Case Study:
Reactive PR Case Study
Award-winning campaigns for an online wholesaler
Client
Wholesale Clearance UK is an online wholesale website specialising in selling bankrupt, surplus stock and end-of-line clearances to individuals and companies of all sizes.
The Brief
Screaming Frog has worked alongside Wholesale Clearance UK for several years, providing Digital PR and SEO services.
Since we began working together, our campaign has consisted of a mixture of B2B and B2C PR, as well as many innovative and reactive campaigns that publicise Wholesale Clearance’s business of buying and selling unwanted stock.
One campaign that’s been particularly successful is the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee memorabilia misprint. In February 2022, Wholesale Clearance was tasked with selling a large volume of poorly translated jubilee memorabilia from China after a fulfilment partner rejected it. The client was hesitant to accept, but our PR team saw a huge opportunity to create a viral campaign, attracting international media coverage, high-value backlinks and organic visibility boosts.
With our assistance, what could have been a risky business decision was transformed into a lucrative opportunity, generating considerable global PR coverage and boosting sales.
Our Strategy
The objective was to drive consumer demand for the memorabilia, helping to make it an attractive investment to Wholesale Clearance’s community of sellers. Alongside this, leveraging the viral nature of the product created an opportunity for a global PR campaign, driving brand visibility and SEO benefit within the narrow timeframe of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
To create a compelling story for the media, we emphasised the amusing link between the misspelling and the beloved British sitcom character, Del Boy, from ‘Only Fools and Horses’. This echoed his well-known catchphrase: ‘Lovely Jubbly’, adding an unexpected and delightful twist to the story. We also added to the campaign’s humorous element with product photography of the director of Wholesale Clearance, Karl Baxter, dressed up as the iconic character, so that the public (and journalists) could empathise with Karl’s predicament.
To generate maximum awareness and demand for the product, our outreach strategy was wide, targeting international consumer media (English speaking) in territories with an interest in the British monarchy and Jubilee celebrations, such as the US and Australia. Our target journalists included royalty, lifestyle, entertainment and shopping. We outreached to several media types, including online, print, radio and television production for their Jubilee specials.
To accompany the campaign, we created onsite copy, product photography and press releases to showcase the product range and promote the client as a trusted online seller. As well as this, we made some of the stock available to journalists to run giveaways.
As a company that deals with clearance stock, we get a high volume through the doors. When we occasionally get some weird and wonderful items in, Screaming Frog has been instrumental in helping our company get amazing press coverage which, in turn, has increased the traffic to our site and helped amplify business. They are highly professional - we would not hesitate to recommend them to any company looking to increase visibility.
Andy White
Sales Manager – Wholesale Clearance
Featured In...
Below is a small selection of mainstream and industry media coverage received from our content & digital PR.
Pieces of Coverage
516
Social Shares
64,200
Branded Clicks
+768%
Results
Our campaign exceeded all KPIs and was a masterclass in reactive PR.
We secured 516 pieces of international coverage, with 248 links to the client’s website boasting an average DA of 60.
The piece also generated over 64,000 social shares, with an estimated 138 million online views.
As well as online placements, the campaign also featured on The Drew Barrymore Show (US), Shameless podcast (Australia), Meridian News (UK) and Have I Got News for You (BBC – UK).
The misspelt products were even placed in an exhibition by the Museum of Brands in Notting Hill.
Subsequently, Screaming Frog won an award for Best Use of PR in a Search Campaign at the UK Search Awards 2022.
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