How We Secured 100 Linked Pieces of Press Coverage During Black Friday For the UK’s Largest Group of Outdoor Retail Brands

Learn how we earned over 100 links (44% more than the previous year) for JD Outdoor, a group of some of the biggest outdoor retail brands in the UK; GO Outdoors, Blacks, Millets and Fishing Republic.

Black Friday is one of the busiest times in digital PR, and it can be extremely hard to cut through the noise.

But as you’ll learn in this case study, our digital PR team was able to successfully earn highly authoritative and relevant links and coverage for our clients in one of the busiest seasons through a proactive Black Friday strategy.

JD Outdoor is a family of fascias that includes GO Outdoors, Blacks, Millets and Fishing Republic.

JD Outdoor first engaged Digitaloft in June 2021 to work across Millets on their Made for Adventure campaign. Fast forward to 2023, and we work across 4 brands, and this is our third Black Friday working together. 

For Black Friday 2023, our focus was across GO Outdoors, Blacks and Millets, and our primary goal was to earn topically relevant links and features for their Black Friday deals in national, regional and niche publications.

The main business goals during this period were to drive traffic to their site, increase sales, and position the brands as the go-to retailers in the outdoor space.

We know that the most important things to successfully secure Black Friday coverage are preparation and collaboration.

Even before we had a list of the final deals, we reached out to our key contacts to let them know we were expecting similar deals to 2022 to find out if they would be covering this year’s event!

This strengthened our strategy as it meant we opened up conversations with journalists early and started building our master Black Friday media list.

It also meant we had a definite ‘no’ list of who we knew weren’t covering Black Friday deals this year, meaning we could be as targeted as possible with our outreach.

We worked closely with the JD Outdoor team to ensure the Black Friday deals were confirmed before the event, meaning we could go out to press under embargo at the end of October. This meant that we were ahead of the game and could open up conversations and continue building relationships with key journalists early on in the Black Friday month! 

The response from journalists was extremely positive, and many thanked us for being so organised. Our first piece of Black Friday coverage went live just eight minutes after the embargo was lifted. 

We also had a shared database with the JD Outdoor team, so we focused on deals with high stock levels. Our communication was seamless between the two teams as it was important to be aware once products had sold out. 

As well as making sure we were prepared, we also utilised a range of tactics in our Black Friday digital PR strategy.

JD Outdoor also work with some amazing ambassadors such as Helen Skelton and Gethin Jones, and we utilised the ambassadors during our outreach which secured some brilliant links and coverage for the JD Outdoor fascias and ambassadors.

Helen Skelton posted a photo of the North Ridge Roaming Jacket from GO Outdoors on her Instagram, and the team newsjacked this by outreaching the discounted jacket to relevant press, resulting in links on MyLondon, ExaminerLive, MSN and more.

The team also proactively pushed out the Black Friday discount on Kate Middleton’s walking boots, securing links on Grazia, OK!, Marie Claire, Red and more for Millets.

Another tactic our Digital PR team used was utilising onsite reviews to encourage journalists to cover the products. We led with angles such as “This is what consumers are saying”, with this resulting in multiple links across the fascias.

Over the Black Friday period:

• We secured 127 links across the 3 retailers (this is a 44% increase on last year’s results)
• Our highly authoritative and relevant links had a high average DR of 77 
• We generated nearly 12,000 sessions from direct affiliate traffic

When we break this down across the fascias, it looks like this:

• 55 links earned
• Average DR76
• Secured links on publications such as Scottish Daily Express, BBC Good Food, Marie Claire, Leeds Live and Mountain Bike Rider.

• 35 links earned
• Average DR77
• Secured links on publications such as The Mirror, Country Living, Red, OK!, BBC Countryfile and Live for the Outdoors.

• 37 links earned
• Average DR76
• Secured links on publications such as The Mirror, T3, BBC Countryfile, Cornwall Live, Angling Times and Live for the Outdoors.

One thing to be aware of with Black Friday coverage is that the majority of the links are affiliate links, which pass very little SEO value. However, our main goal for Black Friday digital PR for JD Outdoor wasn’t to earn links that directly improve rankings but to generate an increase in referral traffic and sales.

Black Friday is an extremely busy time for brands, journalists and PRs, but with the right strategy in place, you can reap the rewards, and if you are a brand offering Black Friday deals you should be getting involved in the action!

If you want to find out more about whether or not Black Friday is really worth it, then read our Head of Digital PR, Chloe Bennett’s blog post on the topic.