Strategic PR Makes Web Content Management Firm Pop
WPEngine is an Austin, Texas-based company that was founded in 2010 to bring ease of use and open source freedom of WordPress to the masses. Its managed platform promises speed, scalability, security and support to empower content creators and developers at companies and agencies of all sizes to create, manage and optimize their WordPress websites with confidence.
Today, the company proudly displays on its website logos from such well-known organizations as American Eagle, Cost Plus World Market, Instacart, Pandora, Petco, Stanford University, Thomson Reuters, Tiffany & Co., Sleep Number, Thomson Reuters and Warby Parker.
But back in 2013, the company was much less visible and needed help with brand awareness.
Challenge
So, the company in 2013 set out to find a dynamic public relations partner that would help raise awareness about its brand and offerings among senior marketers and content professionals; increase its media coverage in relevant trade and internet media outlets and expand its media coverage to broader media outlets; and spotlight its spokespeople as thought leaders.
Strategy
The PR team started with an extensive media research audit of the client and its competitors. The results indicated that media coverage was mainly business focused – with limited thought leadership or stories on big issues and little in the way of compelling, visionary media coverage.
With this intelligence in hand, the PR agency and client joined forces on three main objectives. They would implement media campaigns to provide the company with an opportunity for thought leadership and allow the business to disrupt the media landscape within its industry. They would aim to increase awareness of the client’s spokespeople as authorities and visionaries in entrepreneurism, marketing, publishing and WordPress. And they would move forward to secure media coverage that would set the company apart from its competitors.
The public relations team developed a threefold approach to help the client do that. The strategic plan included quarterly thought leadership campaigns, monthly product news outreach to marketing and tech media outlets and a CEO/corporate public relations program. A key initiative to advance these efforts would be a third-party survey on the blogosphere.
The PR efforts were a success!
Marketing and technology media outlets featured the client’s new products and offerings. Bloomberg and Fox Business featured the client’s CEO. Thought leadership campaigns such as “GIF the Halls” created by the PR team earned coverage in all major local TV networks and such leading tech and general media outlets as CNET, Fast Company and NBC News. And coverage of the Blogosphere survey alone included CNET, Huffington Post and Yahoo Small Business.
These 2014 stories were among the top placements:
- CNET ran a story by Chris Matyszczk with the headline “America to Celebs: Shut Up Blogging About Products” and called our work “a remarkable piece of research”
- CNET’s online circulation at the time was 24,262,143
- Huffington Post published an article by reporter Liat Kornowski titled “No One Cares About Celebrity Endorsement, Says Study Likely to Freak Kim Kardashian Out”
- HuffPost’s online circulation at the time was 44,272,773
- MediaPost shortly after that came out with a Jack Loechner report titled “Consumers Reading Blogs from Favorite Brands” that included a CEO quote and many of our stats
- MediaPost’s online circulation at the time was 1,746,439
Campaign Results
Pieces of coverage: Coverage of the blogosphere survey alone led to media coverage on the CNET, Huffington Post, Yahoo Small Business and other news sites.
UVM: More than 78,894,506 UMVs in just one month!
