Hotel Chocolat Christmas Outreach Case Study

Transcription

1 Hotel Chocolat Christmas Outreach Case Study About Hotel Chocolat The Challenge The Approach The Bloggers Results

2 About Hotel Chocolat Since Hotel Chocolat s conception 20 years ago, the British chocolatier has grown from a web-based business to a well recognised brand with retail stores, cocoa bars, and restaurants across the UK. As one of the world s few chocolate makers to actually grow their own cocoa, Hotel Chocolat connects the entire chocolate making process(from growing to retailing) and in doing so presents luxury, authentic and ethical chocolate and cocoa-based products. What Ambergreen do for Hotel Chocolat Search marketing: paid and organic. Ambergreen have been working with Hotel Chocolat for 10 years with the primary objective being to increase online sales from search channels. As one of our longest standing clients our relationship has evolved as their business has grown and the search landscape has advanced. The key challenge has been devising and adapting a strategy that takes advantage of the increased dominance of paid search whilst building an organic presence through regular technical site checks, audits, recommendations and blogger outreach to drive long term visibility of their brand.

3 The Challenge To deliver a Y-O-Y increase in Christmas sales via organic and paid search. October to December is a peak season for Hotel Chocolat as consumers begin their Christmas shopping and competition from generic retail brands picks up. Historically, Hotel Chocolat has experienced improved search performance year-on-year during the Christmas period and the challenge was to keep this on an upward trajectory. Our response Opportunity analysis was carried out ahead of season to help inform the SEO tactics required to optimise the website ahead of Christmas. Insights from competitor analysis and a technical audit were also used to formulate a campaign plan that incorporated outreach as a key tactic for organic growth. The outreach goals The outreach campaign was designed to achieve the following outcomes in order to get Hotel Chocolat well positioned on organic search: Brand mentions on relevant domains about Hotel Chocolat Social mentions about Hotel Chocolat products Links to the Hotel Chocolat website from high authority domains (Signals that Google uses to determine the authority of websites and where to rank them for keyword searches)

4 The Approach Building relationships with bloggers To achieve our campaign goals we reached out to influential bloggers to get them talking about and engaging with the Hotel Chocolat Christmas product range. It was important that the product reviews were written by the bloggers themselves in order to attain natural links and shares that Google rewards. Our communications strategy was key to the success of the campaign and so we aimed to build ongoing relationships with bloggers and a positive brand experience through personalised contact. Our approach Bloggers were selected and tiered according to relevancy, domain authority, social followings and page rank. Four different types of bloggers were contacted. For each type of blogger, personalised messaging was used. Bloggers who responded were offered products from the Hotel Chocolat Christmas Range and asked to write about them on their blog. Posts were tracked and links, social engagement and SEO improvements recorded.

5 The Bloggers The bloggers were selected and divided into key groups who we targeted with different messages. Food blogs Offered a choice between traditional chocolate products and more innovative cocoa based products (e.g. cocoa pasta or cocoa pesto). Asked if they would like to create an innovative seasonal recipe. Lifestyle blogs Offered a selection of products. Asked how they might gift them. Design/DIY and Craft blogs Offered a selection of the most aesthetically interesting products. Asked if they would like to create a visual post with them. Mummy blogs Offered some of the more child friendly products to review with their family. Mummy bloggers were reminded of the fact that HC products are created with less sugar and more cocoa.

6 The results A total of 82 links from sites with an average domain authority of 30.36, a quarter of which were over 40 (pre-campaign the average domain authority of sites providing backlinks to Hotel Chocolat was 20.52) Considerable referral traffic from links placed on blogs to the Hotel Chocolat website (368 visits at the time of research - 19/12/14) At least 37,015 competition entries to giveaways hosted on blogger sites offering Hotel Chocolat products as prizes. Response rate Food Blogs 64.0% Lifestyle Blogs 63.3% Design/Craft Blogs 83.3% Mummy Blogs 72.5% 5,724 total engagements on social media across 7 different platforms including large numbers of shares and comments on competitions and giveaway posts on twitter but also a number of interactions on visual sharing sites, pinterestand considerable sharing of gift guides via facebook, twitter and google + Our personalised approach received a high response rate. The Christmas campaign saw a 27% rise in the number of website sessions which was mainly due to the significant rise of organic visitors (52% YOY increase).