helpful advice, case studies and stunning aesthetics is the ultimate goal. 

Summary

Hopefully this piece has provided you with some helpful insight and tips to consider when planning PR activity in the home interiors industry. 

One thing that’s important to take into consideration is that no two strategies should ever really be the same; you should always take your brand’s goals, aspirations, and priorities into consideration when planning, and be sure to work closely with your SEO team too. As always, remember to keep ideas and content relevant to the brand too. 

Remember to revisit your strategy regularly, and be honest about what is or isn’t working and what is helping to drive organic performance. If you’re finding that reactive commentary is proving to be hugely successful in driving results, it may be worth putting more time into this tactic as opposed to creative-led campaigns. 

There’s nothing we PRs love more than a good newsjacking opportunity and to keep on top of all the upcoming national days, weeks, and months, we’ve created C3 Newsroom – sharing all the latest opportunities across a range of sectors with our ‘always on’ approach. 

Keeping on top of digital PR trends can be tricky, especially in such a dynamic industry as marketing. Still, there are moments throughout each season when digital and traditional PRs truly put on their thinking caps to create campaigns that will land well in the media, and Christmas is the ultimate, trickiest, season of all for media coverage.

Understand which PR trends have worked in the past

If you work in PR, you know coming up with an idea for a Christmas PR campaign is never easy. Designing a campaign perfect enough to get snapped up from the slush pile and published with a link is what most PRs want for Christmas, but there are ways to increase the chance of success.

Learn from previous digital PR trends

Have you run a digital PR campaign in the past around Christmas that performed well? Or perhaps it underperformed, and the campaign ended up being a flop? It can be hard to understand what makes a campaign stand out to journalists and what doesn’t, but taking learnings from it is important. Some things you can do are:

1. Evaluate your previous Christmas campaign success: What theme did you focus on? Did it appeal to a broad audience or a niche group? Understanding the intrigue of your story can help you shape your future digital PR campaign.
2. Keep yourself up to date with what newspapers are covering: You might have come up with a great idea for your brand, but will it appeal to the publications you want to cover the story? Before your ideation, make time to go through your dream publications and backtrack to Christmas in 2022/2021, to see what they wrote about. What is their tone of voice? What is their audience demographic? This can help you with your ideation and coming up with a story you know journalists will want to cover. If you want some ideas on how to run a great ideation session, check out our blog on how to have better brainstorms with your internal teams.
3. Review what competitors are doing: Finding inspiration from previous work from your competitors can help you find that new spin on a story or explore a topic you haven’t seen before in the media.

Do you need some campaign inspiration? Why not check out the previous PR campaigns we’ve run at connective3?

Christmas PR campaign ideas based on sectors

PRs know that different strategies are required for different sectors. It isn’t easy to create a one-size-fits-all strategy for multiple markets. Instead, break down your understanding of each sector and do market research to better inform your strategies.

Christmas ideas for the retail sector

Luckily, there are some tell-tale signs of what will be trending during Christmas for the retail sector. With the competition being impossibly hard, big brands such as John Lewis and M&S will be trying to secure themselves coverage early, ahead of the crowd.

John Lewis has already revealed their Christmas decorations for this year, with the themes being Rainbow Time Capsule, Winter Fairytale, Polar Planet, Beyond Christmas, Royal Fairytale and Christmas Cottage. John Lewis has already secured coverage, particularly for their ‘Christmas shop’ and ‘Christmas tree decorations’. Taking a reactive approach and jumping on trends the big brands set can benefit your strategy in the lead-up to Christmas.

Thinking about the core Christmas values such as kindness, generosity and spending time with your family can also be a good way of starting your ideation. Can you flip anything on its head, and create a new story?

Publishing Christmas content early can also help brands in the run-up to Christmas as their content has had time to make an impact on the SERPs and Google has had time to index, validate, and push the content.

Source: John Lewis

Christmas PR ideas for the travel sector

For travel brands interested in running a Christmas campaign, being influenced and inspired by other sectors can prove beneficial. An example of this is travel brands being inspired by the retail brand John Lewis, and their Christmas Cottage theme, an indication that this is a theme that might become trendy in the months leading up to Christmas.

Keeping yourself up to date on recent reports and articles, such as Conde Nast Traveller’s ‘The best Christmas holiday destinations for 2024‘, can help you better understand what is trending from a news perspective.

It’s also smart to keep yourself updated on reports. PWC, for example, has released a full report on Christmas consumerism and what shoppers want. Reports like these can help you predict what consumers want, and how they will be getting it. These kinds of statistics can inform your upcoming ideations and campaigns.

Source: Unsplash.com

PR ideas from a finance and insurance perspective

Coming up with a great campaign can be tricky in the finance and insurance sectors. It’s important to evaluate previous campaigns and the media landscapes around Christmas in the years before to determine what is the best approach for your insurance or finance brand.

You might want to consider keeping a loose tie to the two sectors with the influence of lifestyle topics, such as parenting, weddings, or big lifestyle decisions, like purchasing a house or a car.

Think; are there common denominators causing arguments in families over Christmas? Can you survey parents to see if they spend more, or less on gifts for their children and partners than before? Does Christmas influence people to buy more? Are there ways to ensure you have the best Christmas with your family, without feeling external pressures?

Regardless of which sector you work in, it’s important to be fluid in your approach depending on the emerging trends. Keeping yourself up to date on big industry news from market leaders and checking out what’s previously worked can help form your Christmas campaign and secure great coverage.

If you’re interested in seeing how the PR team at c3 works, please visit our digital PR page or head over to LinkedIn to keep yourself updated on industry news from our team.