Cost of Living Campaign for Puppies.co.uk
%
ROI Over 2 Years
of Media Coverage
The Results
The cost of living story overall was a real success and exceeded our overall target, landing coverage in Sky News, iNews and MSN, as well as gaining coverage in other relevant publications such as Pet Food Industry and The Argus. Similarly, the XL Bully and Aggressive Dogs pieces were also smash hits and were picked up by national publications, such as The Daily Mail, The Mirror and The Daily Express. Following the success of the campaign, Puppies has started to increase its reputation as a marketplace for ethical breeders and responsible dog owners.
The below results cover a period from November 2022 – February 2024:
%
ROI
New Links and Mentions
Domain Rating Increase
Average Rating of New Media Placements
Value of Media Placements
%
Traffic Increase
Background
Puppies.co.uk is one of the UK’s most popular dog marketplaces, where breeders can sell litters, and dog lovers can buy puppies or adopt a pet.
The Challenge
Puppies came to Avid Panda to put their brand in front of dog lovers. To support their wider SEO efforts, the digital PR team was tasked with creating campaigns that generated traffic, links and mentions to the website and also increased Puppies’ authority in the public’s eye on all things dogs.
We knew that Puppies had some strong competitors that were already quite prominent in the press. So, we had to create a data-driven campaign to give journalists a reason to link back to and mention Puppies instead of their competitors. We planned to do this by producing data-driven campaigns on topics dominating the news cycle.
How We Did It
The first campaign focused on the impact of the cost of living crisis on dog owners. We gathered data by surveying dog owners across the UK and broke down responses by region so that we could land placements in both national and regional press.
Once we organised our findings, we knew that the data alone would not be enough to guarantee success. To build a story that would get picked up, we decided that we needed to get further insights from respondents about how the cost of living crisis was actually affecting their ability to keep their pets happy and healthy. We used the responses we got to build a case study to increase the breadth of appeal and separate our campaign from anyone who tried to replicate the study. The report was supported with visuals and other assets to make it easier for journalists to understand the data. This also meant authors could use the assets in their own content and attribute them back to Puppies.
The report was supported with visuals and other assets to make it easier for journalists to understand the data. This also meant authors could use the assets in their own content and attribute them back to Puppies.
Before launching our reports, we generated interest by contacting authors, which helped us identify publications interested in our findings. With personalised email templates, we quickly secured coverage. We then targeted authors who needed data for their stories, achieving placements in top-tier publications, and followed up with relevant local and industry outlets for further coverage. The second campaign focused on the rise in dog attacks by the dangerous American XL Bully breed. We noticed that whilst many journalists were reporting on the actual attacks, there was very little data on the number of people still looking to buy the breed despite the proposed ban. So, we analysed Google search data to identify the UK’s XL Bully hotspots and shared our findings with key publications that covered the attacks.
