How Our US Car Insurance Study Earned Relevant Links from 70+ Major Publications

Learn how we earned links from over 60 major US publications with a data-driven digital PR campaign for car subscription provider, FINN, that took a deep dive into the cost of car insurance in every state.

In this digital PR case study, you’ll learn how we came up with the idea, how it’s a perfect example of how top-of-the-funnel content can increase awareness and earn relevant links at the same time, and the top-tier press coverage we earned.

You’ll gain an insight into why regional hooks are so important to digital PR success in the US and how we leveraged a popular type of hook to gain attention from the media.

FINN’s mission is to “revolutionise conventional car ownership and make driving as easy as buying shoes online”.

They’re doing this with their instant, flexible car subscription, allowing you to get behind the wheel in your car of choice for an all-in monthly fee that includes everything except for fuel.

FINN engaged Digitaloft in mid-2023 to support their phase of rapid growth and entry into the US market (having been launched initially only in Germany) and is one of the agency’s retained digital PR clients.

Whilst the goal given to us by FINN was primarily to earn topically relevant links from top-tier media, the main business goal is, of course, to leverage the tactic to drive a growth in organic search performance; increasing rankings, traffic and revenue as a result of authoritative links.

Here’s a look at how we came up with the concept for FINN’s ‘State Insurance Report,’ one of a number of campaigns we’ve launched in 2023.

One of FINN’s main unique selling points is that their convenient car subscriptions are all-inclusive, offering motorists everything they need to get behind the wheel of a brand-new car (except fuel) for one single fee.

This means that the cost of insurance is built into the subscription.

Our brand research brought the importance of this point to our attention and helped us to discover just some of the frustrations that motorists across the US held around the cost (and hassle) of insurance.

Motorists have SO many questions about car insurance, and there’s plenty of evidence that it’s something that so many find to be a hassle. Here’s just one set of PAA (People Also Asked) results around this:

We knew we had a hook to FINN’s car subscription; the frustration of insurance.

And our ideation sessions saw us come up with the concept of a data study to compare the average cost of insurance in every state.

It sounds simple, but we had a few key hooks and headlines from this:

• The cost of insurance can change wildly from state to state
• A simpler solution is FINN’s car subscription, an all-inclusive option
• States LOVE to compare themselves to others; we had the perfect way to do this, hooked to an already frustrating topic

In the US press especially, state-by-state studies are a proven way to earn widespread coverage.

Why?

Because the US media landscape is nicely split into regional media both at the state level and the city level, and this makes for SO many opportunities to pitch relevant stories. And ones that also showcase how they compare to other states.

This sort of story gets people talking every single time!

We had the story, and we found the data.

And, we also found data for the average cost of insurance in each state going back to 2013.

This meant we could not only do a state-by-state comparison but also show how the average cost had increased in each state over the last 10 years.

AND, it meant we had sufficient data to project forward a further 10 years, to 2033, what the average cost of insurance could be if this continues to rise at the same rate.

This wasn’t in our original concept, but the perfect example of how ideas should always continue to be refined throughout production as more data is discovered.

When launching data-driven campaigns, we’re always looking for as many angles as possible from a concept, and by looking at data both by state and by time, we were able to maximise the stories we could tell.

Our data & insights team broke the campaign report down into a number of key sections, each highlighting the standout stories we wanted to tell:

• The states with the highest projected car insurance premiums by 2033
• The states with the highest car insurance premiums at the moment
• The states with the cheapest car insurance premiums at the moment
• The states with the highest increase in car insurance premiums over 10 years
• The states with the biggest decrease in car insurance premiums over 10 years

SO. MANY. STORIES.

Here’s the full campaign asset we launched, complete with rankings and maps to help visualise the stories:

The State Insurance Report, to date, has seen us earn 116 links from 72 referring domains, with these links having an average DR of 55.

Here’s a look at some of the standout links earned with this campaign:

Publication	DR
USA Today	92
Yahoo Finance	92
Daily Mail	92
AOL	91
iHeart	91
Consumer Reports	90
Fox Business	89
Palm Beach Post	81
Fox5 Atlanta	79
The Nevada Independent	75

By leveraging the power of a data-driven asset that told a story that hooked into an area of frustration that FINN’s offering could alleviate, we successfully earned authoritative links from more than 70 of the US’ top publications.

And with 6 of these publications with DR90 or higher, there’s no debating the quality of the links this campaign delivered.

By following a proven formula; taking a great idea, backing it up with data and producing an engaging asset, we told a story that journalists at multiple publications wanted to cover.

And this, and other campaigns we’ve launched, continue to have a positive impact on FINN’s overall organic visibility, with the brand enjoying consistent month-on-month growth, as well as a stable top-3 ranking for their key term of ‘car subscription’ in the US.