How Our “Caravanning Hotspots” Campaign Earned Over 70 Pieces Of Press Coverage For GO Outdoors.

In this digital PR case study, we’ll explain the techniques we implemented to secure relevant results, including how the concept was formed, how we pitched to the press and, more importantly, how we landed coverage on national, regional and relevant industry publications.

The Client.

GO Outdoors was founded in Sheffield in 1998. Now with over 80 stores and 250 outdoor brands across 9 different activities, GO Outdoors has grown to become one of the UK’s biggest and most loved outdoor retail chains.

The company is well known around the UK for offering unbeatable in-store ranges of quality outdoor equipment and clothing. Its aim is to inspire everyone to get outdoors for less and love the outdoors as much as they do.

GO Outdoors and Digitaloft’s partnership began in 2021 after the retailer appointed the agency to increase organic visibility and brand awareness and position GO Outdoors as the leading name in the outdoor clothing and equipment market.

Our measure of success is press coverage in topical, relevant, and authoritative publications, which contributes to the site’s continued organic growth and brand awareness.

The Brief.

Since Digitaloft’s partnership with GO Outdoors began, we have been using a multitude of tactics, including data-driven digital PR campaigns, a proactive and ‘always on’ strategy, brand ambassador outreach, store opening announcements, and product PR. Combining all of these tactics into our strategy has helped us enhance our efforts and achieve relevant results at scale. 

Our main objectives are to earn editorial links and coverage while helping drive relevant traffic to the GO Outdoors site, increase revenue and position the brand as the leading market retailer on the SERPs.

We work closely with Go Outdoor’s SEO team to ensure our digital PR activity aligns with their wider SEO strategy and we focus on different keywords, priority pages and topic clusters throughout the year. We also work closely with Go Outdoor’s brand team to ensure all of our digital PR activity is on brand, and we also support the team by making sure we get the most out of their brand activity from a digital PR perspective.

In 2024, the caravanning category page on the GO Outdoors site was a priority focus ahead of the summer months. With this in mind, we knew the topic had to form the foundations of our ideation process for one of our hero campaigns.

The Strategy.

One of GO Outdoor’s key missions is to make people love the outdoors as much as they do, which is why we always have this at the heart of our campaign ideation.

Whether it’s a long weekend in a log cabin or a city break in a 5-star hotel, holiday options are abundant in the UK, but we know one of the most loved family-friendly options is a road trip in a caravan.

The Caravan and Motorhome Club represents over 1 million caravan, motorhome, campervan and trailer tent owners across the UK, and with caravanning products providing a key revenue stream for GO Outdoors, we knew we had to capitalise on this.

In this case study, we’re going to focus on one data-driven campaign that secured results at scale, Caravanning Hotspots. 

During the ideation process, we brainstorm ideas that resonate with GO Outdoors’ audience and create hooks that will appeal to journalists. In this case, caravanning hotspots struck the perfect balance and here’s why.

With staycations more popular than ever, we knew launching a timely campaign featuring some of the best UK holiday destinations would catch the attention of national and regional publications.

We also wanted the campaign to resonate with current climates. With the cost of living being a key consideration in many families’ spending decisions, the campaign included a ‘cost-effective’ section to cater for Brits on different budgets.

We have evidence to prove that data-driven campaigns that generate ‘best’ and ‘worst’ headlines get results. Combining this with a topic that would appeal to travel enthusiasts and families alike, all while promoting the UK outdoors, we knew this concept would be perfect for the GO Outdoors brand and would put them in front of their target market.

To reveal the best places in the UK to enjoy a caravan holiday, we ranked each location on several factors.

We used Campsites.co.uk to reveal the best caravanning locations in the UK and analysed the following factors:

• The average cost of a two-night stay
• The average user rating out of five.
• Pet friendliness.
• Availability of a games room.
• Availability of a swimming pool.
• Availability of entertainment.
• Availability of an on-site shop.
• Proximity to a beach.

We looked at all family-friendly caravan sites from our previous list to reveal the best places for family caravanning in the UK. Factors included:

• The average user rating out of five.
• Availability of a kids’ playground.
• Availability of a games room.
• Availability of a swimming pool.
• Availability of entertainment.
• Availability of an on-site shop.
• Proximity to a beach.

To reveal the best UK regions for caravanning, we built a seed list using the regions of each caravan park from our first list, looking at the following factors:

• The number of hiking trails using All Trails, calculated per 1,000 km2 of each region, was sourced from City Population.
• The number of attractions using Tripadvisor was calculated per 1,000 km2 of each region.
• The number of campsites sourced from Campsites was calculated per 1,000 km2 of each region.
• The average highest temperature and annual precipitation in July in each region’s largest settlement using Holiday Weather.

To reveal the best countries for caravanning, we looked at all EU countries, and sourced:

• The number of campsites in each country using Camping, calculated per 10,000 km2 using the most recently available figure for land area sourced from the World Bank.
• The percentage of campsites rated four stars and above, rounded to the nearest whole number, using Camping.
• The number of global Google searches in the last 12 months for caravan holidays in each country using Google Ads Keyword Planner.

Once the data had been collected, we took our findings and turned them into an engaging editorial asset. This asset utilised strategic internal linking to key pages (including the caravan product page) and was published on the GO Outdoors site to give journalists a reason to link back to the site.

The snippet below displays how we linked naturally to internal pages on the GO Outdoor site, this meant any links to the campaign page, not only drove authority to key pages but also referral traffic. The copy also helped advise readers on the best equipment to take on a camping trip.

We strategically launched this campaign in April, which meant that we had plenty of time to promote the findings ahead (and during) the peak summer months when caravan holidays are at their most popular. 

One key objective of this campaign was to place GO Outdoors in front of its target market, which meant that we identified relevant journalists and publications covering outdoor, travel, and family-related topics.

Conducting thorough research into the correct publications and journalists to target meant that we achieved relevant results at scale.

The Results.

To date, Caravanning Hotspots has earned 76 pieces of coverage, 33 of which link back to the campaign page or the GO Outdoors homepage.

Here are some of the standout links this campaign has secured:

Publication	DR
The Sun	90
Mirror	90
Express	89
Daily Record	81
Visit Somerset	66
Caravan Times	34

Ensuring we had a thorough ideation process and understood GO Outdoors’ target audience allowed us to land coverage on highly relevant publications, such as Caravan Times and Visit Somerset.

 

In addition to earning coverage in a range of industry, regional, and national publications, we worked closely with GO Outdoor’s SEO team to ensure that both of our strategies were aligned. This enabled us to identify the products GO Outdoors wanted to push, and we could then naturally link to them within the campaign copy.

This is a campaign that we can now refresh annually to provide journalists with the latest data on a topic relevant to the GO Outdoors brand.