'Hot Tub of The Year' competition heats up revenue for Outdoor Living

Outdoor Living

PR Campaign

Project Overview

Our talented PR team launches national competition for one
of the UK’s largest hot tub retailers, Outdoor Living Hot Tubs.

In the lockdown summer of 2020, we encouraged hundreds of Brits to take a dip into their hot tubs and spread some community cheer at the height of the global pandemic.

Warmed by the idea, friends and families across the UK shared their hot tub set up photos to inspire the nation.

The result? Our competition drove impressive levels of traffic to the site, improved revenue and social media engagement and gained high quality press coverage in renowned publications such as Hull Daily Mail and Daily Record.

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Results

A selection of key statistics from this project

18,763 Campaign page views
552 Competition entries
2,950 Votes
16 Quality Backlinks

The Brief

Outdoor Living Hot Tubs wanted to increase their brand awareness in the local area, as well as reach a larger audience and in turn, gain more visitors to their site.

By illuminating the health benefits of hot tub use and influencing owners to enter images of their amazing hot tub installations, our PR team created a competition that would see a huge return on investment for the brand.

Objectives

To launch an engaging competition to boost traffic across multiple channels
Increase revenue
Increase business through the site long term
Secure coverage
Build brand awareness

“This was another amazing year for our Hot Tub of the Year competition. There were some spectacular set-ups and the competition was tough! Thank you to the PR team at Herd, to everyone who took the time to enter, vote and share the competition. It is great to see communities far and wide get involved!”

Paul Margerison, Sales Director, Outdoor Living

How we did it

We wanted to promote positive wellbeing by creating an inclusive competition with a first-class prize.

By targeting our partner’s core audience, we encouraged hot tub owners to enter images of their creative hot tub structures.

We finalised the concept by exploring consumer driven data, highlighting the increase in the searches and sales of hot tubs, due to the pandemic. We wanted to tap into the “consideration” stage of the buyer journey by sharing content that would encourage conversions.

We integrated WooBox, a competition tool that would form our landing page and entry mechanism. Our team then created captivating assets such as bespoke banner images, newsletter content and informative blog posts to pull the strategy together.

Our PR team syndicated out several press releases throughout the competition, tailoring the content to suit key categories of relevant publications. Personalised pitching is effective and key to getting your ideas across to busy journalists.

We supported the campaign with promotions across social media, using a proactive content calendar with suggested appropriate links and hashtags that would help expand our reach.

Monitoring, downloading and continuing to mould the user generated content (UGC) into branded content was crucial for the upkeep and analysis of the competition. Our hands on approach allowed us to target local press with listicles of the top 10 hot tubs in particular areas, which secured impressive press coverage.

Project Highlights

1

Integrating and managing WooBox

Our development team embedded a WooBox widget on site, so users had a quick and easy enter function to take part in the competition vote, reshare and view the competition gallery.

2

Creative competition assets

We designed and created compelling visuals in line with the brand identity, and guidelines to spread brand awareness.

3

Social media management

Our experts put together a social media calendar to inspire viewers and promote Outdoor Living products. This facilitated seemless sharing throughout the lifetime of the competition.

4

Campaign syndication

We were personal and approachable in our outreach strategy to journalists. Our tailored press releases targeted suitable publications.

5

Engagement and reach

The competition reached 18,763 views, spurred on by using user generated content, which was shared by friends and families of the entrants.

6

Choosing the winner

The winning entrant receiving the most votes was based in Scotland, which therefore allowed us to secure coverage in the Scottish press, expanding Outdoor Living Hot Tub’s demographic and audience reach even further.