Leading UK holiday providers holidaycottages.co.uk approached 10 Yetis with a view to carrying out some project campaigns that would reach a certain target audience and help to improve SEO rankings as a result of follow links from high domain authority websites.

The main audiences that the marketing team at holidaycottages.co.uk wanted to target through 10 Yetis' initial SEO implementation were pet owners. This is as a result of the company's plans to position itself as a leading website for those with dogs and similar animals looking to enjoy a getaway with all members of their family, even the extended ones!

How We Got holidaycottages.co.uk In The News

With a flexible brief that allowed us to do what it does best and focus on putting together as creative a set of ideas as possible for the client, our PR and social team got together in order to come up with a vast array of different dog-themed project ideas that would appeal to exactly the right kind of audiences holidaycottages.co.uk were looking to attract, and generate as many follow links possible at the same time.

After running all of the ideas in detail past the marketing team at holidaycottages.co.uk, the most popular idea by far emerged as our "Canine Critic" conecpt.

In a nutshell, the premise of the campaign involved the team at holidaycottages.co.uk creating and adding a page to the existing site, linked to the company's careers page that advertised for the services of a dog to take over the very genuine and legitimate role of a "Canine Critic".

The special pooch selected for the role of Canine critic would be eligible, along with their owner, to take four free holidays courtesy of holidaycottages.co.uk over the course of a year. The job, however, was not to be taken lightly. Whilst enjoying each of these unique trips, the Canine Critic and their owner would be in charge of writing about and documenting each and every aspect of the break, through blog posts, YouTube videos and social media updates.

The ideal doggy candidate therefore needed to have an owner who enjoyed writing, had good time management skills and was able to meet the review deadlines set.

Characteristics holidaycottages.co.uk had to look for during the judging process included:

  • House-trained (does not chew furniture, toilet trained etc.)
  • Minimum age of 1 year old
  • Sociable personality (good with other dogs/animals/children)
  • Active
  • A nose for discovering new places
  • A good traveller

It was decided that the vacancy would be live on the holidaycottages.co.uk website for one month after which date a successful applicant would be chosen based on how well they fit the criteria above, as well as how original and imaginative the application forms or CVs sent over on behalf of the potential candidates were.

In order to keep an eye on how much the vacancy was being discussed by relevant audiences on social media, it was decided that the hashtag #hccaninecritic would be incorporated in all website material relating to the vacancy, as well as any accompanying press releases and official tweets from the holidaycottages.co.uk Twitter account.

Our Results

The announcement of the vacancy generated more than 25 follow links and 40+ pieces of coverage alone, including Metro.co.uk, Mirror Online, TNT Magazine and Money Saving Expert, as well as a plethora of target pet and animal press and websites.

We monitored the ongoing social media activity taking place after the larger pieces of coverage with links went live, and within 24 hours of being uploaded to the website, the Mirror article had almost 13,000 impressions on Twitter and the Metro article had over 14,000 impressions. Furthermore, the #hccaninecritic hashtag itself generated almost 82,000 impressions just 24 hours after the initial press release announcing the vacancy was sent out to all relevant media.

Altogether the vacancy attracted just over 1000 applications within the four weeks it was open, including a Scottish Terrier who was a star of the 2014 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony in Glasgow and a Labrador who has raised thousands of pounds for breast cancer charities with his owner.

More work ...

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