Conducting a marketing audit for your business sounds daunting and stressful. And with so many different elements involved, concerns about getting it right can really pile on the pressure.
But it doesn’t have to be that way – an audit is a great way to remain proactive. Whether that’s by identifying new opportunities, pinpointing inefficiencies or providing clarity on where to focus your investments.
And what’s more, these aren’t reserved for any specific business type. Whether you’re a startup or a long-established enterprise, your business is sure to benefit either way.
In this guide, we’ll cover:
Essentially, we’ll break it down step-by-step so it’s less of big task and more of a big win!
You’ve probably seen plenty of articles claiming to reveal the secret formula for a successful marketing strategy. They sound convincing, but they often make things more confusing than they need to be. No wonder people are put off by the thought of analysing their marketing activities!
Put simply, a marketing audit is a comprehensive analysis of your business’s strategies and activities. Its main purpose is to identify what works, what doesn’t and where you can improve efforts to maximise your ROI.
It’s like a health check-up: you want to remain proactive rather than waiting for something to go wrong and then have to react in a more urgent and less thought-out manner.
A marketing audit is used to:
Now that we’ve established what a marketing audit is and what it’s for, it’s time to establish what goes into one.
Depending on how granular you want to go, and how comprehensive your current activities are, it can include hundreds of elements. However, to get started you only need to focus on the main areas.
This is your opportunity to look inwards and see if your activity is aligned with your overall business goals. This includes:
This is where you look to the wider marketing landscape and how it will affect your own activities. This includes:
Next, you analyse your quantifiable data to build a clearer picture of how your current marketing is performing. This includes:
And last, but by no means least, you look at how you execute your efforts and whether they are effective. This includes:
We always recommend conducting a marketing audit for your business at least once a year at a minimum, but bi-annually is even better.
However, there are some indicators that will tell you if you should be conducting one sooner than you thought.
A marketing audit will evaluate if your activity is effective and ensure all your decisions are backed by data.
If there is any sort of notable shift that could affect your strategy, it’s always worth doing an audit to make sure any new decisions will bring positive change or growth.
A mini audit may be enough
Depending on the reason for your audit, it may be that a mini audit is the best way to go. Instead of auditing your entire marketing ecosystem, you can just evaluate a specific area that may need changing or improving.
A marketing audit isn’t just a process for gathering data. If done correctly it will provide a whole host of benefits.
Clarity
One of the main benefits of conducting an audit is that it provides you with objective clarity.
It will show you what is working and what isn’t, and thus where you should focus your efforts next to maximise returns.
It can be easy to get caught up in your own marketing, and if you don’t take a step back to evaluate your own activity it’s easy to focus on the wrong things.
Internal alignment
An audit can be a great way to communicate your performance and activity to the wider business.
Whether that’s showing your board how your work is contributing to the overall company goals or ensuring that everyone in the marketing department is on the same page.
This open communication means everyone can understand your decisions and their reasoning, so you should face less resistance when pitching new approaches.
Improved ROI
By understanding which channels are effective, and which aren’t, you can identify exactly where to focus your budgets.
Getting improved results doesn’t always require additional spending. Sometimes it can be a case of concentrating what you already have on areas where you know it will pay off.
Improved customer understanding
Often, audits will uncover plenty of information about your customers. Whether this is their preferences, behaviours or pain points.
This new information will help steer your approach and create more targeted and effective strategies.
Risk mitigation
By conducting regular audits, you can identify and fix any potential issues before they become full-blown problems.
Whether that’s technical issues harming your search engine visibility, or branding that confuses your audience. By identifying this early you can nip it in the bud.
Future proofing
Conducting regular marketing audits will also provide you with a roadmap for continued growth and success.
It allows you to measure the tangible impact your work has on the business and prioritise next steps.
Just as the results of your audit will be completely unique to you, the way you conduct it will be too.
It all comes down to your current activity and your business priorities.
By regularly evaluating your marketing, you’ll have objective data to pull from which will inform your strategies in the clearest way possible.
So, whether you’re a start-up looking to pave the way in your market, or an enterprise looking to boost growth, this isa great place to start.
Ready to improve your marketing strategy? Why not get in touch with our specialist team to see how we can help.
It’s no secret that the recent US tariffs are having a major effect on the manufacturing industry.
With the additional financial pressure, many businesses will be looking for places to cut costs, and marketing is often the first to be scaled back.
We’d recommend a note of caution: marketing isn’t just a nice-to-have, and there are many cost-effective ways to ensure your manufacturing marketing boosts long-term growth, even in tough economic times.
In this guide we’ll cover:
It’s common to see businesses approach their marketing strategy as a more ‘ad hoc’ activity. In reality, this will be your roadmap when it comes to interacting with customers, growing your audience and ultimately increasing your sales.
When it comes to saving on costs, a clear strategy will help you map out exactly what you want to spend and where. If you don’t have an overarching plan and budget in place, you risk spending money on ineffective channels and losing track of how much you’re spending.
To put your plans into action, a good place to start is with your brand strategy. Once you have established exactly what your brand is, and who your audience is, you can move on to the wider marketing plan.
A good marketing plan will include:
With that established, you can move forward with confidence, knowing that all your marketing efforts will be underpinned by clear goals and a solid plan.
The manufacturing industry has traditionally relied on trade shows, print advertising, and relationship-based sales to reach customers and bring in more revenue.
While these methods still have their place, digital marketing is now an essential addition to any successful manufacturing marketing strategy in 2026.
Digital marketing can seem daunting as it encapsulates so much, but don’t feel like you need to tackle it all right away. Especially with smaller marketing teams, you need to be able to prioritise the best, most cost-effective approaches to start.
