The Client
money.co.uk are a financial comparison website established in 2008 by serial entrepreneur Chris Morling. Based in Cirencester and London, they attract millions of visitors every month to their website. Comparing over 17,000 financial products, money.co.uk offers consumers the best tools and information in the industry.
The Challenge
money.co.uk had planned significant renovations of their HQ, a castle formally known as The Barracks in Cecily Hill, Cirencester. Edit were challenged to use the opportunity to make an online campaign about the renovations, to promote the brand for SEO gain and to drive backlinks to the site.
The Strategy
In order to maximise the PR opportunities from the renovations, we decided to split the strategy into three key parts, all of which needed to be delivered by January 2017. We planned to carry out activity before, during, and after the launch event.
First we aligned ourselves with money.co.uk’s internal PR team to make sure we mirrored and delivered their core messages consistently. The main focus was to ensure we communicated that the renovations were carried out to empower employees and offer an amazing environment to work in.
After thorough research and planning, we split our seeding for the campaign outreach into different niches. These included: interior design, architecture, and viral sites.
We then looked to set up exclusive interviews with the design team behind the castle, which included celebrity designer Laurence Llewlyn-Bowen. This was done all prior to the launch event, which was held mainly for local journalists and stakeholders of the money.co.uk HQ.
Once the event had taken place on the launch day, we outreached to national, international, regional, and B2B sites with the story behind the castle and the reasons for the renovations. In order to provide the journalists with something to link back to onsite, money.co.uk created a central hub which provided users with information about the castle. This included a video tour, a Q&A with the design team, and staff.
The Results
The results we received were phenomenal, including:
- 134 backlinks to the money.co.uk site on publications such as The Daily Mail, The Metro, Business Insider, and The Entrepreneur, along with 75 pieces of coverage
- The campaign page received over 13,000 visits and the average time on page was just over three minutes
- The campaign was talked about across 13 niches, from architecture to Star Wars publications, and was featured in news outlets all over the world.
Chris Morling, Managing Director of money.co.uk, was named unofficially “Britain’s Best Boss” by the Metro.
