The Brief: Build Authority in a Competitive SaaS Category
The client was a project management SaaS platform competing in one of the most link-saturated categories in B2B software. Their existing backlink profile was solid at DR 54, but they were plateauing. Incremental links from standard outreach were not moving the needle on their target keywords.
We proposed a single data study campaign instead of three months of standard link building. The results: 142 editorial placements, average DR 71, in 8 weeks. Here is the exact playbook.
Step 1: Find the Data That Journalists Actually Want
Most data studies fail before they start because they are built around what the brand wants to talk about, not what journalists want to write about. The question to ask is: what would a journalist at a major publication need this data to prove or disprove a story they are already working on?
For this campaign, we identified that there was no public data on the actual cost of poor workplace communication in UK businesses. Every article on the topic cited a 2016 US study. We had our angle: original, current, UK-specific data on a topic journalists were actively covering.
Step 2: Design the Survey to Produce Quotable Statistics
We ran a survey of 1,000 UK workers across 5 industries via a research panel. Key design principles:
- Questions were written to produce specific, quotable statistics, not general sentiment
- We over-sampled by industry to enable interesting cross-cuts (finance vs retail vs tech)
- We included questions designed to produce surprising or counterintuitive findings
- Total cost including panel and analysis: £3,200
Step 3: Build Five Story Angles From One Dataset
The mistake most brands make is writing one press release and sending it to everyone. Journalists at Forbes, HR Magazine, and a regional business publication all need different angles on the same data. From our single dataset, we built five distinct pitches targeting five journalist beats: the productivity angle for business press, the management angle for HR publications, the technology angle for tech press, the cost angle for finance titles, and the regional angle for local business media.
Step 4: The Outreach Sequence That Gets Replies
We do not blast 500 journalists at once. We identify the 80 journalists most likely to cover each angle, personalise the opening line of every pitch to their recent work, and send in two waves: a small test wave of 20 to validate the angle, then the main wave once we have confirmed what is resonating. Our response rate on this campaign: 31%, versus an industry average of 3–5% for untargeted press releases.
The Results
- 142 editorial placements over 8 weeks
- Average DR of linking domain: 71
- 6 placements on DR 80+ domains including Forbes, Inc, and HR Magazine
- Organic traffic to target pages: +68% over the following 90 days
- 3 target keywords moved from page 2 to page 1 positions 1–4
Total campaign cost: £8,400. Cost per DR 70+ editorial link: £148. No link building method we have tested comes close to this ROI at scale when executed correctly.