Organic SEO is the process of getting your website to appear higher up on search engines when potential customers search for terms relating to your business or industry.
Unlike paid search, organic SEO is a free marketing method that can generate more traffic to your site.
By creating content and pages that use optimised keywords, you’re telling the search engine algorithm what your content is about and the specific search terms it should rank for.
For example, if you were a packaging manufacturer and you wanted more people to find out about your shelf-ready packaging products, you would use ‘shelf-ready packaging’ as your main keyword.
This means dotting the term throughout the content on that product’s page, along with other related keywords, so you can tell the search engine that when someone looks for this service it should show your content.
The key to successful SEO is selecting keywords that have a high search volume (so plenty of people are looking for the term), and low competition (not many other businesses are ranking for it so you have a good chance of getting your page to the top!).
Google Analytics is a free platform created by Google that can show you all the data relating to your website and your website’s traffic.
It will give you information on:
And that’s just a few of the things it can do!
By looking at your website’s data you can form a much stronger marketing strategy that reaches the right people at the right time with the right content.
Social media marketing can be organic (no direct cost) or paid. The main difference here is when you put money behind your social media content, it will get put in front of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more people.
However, organic social media marketing is still incredibly important and will help build a new audience, foster trust with your prospects, and help you become an authority in your industry.
The key with social media marketing is to find out where your typical customers spend their time. For example, B2B companies often find the majority of their audience operates on LinkedIn. Whereas a lot of B2C organisations may find their audience is more active on Meta (Facebook and Instagram).
By ensuring you’re active on the right channels, you’re increasing your chances of prospects seeing your business. You’re also saving time and resources that would be wasted on platforms which won’t give you a return.
The type of content you post really depends on your business, but some good places to start are:
And the number one rule of making the most out of your social media: stay consistent. Ideally you want to be posting at least five times per week, but if that’s too much to start with, try once every week and build up from there.
These are just a few elements of digital marketing that should make a big difference to your business with little to no budget (especially if you haven’t got these strategies in place already).
If you want to learn more, you can get in touch with us and we would be happy to help!
Email marketing is a great way of getting your message directly in front of people. Where social media can be a more general approach, email marketing is more direct and targeted.
The key to a successful email marketing campaign is to have strong audience segmentation. This means grouping all your contacts into specific areas i.e. you may have a group of decision makers, you may have a group of prospects in a specific industry, or you may have a group of contacts who have been on your website before.
The possibilities for audience segmentation are endless, especially if you have large contact lists, but you need to make sure each segment is built for a specific purpose.
For example, if you create an audience segment of people who have visited your website but didn’t make a purchase, these would be the perfect prospects to put in an email campaign with a special offer or discount. This is because they have shown intent in looking at your business and your services, but they didn’t convert.
You can also run email campaigns that are more generalised, like an email newsletter. This is a great way to remind your contacts of you and your business without being too sales driven. You can run these monthly or quarterly, and it means you can keep your audiences updated on any news, offers or new products you may have.
The cost implications of this form of marketing can vary. You can do it organically for free, but this will take more time and manual effort. The other option is using a specialised email marketing platform like Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign. This costs more but means you can keep all of your contacts and emails in one place, and automate your email sequences.
As mentioned previously, companies in the manufacturing industry often still rely on print materials and trade shows to attract new business.
But with the rise in digital marketing, standing out online can be a challenge. This is where video marketing can be incredibly valuable.
According to a 2025 Wyzowl report, 93% of marketers say video marketing has given them a good return on investment (ROI).
Video marketing can serve a range of purposes; from increasing brand awareness and engagement, through to boosting bottom-line sales. And there are plenty of video types to choose from! To name a few:
Video marketing can seem daunting, but once you have a plan for your content laid out, getting started is easy! In fact, it’s often the shorter videos that perform better online in terms of engagement.
Video marketing is a key player in standing out in your market and can be the big differentiator between you and your competitors.
Now that we’ve covered some of the main marketing strategies you can use for your manufacturing business, you may be wondering which one is the best.
The key here is to understand that this isn’t a tick box exercise. It isn’t about doing each activity once and expecting the results to pour in overnight. You need to be applying each strategy consistently and in tandem with one another.
Each point has a different purpose and benefit:
But the main takeaway is that there are plenty of ways to improve your marketing approach that don’t need to break the bank.
If you would like to find out more about how we can help you with your marketing strategy, get in touch with our experts and we’d be happy to help!
As Google evolves, more searches end without a click, with users finding answers directly on the results page. This shift leaves brands to compete for visibility on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) in ways they’ve never faced before.
This guide will help you understand what zero-click searches are, why they’re a critical part of a search marketing strategy, and how to optimise for them effectively. With proven strategies and expert, up-to-date insights, you’ll be equipped to thrive in a zero-click SERP.
A zero-click search is a search query where the user finds the answer directly on the SERP without clicking on any links. This happens when Google or other search engines display information in enriched features.
A zero-click search occurs when search engines provide answers directly in the SERP, eliminating the need to click a link. Instead of traditional organic results, zero-click searches use features like:
For businesses, success is no longer just about clicks but securing visibility within these dominant SERP features.
Zero-click searches aren’t new, but their prevalence has grown exponentially as Google prioritises quick answers and leverages Generative AI to create a smoother, self-contained user experience.
Featured snippets, knowledge panels, and People Also Ask sections have long dominated the top search positions. However, the introduction of AI-powered features has amplified this trend dramatically:
User Behaviour Shift: Users are being trained to expect a synthesised, direct answer at the top of the SERP, accelerating the shift away from clicking on blue links.
