Digital PR campaigns for British Recycled Plastic
British Recycled Plastic came to The Marketing Optimist for help with Digital PR campaigns. They wanted to increase brand recognition, build thought leadership and gain press coverage across the UK.
Education, Commercial property and local government where their prime target, with a secondary focus on regional news outlets to highlight local projects utilising their recycled outdoor furniture.
British Recycled Plastic manufacture outdoor furniture and planters for use in commercial and domestic settings. They create stunning furniture, designed to stand all weather conditions from recycled plastic sourced in the UK. Sustainability and an adherence to a circular economy are core values of the business, they are an innovative company pushing the boundaries of recycled plastic use.
Creating a Digital PR campaigns plan for British Recycled Plastic
Our first job was to take the time to get to know the team at BRP, what they stood for and what they wanted to achieve with their PR campaigns. As we were in lockdown, we held several Zoom meetings to ensure that we had a clear brief.
From here we audited all the client’s current content, blogs, images, videos, previous press coverage, etc. We then created an outline Digital PR plan which covered a 12-month period and a more detailed 3-month plan followed by a week-by-week schedule of specific activities.
Planning in this way provided clarity for the client, as well as giving them the opportunity to feedback on plans, add developing stories and let us know of key dates for the business.
Selecting the right publications and journalists
Key to any PR campaign is to ensure you are getting the right messages to the right publications. We combined our journalist database, with website research and relationships on Twitter with key writers and publications, to collate a list or prime publications. We then researched stories journalists had previously published to ensure our approach would interest them and their readers.
Building a media profile
As British Recycled Plastic were relatively new to the press, we needed a way to give more information about them than press releases alone. To achieve this, we interviewed Jason Elliot, the MD of BRP, on subjects related to the manufacture of the recycled plastic furniture as well as wider environmental subjects.
Luckily Jason has very strong views, this really helped his profile stand out and gain coverage. Playing too safe with views, gives journalists very little interesting content to publish.
We pitched this interview to several publications and had it published as readymade content several times.
The results
Using a combination of Press Releases, Pitches, Ready-to-go content and social media outreach we achieved:
- 23 pieces of online and print coverage over 9 months, in 16 different publications across education, consumer, events and sustainability titles in the UK.
- An average of 2.5 pieces of media coverage per month.
- An additional bonus was that several of the stories published online included a “follow” link back to the website, helping the businesses SEO efforts too.
- Several stories where repurposed by the publications for use in social media and email newsletters, increasing coverage further.
I initially hired The Marketing Optimist to do some individual and small group training on certain detailed aspects of specific social media platforms; tasks at which they excelled, generating very positive feedback from my team, both for their style and technical knowledge.
This gave me confidence to let him handle the British Recycled Plastic PR brief for a trial period of three months, however, based on his excellent results, I was delighted to renew the contract on a continuous rolling basis.