With 160 years of experience, 22 garden centres, and a hugely popular online shop, not to mention holding the world record for the most consecutive gold medals at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, it’s safe to say that Hillier is the leading name in horticulture retail.
With more than 750 employees, there’s a huge amount of knowledge within the Hillier team from those at HQ, to the growers of over one million plants per year on the nursery, to the customer-facing teams in Hillier Garden Centres.
Plant expertise is at the core of Hillier, and always has been – it’s what makes Hillier stand out from other garden centre groups. Our challenge was to communicate this expertise and make Hillier the go-to company for plant knowledge and gardening advice by implementing an expert comment strategy that would cement its reputation as a trusted source in the gardening world.
To best utilise the amazing treasure trove of knowledge within the Hillier team and ensure an even coverage of themes, we first mapped out our wish list for the topics we would love to generate coverage about, aligning this with Hillier’s wider plans. For example, landing coverage about what bulbs to plant at the time when Hillier is promoting its autumn bulb planting workshops. We then matched the topics with the best expert to provide commentary and worked with them to devise their top tips.
Our strategy was simply twofold – inbound and outbound. We created a steady flow of outbound content for media showcasing Hillier’s knowledge from top tips and problem-solving, to plant profiles, grow guides and ‘meet the grower’ features. This built the foundations for the inbound enquiries to skyrocket with requests for the experts at Hillier to provide commentary flying in on an almost daily basis.
When it comes to expert advice, the need for quick turnaround is paramount. Thankfully the Hillier team is incredible at that and we’re a well-oiled machine, able to jump on enquiries at the drop of a hat. We can pre-empt the topics as well, so have built an extensive library of pre-approved expert commentary that Alan Titchmarsh himself would be proud of, that we can call upon in those times when the Hillier experts are out tending to plants and not able to comment instantly.
Since January 2022, we have secured almost 250 articles to showcase the amazing plant experts at Hillier. 60% of these have been this year and inbound requests have increased 299% in the past three years, showing how the work of our previous efforts to spread the word is now paying dividends with regular inbound requests for commentary.
We’ve shared tips for Hillier about sweet peas, jasmine, dahlias, sunflowers, rosemary, peonies, narcissi, geraniums, hydrangeas, and even artichokes among so many other plants. A core aim was to showcase advice as well as plant knowledge, so we’ve landed features for Hillier to discuss pruning, small space gardening, low maintenance gardens, plant for privacy, summer gardening, spring bulb planting, container planting, deadheading, watering and gardening for wellbeing.
The Hillier plant experts now make regular appearances in Ideal Home (36 articles in the past 12 months alone!), woman & home (10 times this year so far) and the Daily Express, not forgetting Country Living, Grand Designs, MSN, Yahoo, English Home and Period Living to name but a few.
Our “four plants to prune now for summer colour” campaign was featured in the Daily Express, MSN, Yahoo!, the Daily Record and an array of regional titles including the Manchester Evening News, the Leicester Mercury and the Liverpool Echo.
To support our goal of driving traffic to the online shop and building digital presence as well as expertise, we have focussed on online opportunities. As such 95% of the placements we have secured have been online, with more than more than 60% of these having links back to the Hillier website. But, as ever, it’s about quality not quantity. Thankfully, we’ve got quality AND quantity of links, as the average Domain Authority is 76/100.
Our expert comment strategy has meant that Hillier has been able to extend its long-standing reputation as a trusted source for expert plant advice and high-quality plants, earning the trust and loyalty of many new customers to solidify the company’s position as the ultimate destination for plant enthusiasts seeking expert advice and high-quality plants.
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