Zero-click searches may feel like a roadblock to website traffic, but they also present an opportunity to build trust and authority with answers that serve users directly.
The new data confirms that for many informational queries, a massive traffic drop is the reality. The median external clicks per AI Mode session were found to be zero.
However, this click reduction is not uniform:
This means success is no longer defined by CTR, but by brand presence and influence within the AI-generated answer. Businesses featured in zero-click content often experience:
Adapting to zero-click search requires a fundamental shift to Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). Your goal is to be the authoritative source that the AI chooses to synthesise.
1. Target Featured Snippets & AI Summaries
To increase your chances of appearing in both traditional snippets and AI-generated summaries:
2. Optimise for People Also Ask (PAA) Boxes
PAA boxes offer critical secondary visibility, and are a major input for AI answers.
3. Leverage Local SEO for Local Packs
For local businesses, appearing in Google’s Local Pack is essential. These results are less impacted by AI Summaries than informational queries.
4. Use Structured Data Markup (Schema)
Structured data (schema markup) helps search engines and AI models understand your content better, increasing the likelihood of being featured in rich results. Implement:
Zero-click searches aren’t a passing trend, they are the future default. Traditional SEO strategies focused solely on driving volume traffic no longer guarantee success.
The future of SEO will lean heavily on:
Yes, ranking for zero-click searches is essential. While you may not get a click on a definition, you gain:
The Key Takeaway: Zero-click is rewriting the rules of engagement. While it reduces organic traffic volume, it increases the value of the traffic that remains and makes brand building directly on the SERP the new competitive advantage. Adapting now is key to staying competitive.
Link building has changed a lot over the years, and in many ways it has ‘grown up; in the past largely viewed as a way to spam low quality sites with a view of gaining high quality traffic, the term is now used to incorporate a wide range of tactics all with the aim of achieving coverage (and links) for websites.
There are some ‘white hat link building tactics’ and there are some ‘black hat link building tactics’, over time the white hat ones have become more impactful and they are the ones we will be looking at today. White hat tactics are ones that will never result in a manual action penalty in Google and are not against guidelines, black hat refers to several tactics (think buying loads of backlinks and spamming directories) that could get you deindexed due to policy violations.
If you are looking to learn about black hat link building, then I suggest checking out this guide from Linkbuilder.io which goes into plenty of detail. If not, then keep reading to learn more about link building and how to do it the right way.
Source: Wikipedia
In 2025, link building is firmly quality-first. Search engines prioritise links that show topical relevance, authority and user value, while ignoring low-quality ones. Digital PR has become a leading strategy, with brands using campaigns, studies and expert commentary to win high-authority placements. There is also a growing focus on earning links through assets like tools, guides and visuals. Measurement has shifted too, with marketers assessing not just referring domains but also the traffic and visibility links bring. The emphasis is now on sustainable, brand-aligned strategies.
Judging the value of the link has, much like the rest of SEO, evolved over time. For many, judging the value of a link begins and ends at Domain Authority. This metric was developed by the SEO company Moz as a way of judging how likely a website is to rank in search based on quality, quantity and relevance.
Whilst it is a great metric and in many instances driving links based purely on it can still generate links that move the needle, there are a number of other metrics useful when it comes to sorting a good link from a bad link.
Page Authority / URL Rating (PA/UR): strength of the specific page linking to you.
Relevance: how closely the linking site and page match your topic.
Traffic: estimated organic visits to the linking page or domain.
Anchor text: the wording used in the link and whether it is natural and relevant.
Co-occurring text: the text that appears around your anchor text to add context
Placement: whether the link sits in the body content, navigation, footer, or sidebar.
Follow vs. nofollow / sponsored: whether search engines will pass equity through the link.
Link diversity: whether the link comes from a unique domain or repeats an existing one.
Outbound link profile: how many other sites the page links to and their quality.
Indexation: whether the linking page is indexed in Google and can pass value.
Engagement signals: likelihood that users will actually click the link (context, visibility).
The Varn Score takes into account the above metrics in combination (with a big focus on relevance) and acts as a scoring system when we are conducting outreach and also looking to measure the results of our work. It’s also a very important first step to take before you dive into the actual link building tactical playbook.
Okay, we have the fundamentals of why links are important and the tools needed to judge good links from bad. Now lets dive into the actual link building tactics we use to earn coverage for all our lovely clients:
Digital PR campaigns
Digital PR is one of the most impactful link building tactics because it generates authoritative, editorial links from major publications. By creating newsworthy campaigns, original data studies, or expert commentary, you can secure links that not only improve rankings but also build brand visibility and trust. These links are hard for competitors to replicate, making them especially valuable. Read the full guide to digital PR here.
Update for 2025: Another important element to consider when conducting digital PR is AI citability; many news sites are opting to block AI crawlers from their site, so if you have coverage on these sites, they may not be as impactful when it comes to earning coverage in AI (which isn’t to say you shouldn’t pitch to them, just make sure you are not only pitching to them!).
Resource page link building
Authoritative sites often publish curated resource lists. By identifying a page that is missing your guide, tool, or explainer, you can pitch it as a valuable addition. Since these links are highly contextual and relevant, they often bring both SEO equity and referral traffic from users seeking practical resources.
Listicle link building
Listicles (“Top 10 X”, “Best of Y” types) are popular and shareable, making them fertile ground for link placements. You can pitch to be included in relevant listicles or build your own list-style asset that others cite and link back to you. These are also getting increasingly cited within AI.
