The Challenge
Next Gen Freelancers is a brand campaign aimed at associating PolicyBee with freelancers (including the self-employed and contractors which are largely interchangeable terms for this audience). PolicyBee is an independent, specialist, digital professional indemnity and business insurance broker.
In keeping with PolicyBee’s vision of being a little different to others in the industry, this idea positioned the company as being both well informed about the existing freelance market but also demonstrated its commitment to going that extra mile by nurturing younger, aspiring freelancers too.
The agreed goals included increased site visits, increased engagement metrics such as time on site and pages viewed, and improved brand awareness. As well as this, there was a focus on creating some high quality links which would go towards strengthening Domain Authority and driving referral traffic. PolicyBee also wanted improved interaction via the tracking of specific goals such as viewing the Flipbook or interacting with the calculator.
Our Approach
At the core of the campaign was a piece of research that asked recent graduates about their propensity to freelance or become self-employed in the future. Materials produced all centred on the main findings of this study – namely that many universities don’t provide adequate support for their students and that the support is not equal across all institutions. This sentiment formed the crux of:
- 6 x press releases – a national version, a student version, an HR version, a University specific version aimed at post 1992 institutions, a West Midlands version and an Ipswich/East version
- An infographic (and associated blog post)
- A core campaign blog post
- 2 x video case studies https://www.policybee.co.uk/blog/11144/video-wills-freelancing-story & https://www.policybee.co.uk/blog/11154/video-joshs-freelancing-story
- 1 x written case study
- Social media output
- 1 x freelance / self-employed tool
- 1 x freelance / self-employed flipbook/guide.
The purpose of the above was to have a variety of options with which to offer to interested parties in order to either persuade them to write about PolicyBee themselves or to receive a guest blog or article.
Results
A wide variety of publications/websites/media were targeted, including professional bodies, university careers and enterprise departments, student advice sites, virtual office sites with news content, education writers (national and trade), SME, HR, West Midlands media and Ipswich/East media. The resulting content appeared in 59 different places across a broad range of sectors, including 61 links to the PolicyBee website (+3 written out URLs).
The majority of these were deep links to the campaign blog (19) with 12 to the flipbook, 12 to the homepage and 10 to the tool. All pieces of on-site content have at least 1 link pointing to it.
48 piece of the content were created by third parties such as journalists and bloggers, and 11 were written as guest posts/articles by PolicyBee.
The success was shown through the creation of 5 ac.uk links (there are more than 5 pieces of content on university sites but the careers/enterprise blog is not always hosted on the ac.uk domain). Content was also featured in two national newspapers, the Independent -which focussed entirely on PolicyBee news, and The Times, which used case studies to highlight a broader story in a feature.
Other content featured on high Domain Authority sites such as Prospects.ac.uk and YorkCareers. Key influencer, Nigel Locket, Professor of Enterprise at Leeds University Business School and Director of the Enterprise Centre and Head of Enterprise at Leeds at the University of Leeds, used the research for a in depth article on his own independent blog.
Google Analytics showed that organic traffic increased by 30 per cent from 12 October to the end of the campaign. Site users increased by 35 per cent, new visitors were up by 6 per cent, and overall blog traffic increased by 47 per cent.
There were just under 700 page views of campaign blog content with an average of 3:26 mins spent on site, which is considerably higher than overall average of 1:41mins. The Freelance guide was particularly successful, visited 342 times, and the ‘Should I Go Freelance’ tool was visited 121 times.