The Situation: To support the launch of an online education conference series and an accompanying digital badge program, our client sought media coverage to increase participation and awareness. C. Blohm & Associates leveraged the growing trend of digital badges to generate compelling news stories and position the client as a trend leader.
The Results: C. Blohm & Associates developed a visibility campaign for the client, which featured an initial launch news release followed by extensive media relations and additional news releases for each online conference. The outreach highlighted the popularity of digital badges and the program’s success in generating online engagements with students. Landing a trend-based article, among other coverage, this strategy generated a steep rise in website traffic and produced new program users.
Becoming a trend leader
Using these success stories as a narrative for the increasing popularity of digital badges, T.H.E. Journal, a highly-respected education trade outlet, featured a trend-based story about the program’s success. This one article generated the largest amount of traffic to the client’s website than any other referral link following the launch.
Impacting individual classrooms
In addition to media relations, CB&A gauged the launch success through follow-up user interviews. Question and answer sessions with educators, who actively attended the online conferences and participated in the badges program, offered first-hand insight to complement pitching efforts.
An interview revealed that one educator began using the badges program after reading the article in T.H.E. Journal. An eighth grade teacher from North Carolina, she applied the program as part of her STEM curriculum. After only a few weeks, many of her students had already earned one badge and had begun working toward a second.
Campaign visibility
In five month’s time, CB&A’s vigorous media relations outreach resulted in 44 articles. The placement, largely in popular education trade outlets, produced more than 7.5 million impressions.
After the launch news release, the client saw web traffic more than triple that of the previous month. Subsequent releases for the individual online conferences resulted in similar peaks of web traffic. The trend-based article from T.H.E. Journal alone resulted in more than 2,500 unique visits.