Issues and crisis communications campaign
Key takeaways
Increase of Google review status to
%
Increase in positive Google reviews
Pieces of regional editorial coverage
Overview
A family firm with four bases across the UK and more than 50,000 customers, had received a handful of negative comments online. With zero PR and marketing activity, this meant the majority of online comments about the firm were negative.
The comments were having a negative effect on sales and the company wanted to limit negative reviews and instigate positive comments about the company online to fairly represent the views of the majority of its customer base.
Objectives and planning
At the outset, we carried out in-depth research to fully understand the situation – Reviewing search engine results for negative branded searches, analysing social media channels, reviewing negative articles, and researching common customer complaints and identifying potential causes.
Our plan and strategy focused on encouraging current customers to share their views and experiences online and placing positive editorial in key third party publications as third parties across both traditional media and the general public talking about the company in a good way would impact what potential customers thought about the brand.
In addition, another key element of the campaign was to re-build relationships with customers who felt dissatisfied with the service.
Tactics
Social media planning and strategy
Search engine optimisation
Email marketing
Media relations
Key outcomes
Our focused campaign helped correct the online perception of the brand to a more positive one, with Google reviews for all four branches owned by the firm increasing to a rating of at least four stars.
Additionally, every customer issue was addressed and responded to across both Google reviews and a new, official Facebook page.
Our integrated approach helped the client achieve 42 pieces of regional editorial coverage, with 19 online pieces containing a domain authority of more than 30.
This helped boost the search rankings of the brand, with there no longer being any negative articles on the first page of Google for brand-related searches and the search term ‘<BRAND NAME> complaint’ no longer regarded as popular.
We had not carried out any PR and marketing and found that we had a handful of negative reviews online. The subsequent ratings did not reflect the thoughts of the majority of our 50,000 customers who were happy with the service but had not reviewed the company.
The team at Outwrite has been fantastic and have corrected the perception we weren’t a good company to deal with. We now feel confident that when a customer sees our brand online, they will have a good opinion about us.
PR and comms awards for this campaign
Best issues and crisis communications campaign
For the issues and crisis campaign judges noted Outwrite had a clear ability to change the reputation of its client, commenting the agency ‘combined solid research plus multi-channel implementation and use of digital’.
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Foodservice company’s inaugural ESG report up for top industry award
Outwrite PR has further strengthened its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) comms credentials after being shortlisted for a key industry award. The Wales-based PR agency produced Harlech Foodservice’s inaugural ESG report, with the publication nominated at...