Broken link building
This tactic works by helping site owners fix broken outbound links. Once you find a 404 link on a relevant site, you can suggest your own up-to-date content as a replacement. Because you are solving a problem for the webmaster, the pitch feels helpful and increases your chances of success.
Wikipedia / authoritative reference links
Contribute to Wikipedia (or authoritative reference sites) by adding citations to your content in places where it genuinely adds value. These links are nofollow in many cases, but they can generate exposure and serve as a seed for other sites to link to you
Skyscraper technique
The skyscraper approach involves creating a significantly better version of an existing piece of content that already has backlinks. Improvements could include fresher data, deeper analysis, better visuals, or a clearer structure. When you contact sites linking to the older resource, you can present your page as a stronger alternative. Our article on how to write content that gets links can be found here.
Link placements
This method involves working directly with bloggers or publishers to optimise their existing content in exchange for adding your link. Often this includes updating statistics, improving copy, or suggesting helpful resources that enhance their article. When done transparently with relevance in mind, it is a win-win that strengthens their page and earns you a contextual backlink.
Unlinked brand mentions
Websites often mention a brand without linking to its homepage or relevant resource. By tracking these mentions, you can request a link so readers can click through to the original source. Since the site already acknowledges your brand, the conversion rate on these outreach requests is usually high.
Reverse image search link building
If your visuals, charts, or infographics are used online without credit, you can identify these cases through reverse image search tools. A polite outreach message requesting attribution often results in a backlink to the original source. This tactic is particularly effective if you regularly produce shareable visual assets. Read more about this tactic and unlinked mentions here.
Guest posting
Publishing guest articles on other sites allows you to position yourself as an authority while earning a backlink. It is most effective on niche-relevant, high-quality blogs where your contribution adds real value. Overuse or mass guest posting can dilute results, so focus on select placements with strong editorial standards.
Local and community sponsorships
Sponsoring local events, charities, or community projects is a straightforward way to earn links from trusted sites. These backlinks may not carry high authority but they are excellent for local SEO signals and for building relationships with community stakeholders.
Directory and citation links
Foundational links from directories and citation platforms help establish legitimacy. They are especially important for local businesses to reinforce NAP (Name, Address, Phone) consistency across the web. While these links are low impact for rankings, they are useful for credibility and discovery.
We now have the tactics down, it’s time to get into the outreach process. Over time tools have greatly scaled the market when it comes to emailing and cold outreach, getting the right balance between personalisation and a wide enough pool of contacts is crucial. I have detailed a general process below and will call out specific elements where there are differences between the tactics (e.g prospecting for broken links is very different to prospecting for digital PR contacts).
Step 1: Define the goal
Decide what you want to achieve with your outreach: for example, securing backlinks for a new guide, reclaiming brand mentions, or getting included in a listicle.
Step 2: Identify target pages
Use tools (Ahrefs, Semrush, Google search operators, reverse image search) to find websites or pages that are relevant to your content and suitable for a link.
Step 3: Qualify and prioritise prospects
Evaluate the potential sites using metrics like domain authority, topical relevance, traffic, and outbound link quality. Prioritise the ones that offer the highest value. This is where the different tactics have their own nuances:
Digital PR: If you are pitching a story, find the right journalist contacts based on the content you are pitching.
Resource link building: Find the content online by using modifiers in Google (keyword inurl: resources keyword “statistics”). From this look for the relevant webmasters and start to gather contact details.
Guest posting: Find sites online that are open to guest content (search with modifiers containing guest blogs etc) and create a list of good quality websites (considering the link evaluation criteria we outlined earlier).
Step 4: Find contact details
Locate the most appropriate contact person (editor, webmaster, journalist, blogger) and capture their email address, LinkedIn, or submission form details.
Step 5: Prepare personalisation hooks
Read their content and note specific details you can mention — recent posts, broken links, outdated data, or places your resource adds value.
Step 6: Draft tailored outreach messages
Use short, clear, and polite emails that explain the benefit to them and their readers. Avoid generic templates; adapt your core script for each outreach type.
Step 7: Send the first email
Keep the subject line concise and the body focused on value. Include one call to action (add, update, include, or cite your resource).
Step 8: Follow up
If no reply after 3–5 days, send a polite nudge with a slightly different angle. Limit follow-ups to two or three in total to avoid spamming. As part of managing your outreach pipeline, it’s also essential to validate email addresses periodically to ensure your messages actually reach the intended recipients. High bounce rates can weaken your sender reputation and limit deliverability, which means even the best outreach strategy won’t perform if your contact list is outdated. Using a free email address verification tool helps maintain a clean prospect list and improves the overall success rate of your link building campaigns.
Step 9: Track responses and outcomes
Log replies, positive responses, rejections, and successful link placements. Use a spreadsheet or outreach tool (Pitchbox, BuzzStream, Hunter) to stay organised.
Step 10: Build relationships
When you secure a link, thank the contact. Stay connected by sharing their content, offering future help, or engaging with them on social platforms. This builds long-term value beyond a single link.
Step 11: Measure results
Review link metrics (referring domains, anchor text, page traffic) and track the overall impact on rankings and visibility. Use this data to refine future outreach.
When it comes to link targeting and forecasting, you can take industry standard benchmarks and look to extrapolate out link targets from there. Say for example you have 100 prospects, and a 20% open rate with your email outreach (which is a pretty good one to aim for when it comes to this cold outbound approach).
From that you have 20 responses, great. If you can convert 25% of them, you have 5 links, on the low end and if you can convert 50% that’s 10 on the higher end. So you know if you email 100 prospects every month, you can expect between 5-10 links a month on average. Of course if you spend more time personalising each email, there is every chance you can get those percentages higher, but it’s a good methodology to work from.
