Established in 1930 and a registered charity since 1966 FPA (Family Planning Association) is probably best known for its sexual health awareness campaigns as well as setting up the UK’s network of contraception clinics. The organisation was reliant on national government funding, and recently FPA has felt the full force of austerity.
With a pressing need to find new ways of raising funds the FPA management team began to consider a number of innovative commercial activities. Creative thinking that led to a decision to share more positive messages on sexual health and in turn to FPA launching desireandpleasure.co.uk – a social enterprise with a clear focus on sexual pleasure; part ethical online sex shop and part sexual education resource.
The project faced three main challenges:
- What would the response be to this new approach?
- Would anyone visit and shop at the site?
- Was it a sustainable business model?
When FPA approached PR Agency One we quickly identified the need for a broad based SEO/PR campaign – a campaign using both on and offline media to help the new website build quick positive profile, attract visitors and most importantly win profitable business.
Here’s what we did:
From keyword research, to technical architecture to we made recommendations to ensure the website was fully optimised.
Ecommerce tracking and in depth analytics meant that everything, absolutely everything, was tracked, measures and attributable.
Once we had the SEO fundamentals in place and we were confident that the site was optimised not just for search but for users too we then went out and started to pull in the traffic.
Coverage across a wide range of powerful offline media including the Sun, the Guardian and Cosmopolitan not only won brand recognition that directed straight to the site, it quickly translated into branded traffic through referrals and links as offline coverage went online.
We complimented the national media work with a suite of internet specific tactics. Digital marketing that include a social media campaign to generate social referrals, blogger outreach to generate valuable inbound links and longer term benefits and a series of viral videos including an extraordinary rendition of The 12 Days of Christmas.
The results?
Each and every one of the initial challenges met with a series of incredibly positives yeses.
- Press and public reaction to FPA’s sincere and astute initiative was incredibly positive. “It really does show forward thinking in terms of eradicating the so called stigma of sex toys,” comments a contributor to a Guardian article. Despite an initial concern that launching a website focused on sexual pleasure might bemuse or in the worst case offend the concept was universally embraced. The FPA’s policy to boycott products with offensive names and packaging or those with violent or aggressive connotations particularly well received.
- The buzz generated by the campaign site saw site traffic increase by a factor of 10. And clearly, once there visitors liked what they saw with the value of online sales spanking already ambitious targets by more than 75%. Important income for an important service. Here’s a fact: FPA calculates that for every 20 vibrators sold through the new website they can fund the training of one of its advisors!
- With an ethical, educative philosophy that drew clear blue water between them and the more sleazy sexual pleasure competition, FPA has quickly claimed a unique position in a crowded and competitive marketplace. Combine this with the ongoing profile benefits of a successful SEO PR campaign plus the ability to measure, manage and optimise site performance for maximum ROI and it would seem that the project isn’t simply sustainable – it’s set fair for rapid growth.
The final analysis?
A happy client that can see the long term value in its social enterprise model, a proud SEO PR partner, and thoroughly satisfied customers.
If you’d like to find out more about the campaign or to discuss SEO PR in more detail then call me get in touch or drop our Managing Director a mail here: [email protected]
