Top digital PR campaigns in Finance in 2020 so far

Creating an online buzz around payday loan companies can be tough at the best of times, but in the midst of a global pandemic which has left thousands out of work and led to a downturn in the economy, you could be forgiven for thinking it was mission impossible.

So often these loan companies receive nothing but negative press, criticised for taking advantage of people who are struggling financially, leaving companies struggling to point to widespread, organic media coverage that promotes them and of course, gives their online presence that all-important boost.

The use of digital PR to provide a boost to website rankings and traffic is not something that is widely used in the financial sector, but here we look at some notable examples of when digital PR campaigns have been used to boost the performance and awareness of some of the major payday loan companies.

Cashlady

The front runners in the sector, Cashlady have run a number of online campaigns over the past year to bring in coverage (and links from) national newspapers and lifestyle sites of huge renown, such as The Express, Ladbible, The Metro and Yahoo.

That’s pretty good, right? But how did they do it?

By hiring a digital PR agency to both create content to sit on their website and outreach to the media, Cashlady have seen an increase of almost 50% in referring domains to their homepage in the past 12 months, while their organic traffic to the site has more than tripled in that same period.

Campaigns, which can be found on the site, include: ‘Every Country’s Favourite Superhero Movie’, ‘Expenses of Parliament’, ‘The YouTube League, ‘Property Prices 2030’, ‘Disney vs Pixar’ and ‘Richest Sporting League’.

Through these six campaigns, they managed to amass 215 backlinks from external sites back to Cashlady from 125 referring domains, with the pick of them ‘Every Country’s Favourite Superhero Movie’, which picked up 106 links.

Using simple data gathered from ahrefs, Cashlady produced a map of the most popular superhero film for each country, earning massive coverage in the international press from high rating websites, thus boosting the performance of the Cashlady website.

Ocean Finance

Ocean Finance have also seen the benefits of online campaigns, having improved their organic traffic by almost 25% in the past year thanks to a number of content campaigns receiving exposure online.

They have received coverage in Forbes, The Sun, The Mirror, Yahoo and the Daily Record among many others. Where they differ from Cashlady in their approach to content campaigns, is Ocean Finance made sure their campaigns were relevant to the financial sector, and thus gave them authority on the subject matter.

Campaigns in the past year include: ‘Instagram Wellbeing vs Reality: The Real Cost of Wellness #Ads’, ‘Pricing up Europe’s Most Popular Winter City Breaks’, ‘Where are the most successful Brits born?’, ‘The Price of Pop Culture in 2020’ and ‘Britain’s Best-Value Burger Cities: Revealed’.

Through using ahrefs and Majestic, we can see that these selected campaigns totalled 53 links from 50 referring domains, but the high quality of links through the outreach of some onsite content, simple infographics and relevance to the company make these a collection of impressively run digital campaigns.

Progressive Money

Again similar to Ocean Finance, chose to focus on the costs of everyday life when trying to build their brand and online presence. This means they can expand into several new sectors they might not previously have appealed to in their line of work, while still remaining relevant to their own industry.

One campaign in particular that caught my eye was ‘Most Valuable Pokemon Cards’. As well as harbouring fond memories of playing with Pokemon cards back in my school days, I thought it was a nice way of combing popular culture with a financial angle, and it was all tied in to be released at the same time as the Pokemon Detective Pikachu film.

The infographic might not have achieved as many links as competitors, but with eight referring domains and backlinks, it was a nice little piece and received good coverage in local news sites.

The blog page for Progressive Money has also featured in the press on regular occasions, with topics such as ‘How to enjoy a summer festival without spending too much’ also catching the eye, and expert comments from the company itself also providing vital brand exposure.

Something we have done…

We have experience of building links and gaining high-authority media coverage within the financial sector, having worked with Moneyboat in the last year to support their wider SEO aims and objectives. We were tasked with improving their backlink profile in order to help compete with some of the competitors highlighted, as well as raise awareness of the brand and generate traffic to specific pages.

To achieve this, we conducted a series of mini-campaigns, something we call an ‘Always On’ PR strategy to ensure a steady flow of new, authoritative linking domains to the Moneyboat website.

We produced campaigns in line with on-trend media topics, such as climate change, fast fashion and reports into the use of the new banknotes issues in the UK; Paper vs Polymer, True Environmental Impact of Fast Fashion.

The results included links from high ranking sites such as Forbes, Coin World, Fintech Finance, The Telegraph, Eco Textile and Green Energy News.

If you’d like to learn more about how Content Marketing and Digital PR can help you compete within the Finance sector, check out our content marketing services, or reach out here for a free, non-obligatory 1-to-1 session with our senior team!