Another way to forecast results for resource pages and inbound link building can be done with a software tool like SEMRush. If you are conducting a skyscraper campaign, you know that a certain bit of content may get a certain number of links a month. If you can get ahead of that competitor content, you can start to get a gauge on the number of links that you can expect to acquire.
Link building can be a time consuming process, but with the right partner you can scale it and achieve some pretty remarkable results. If you want to learn more about our process and how to leverage agentic AI to get your campaigns driving the best results then get in touch with a member of the off-page SEO team today.
Digital PR is the practice of using creative campaigns, content and outreach to earn online coverage that builds brand authority and improves search visibility (and also drives more awareness with LLMs and AI search).
This guide is written for marketers who want to grow their brand online, founders looking to make a splash in their industry and in-house SEOs keen to strengthen their off-page strategy. Below you will find a clear framework for building a digital PR strategy, practical tactics you can try straight away, tips on how to measure success, handy templates to save you time and real examples that show what works in practice. We will cover the trends in the industry for 2025, how you can go about creating a digital PR strategy and the tactics and campaign formats that can be part of that strategy.
A digital PR agency is a specialist marketing partner that helps brands build authority, visibility and trust online through creative campaigns and targeted outreach. Unlike traditional PR agencies that focus mainly on print, TV and radio coverage, digital PR agencies concentrate on online publications, news sites, blogs, podcasts, influencers and social media.
A strong digital PR agency will also connect activity directly to measurable business outcomes. That includes improving search rankings through earned links, increasing referral traffic from coverage, and building brand reputation by securing placements in relevant outlets. Many agencies work closely with SEO teams to align campaigns with keyword targets, ensuring digital PR not only builds awareness but also supports long-term organic growth. At Varn, our digital PR and content is backed into the technical and wider SEO strategies we implement for clients, ensuring any messaging and campaigns are aligned to SEO and AI optimisation goals.
As stated the industry is moving beyond just links, with brand mentions online, coverage in high-authority media and brand sentiment becoming more intertwined with digital PR. This creates a melting pot if benefits that many brands proactive in the space are taking advantage of:
Proof point: Digital PR is the most common modern method of ‘link-building’, being used by 67% of marketers.
Proof point: Nearly 4 in 5 marketers say earned media is now more effective than traditional advertising methods when it comes to creating a point of difference.
Proof point: A typical PR placement can drive 100 to 500 referral visits, while high-performing ones often exceed 1,000 visits, directly contributing to conversions and revenue growth.
At its core, digital PR is a creative discipline but we find that a combined approach of systems and creative space develops the best ideas for our client. Broadly speaking all of our campaigns tend to follow the below structure with bespoke developments for more creative/off the wall campaigns:
Decide what you want to achieve, whether that is more backlinks, stronger rankings for a set of keywords, or broader brand visibility.
Understand who you want to reach and build journalist, influencer and customer personas to guide content choices and pitching style.
Brainstorming (where you use collective minds to ‘storm’ a subject) campaign concepts that are newsworthy, relevant to your industry and engaging enough to spark coverage. This can include seasonal hooks, data studies or creative stunts.
Back up your idea with credible insights. This might involve running a survey, pulling figures from open datasets, or combining multiple sources into a unique story. Some stories may be more creative, so be mindful that in some instances less is more.
Turn your research or idea into a tangible asset such as a press release, infographic, video, article or interactive tool that journalists can use.
Pitch your story to the right journalists and influencers, share it across owned channels, and consider repurposing it for social media or other platforms.
Track results such as links earned, referral traffic, rankings and brand mentions. Feed these insights into the next campaign to refine what works best.
We find it is always good to have some campaigns within your editorial calendar that are repeatable over longer periods of time, not only is it quicker to update an older campaign instead of launching an entirely new one, you can also reuse the same (updated) media lists and tactics. A lot of digital PR is about timing, and we have had great results over a 2-3 year period with a campaign or idea that didn’t meet the coverage target in the first iteration, it’s all about thinking long term.
Key tip: When planning ideation sessions or shaping client campaign pitches, bring in a mix of team members but remember that everyone’s brain works differently. Some people prefer doing research in advance, while others thrive on thinking in the moment. One person might come up with their best idea on a walk, another over a coffee or even a pint. The point is, variety matters, so give space for different working styles within the group.
Whilst it is difficult to definitively say a given tactic is better than another there are some that we have had greater success with at Varn and some that have better results in certain industries.
When to use: Best for campaigns that need credibility, unique angles, or strong SEO impact. Data-driven content often performs well with journalists because it offers evidence rather than opinion.
How to pitch: Lead with one standout finding that is easy to summarise in a headline. Provide the full dataset and methodology so journalists can trust the source. Offer visual assets like charts or infographics to make the story easier to publish.
Link target: Whitepapers, landing pages, or blog posts that house the full data set or interactive content.
Risk watchouts: Ensure sample sizes are statistically valid and methodology is transparent. Weak or misleading data can harm brand trust. Always add a notes-to-editors section with research detail.
When to use: Effective for ecommerce, retail, or lifestyle brands looking to get products in front of audiences with high purchase intent. Particularly useful around peak trading periods such as Christmas or seasonal launches.
Getting your brand mentioned online is crucial and for certain industries, reviews make all the difference. We run guest stay campaigns with Woolacombe Bay Holiday Parks which are great at generating online reviews and coverage which is crucial for LLM appearances.
How to pitch: Offer products to journalists and influencers with clear gifting policies. For major launches, consider offering an embargoed press pack or exclusive early access. Provide high-quality images and usage guidelines.
Link target: Direct product pages or collection hubs where conversions can be tracked.
Risk watchouts: Be transparent with gifting to comply with ASA and advertising standards. Avoid over-pitching to irrelevant journalists which can damage long-term relationships.
When to use: Works well for service-led businesses or industries where authority and expertise build trust. Use proactive thought leadership for planned campaigns, and reactive commentary (newsjacking) when timely events arise.
How to pitch: Build a bank of expert quotes that can be quickly tailored to breaking news. Proactively reach out with unique perspectives or data that add value to current debates. Media training ensures spokespeople stay on message.
Link target: Author profile pages, company leadership pages, or service pages that reflect the expertise being highlighted.
Risk watchouts: Commentary must be relevant and aligned with brand positioning. Jumping on the wrong story can appear opportunistic. Always fact-check and align with compliance or legal teams before publication.
When to use: Ideal for squeezing more value from existing assets. Repurposing works when you have research, blogs, or thought leadership that could perform better in a new format or reach new audiences.
How to pitch: Share an updated or reformatted asset with media or on owned platforms, making sure it feels fresh. For example, turn a blog into an infographic for journalists, a LinkedIn carousel for professionals, or a short video for social media.
Our client BullionVault has had tremendous success with this, updating an infographics page with interactive content on the gold buying habits of the world’s central banks which acts as great content for outreach and is now driving organic links too.
Link target: Resource hubs, campaign landing pages, or evergreen blog posts that collate formats together.
Risk watchouts: Repurposed content must add value. A simple rehash risks being ignored. Ensure visuals are accessible and branded subtly so they appeal to journalists.
When to use: Strong for campaigns targeting consumer audiences, especially in fashion, lifestyle, food, and fitness. Social content helps amplify earned coverage and can drive additional referral traffic.
How to pitch: Create detailed briefs for influencers and creators that outline the campaign narrative, disclosure requirements, and preferred hashtags. Pair influencer activity with earned coverage for a wider footprint. Use UTM links to measure performance.
Link target: ecommerce collection or lead generation pages.
Risk watchouts: Always comply with disclosure rules and platform guidelines. Vet influencers for audience authenticity and brand alignment. Track results carefully to avoid inflated metrics from bots or fake engagement.
Top tip: With all of the above campaign formats, be sure to consider timing and seasonality, some campaigns can work really well in the summer whereas others may be more suited to the winter. If you are looking for insights into what the press are writing about and how you can take advantage with a digital PR campaign, get in touch.
Coming up with campaign ideas that cut through the noise is one of the hardest but most rewarding parts of digital PR. Strong ideas tend to share the same qualities: they are timely, relevant to the brand, easy to explain in a headline, and backed by credible data or insight.
Techniques to spark ideas
Pre-pitch testing
Before investing too much time in production, run ideas through a filter:
At Varn, we find scoring ideas also helpful when it comes to working out which campaigns to run; some may be more ‘linkable’ e.g the BullionVault example worked well because lots of people were after useful content and found it through Google, whereas others may be more ‘newsworthy’ e.g our campaign on the impact of weather forecasts on the hospitality industry with our client Woolacombe Bay Holiday Parks landed with regional journalists due to topical relevance and timing around the bank holidays.
Idea scorecard
Scoring ideas against these factors helps keep creativity grounded in strategy, ensuring you back the stories most likely to deliver coverage and links.
Even the best ideas fail without effective outreach. Successful campaigns depend on building relationships and pitching stories in ways that respect how journalists work.
Start by mapping beat lists (what journalists are covering) for each journalist rather than chasing high Domain Authority sites alone. Relevance is always more valuable than size. Consider offering exclusives to top-tier outlets or a “first look” to a journalist you want to build trust with.
Subject lines should be clear and concise, ideally under 60 characters, and highlight the hook. Keep the body of the email to five lines:
Always attach or link to high-quality visuals, quotes, or embed codes. Make life easy for the journalist to say yes.
Factor in time zones if pitching internationally. For big announcements, use embargoes so journalists can prepare. Limit yourself to one or two follow-ups—more than that risks damaging relationships. If you are confident the story is a good fit and haven’t had a reply, a polite phone call can sometimes make the difference.
Every outlet has its own style, image rights policy, and linking rules. Some will add a link as standard, others require you to request attribution. Check house styles before pitching and tailor your submission accordingly.
Digital PR must be measured in a way that reflects its broader impact, not just the number of backlinks gained. A structured approach to reporting helps prove value to stakeholders and improves future campaigns.
Not all coverage is created equal. Assess:
Look at how coverage influences search performance by tracking:
Measure what the coverage delivers to your site:
Although PR and digital PR are not a direct performance marketing channel, it can support commercial outcomes. Useful approaches include:
Set up dashboards so reporting is consistent and visible:
By measuring across these levels you demonstrate the full value of digital PR, from awareness and authority right through to commercial impact.
Has the above got you interested in running a digital PR campaign for your brand? Great. But there is one thing worth noting, it takes time, expertise and persistence to create and then land coverage with a great campaign. If you are looking to work with an expert partner that can earn coverage that supports your business and resulting SEO/GEO goals then contact a member of the Varn team today.
In the world of SEO it’s easy to get caught up in the metrics, links, conversions, clicks, impressions, it’s a cliché, but there are people behind all of these, and when creating content, keeping this front of mind is crucial. In the world of link-building and digital PR having content and a story that has genuine interest from human readers makes all the difference when it comes to landing coverage. So how do you go about creating content that people actually want to link to? Well if you keep reading, you may just find out.
Relevance is one of the most important factors in a modern SEO approach, yet it is often where brands make their first mistake. Too many businesses jump straight into competitor backlink analysis without first considering their own goals, ambitions, and key objectives.
By taking the time to understand your priorities, you can ensure that every SEO and content decision aligns with your wider business strategy. For example, imagine you are a clothing retailer specialising in the climbing niche. A competitor may be generating significant links to their general outerwear pages through a strong digital PR campaign. While you can certainly learn from their approach, replicating it may not deliver the best return if outerwear is not a core focus for your business.
If your board has identified climbing footwear as a high-priority area, then creating and promoting content that earns links in this category will achieve far more impact. This creates the sweet spot — valuable links combined with strong relevance between the content being linked to and your overall business goals.
But how do you identify the types of content with the highest link potential?
The classics are classic for a reason, competitor backlinks are a great place to start when it comes to ideation around content to create. Look at the competitors with the most quality backlinks (do not just look at domain authority, consider traffic, relevance and other metrics too) and see what pages and areas of the sites those links are pointing to. Cross-reference this with your current content (LLMs can speed up this process) and give loads of context around the links you want to build, angles you can go down as a business and any other areas you think could develop the best response. Once you have this list of linkable content from the competition, you can get to work.
Bonus tip: Use a tool like SEMRush to analyse when the links have come in for the content, it will give you an idea of potential (which can help when it comes to making a business case for activity) but also show potential seasonal trends to get ahead of (if a particular bit of content gets loads of links in Jan for a competitor every year, you may not want to leave getting this live a few weeks before Christmas. An example graph we developed for one of our clients competitors can be found below, and this has rightly shifted the order of our content production.
A linkable asset content plan provides a structured roadmap for creating resources that naturally attract attention, shares, and citations. With that in mind and your data from the competitor analysis, create a plan that prioritises based on link driving potential (base this on the links competitors and other sites ranking for corresponding keywords are getting from the content in question), and also the relevance to your business objectives. Beyond that, include the target keywords, commonly asked questions (you can get these via an SEO tool or Google itself), determine content length (based on the average length of the top 5 content pieces in Google for the corresponding keywords) and go from there!
Creating linkable content is a must when it comes to generate awareness and coverage online, combining proactive outreach of the content with long-term organic link driving potential will help you have the maximum impact on your SEO and business performance.
If you’re looking for help building your portfolio of linkable content, or improving your off-page SEO, get in touch with our specialist Off-page SEO team.
Understanding how users interact with your website is essential for making smart, data driven decisions. But collecting, interpreting, and acting on that data requires the right setup. We often help clients implement best practice analytics that deliver clarity and insight. Here, we’ve summarised key takeaways from the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Tag Manager (GTM) training that we support our clients with, which shares practical advice for improving your website tracking and data strategy.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google’s latest analytics platform, designed to give you a deeper and more flexible understanding of your website and app performance. It is not just a new version of Universal Analytics, it’s a completely reimagined platform designed for cross device tracking, event based measurement, and deeper insights into user behaviour. It enables more flexible, privacy conscious data collection and customisation.
Once GA4 is set up on your site, navigating its interface and knowing where to find the right information is essential. GA4 offers a series of built in reports that are grouped by topic and can be customised based on your needs.
In addition to these core reports, GA4 allows you to dig deeper by using the filters on existing reports or by navigating to the explore section, where you can build reports tailored to you.
It’s important to remember that GA4 processes data differently than its predecessor, and many reports can take 24 to 48 hours to fully populate. So when you’re analysing data, allow for this delay and always ensure you’re looking at complete datasets.
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a powerful tool that allows you to set up advanced tracking without having to change your website’s source code. It’s the bridge between your website and GA4, enabling you to track user interactions with precision. GTM works through:
Tags: Code snippets that send specific data to GA4 when users take an action, like clicking a button or submitting a form.
Triggers: Rules that determine when a tag should fire (e.g. on a page view, scroll event, or successful form submission).
Variables: Pieces of information that tags and triggers rely on, such as button labels or page URLs.
One of GTM’s key components is the Data Layer, a JavaScript object that temporarily stores structured data about user interactions. This allows GTM to collect data from the website and use it to trigger tags or populate reports in GA4. The platform also helps with version control, showing you exactly what changes were made and when, which is useful for debugging or rolling back if needed.
Once the Google Tag Manager code has been added to the site by a developer, setting up custom tracking can be done entirely within GTM’s interface, below is an example for setting up a tag on GA4:
To support accurate testing, we recommend using browser extensions such as:
These tools help you debug and verify that your tags are firing correctly and passing data to GA4 as expected.
Not everything is tracked automatically in GA4. Using GTM, you can create events that give you more insight into how users are engaging with your website. By choosing meaningful actions to track, you can better understand how users move through your site and where improvements can be made. Popular actions to track include:
As privacy regulations like GDPR become more rigorous, it’s essential that your tracking setup respects user consent. Google’s Consent Mode V2 introduces a more granular approach, allowing for each tag to be configured based on the specific type of consent it needs; such as for advertising, analytics, or personalisation.
In GTM, you can:
If a user does not give consent, GA4 can still collect limited, non-personally identifiable data using what are known as “cookieless pings.” These include basic detail, this is enough to provide high-level insights while respecting privacy settings. Google has also introduced behavioural modelling, where machine learning is used to estimate user behaviour based on data from users on your site. This modelling requires your GA4 property to meet certain data thresholds, such as a minimum number of daily events from users who denied and granted consent.
To benefit from this, your GA4 property must:
As third-party cookies become less reliable and privacy-focused browsers become more common, businesses need alternative tracking methods that preserve insight without compromising compliance. Cookieless tracking via GA4 and GTM is one solution, but server-side tagging offers an even more robust approach.
Server-side tagging shifts the responsibility of data collection from the user’s browser to a secure server environment. This gives organisations more control over how data is collected, processed, and shared. This makes it especially valuable for industries like healthcare or finance, where data sensitivity is high.
Because server-side tagging avoids many issues caused by browser restrictions or ad blockers, it can also improve data accuracy, ensuring that valuable user behaviour insights aren’t lost. It’s a particularly useful option for websites that don’t have the traffic volume to meet GA4’s behavioural modelling thresholds, as it offers more reliable data capture without relying on cookie consent.
In summary the benefits of server-side tagging include:
Whether you’re setting up analytics for the first time or refining an existing setup, GA4 and GTM provide the tools you need to understand your audience, measure performance, and drive smarter business decisions. From custom event tracking to consent management and cookieless solutions, these platforms can be tailored to your specific business needs; if you know how to use them.
At Varn, our Data team specialise in helping businesses get clarity from their data. If you’d like to review your current setup, implement better tracking, or explore server-side tagging options, send us a message as we are here to help.
At Varn, we’re hearing the same questions again and again:
“Will ChatGPT cite my product if someone asks a relevant question?”
“Are we invisible to AI search platforms?”
“What do we need to do now to show up in AI search results?”
These are the right questions to ask, because the homepage of the internet is no longer just Google. AI search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are reshaping how people discover information. So how can you make sure your brand is visible in this new search landscape?
In this short video, Tom Vaughton shares practical steps from our AI Visibility Framework to help businesses audit and improve their performance in AI-driven search. Watch below to hear his take on what matters most right now.
Search is no longer just about Google rankings. AI tools generate answers by pulling from multiple sources across the web, selecting content they see as clear, credible, and authoritative. This means if your brand isn’t being mentioned, or worse, if your competitors are, it’s time to take action.
Here are three starting points Tom highlights in the video:
1. Check where you’re being mentioned
AI platforms don’t operate like traditional search engines. Start monitoring where (and if) your brand is cited in AI-generated responses. This gives you a performance baseline and an opportunity to compare against competitors and our benchmark report can highlight these opportunities.
2. Focus on building authority
Being visible in AI results relies on being trusted. That means consistently producing high quality, accurate content and reinforcing your expertise across your digital footprint.
3. Structure content for AI
AI systems favour content that is clear, well-structured, and backed by reliable sources. Reviewing your content through this lens can reveal important gaps and this will help you adapt for better AI discoverability.
Google has recently introduced a major shift in how it tracks search activity: data from AI Mode is now reflected in Google Search Console. This update means content shown within Google’s generative AI search experience is starting to factor into traditional performance metrics like clicks, impressions, and average position.
This change goes beyond a simple reporting tweak – it reflects a deeper evolution in how search visibility is defined, tracked, and ultimately, optimised.
Websites whose content features in AI Mode generated results will now see that exposure show up in their Search Console performance reports. This includes:
And when someone asks a follow-up within AI Mode? That counts as a brand new search, with fresh metrics tied to the new query.
However, there’s a catch: while this data is included in Search Console, you can’t yet filter or isolate AI Mode performance separately. For site owners trying to understand exactly where their traffic is coming from, that presents a real challenge.
The addition of AI Mode tracking is one example of how AI is becoming foundational to how search operates. Google is also currently piloting a feature that delivers audio summaries of search results, generated by its Gemini AI model.
These brief clips are accessible for users who have Search Labs enabled. are displayed as prompts directly within the results page, with users choosing to play the audio-generated summary if they wish. Beneath each clip, Google displays related web content, offering users a path to explore more deeply – if they want to. It’s a fresh take on how search results are consumed, and another signal that Google is layering AI more heavily into the search journey.
In some content niches, the effects of AI-powered search are already being felt. In the recipe space, certain keyword searches with recipe-intent are now triggering AI-generated overviews instead of traditional rich snippets. However, keywords using the word ‘recipe’ are triggering the traditional recipe rich results. The twist? These AI results often show up on desktop but not on mobile, making the experience – and traffic patterns – highly inconsistent.
As a result, some food bloggers are beginning to notice a dip in desktop traffic, likely due to users getting quick answers from AI instead of clicking through to full recipe pages. Compounding the issue is the fact that AI-related clicks and impressions aren’t yet broken out in reporting tools – leaving creators to guess what’s driving the change. Given that AI Overviews are not being triggered in mobile for recipe-intent keywords, this may be a call to leverage the display of traditional SERP features such as recipe rich results, ensuring proper structured data is implemented and optimising the user experience for mobile.
Adding AI Mode data into Search Console is a clear step toward greater transparency, but it also highlights how traditional performance metrics are becoming less straightforward. As AI continues to shape how users interact with search results, understanding where your content appears – and how it’s framed – is more important than ever.
The rise of audio answers, AI summaries, and layered search experiences shows that Google is reimagining what it means to “rank.” Success in this new environment means optimising not just for blue links, but for AI exposure, context relevance, and new interaction models.
With AI Mode data now feeding into your core metrics, it’s clear that generative AI is no longer a side experiment – it’s baked into the architecture of search. Whether it’s spoken responses, visual summaries, or carousel-style results, AI is changing how users engage – and how you measure success.
Make sure you’re paying attention, because this isn’t a test phase. It’s the next phase of search.
If you want to get ahead in AI Search, get in touch with our innovation team.
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