From PR to Pipeline: 160% Increase in Referral Traffic From A Single Campaign.
Client
Thomson Environmental Consultants
Location
Guildford, England
Sector
Environmental Consultancy
The Goal
Thomson Environmental Consultants is one of the UK’s leading environmental consultancies, supporting a wide range of businesses in complying with environmental regulations to ensure they achieve outcomes that benefit themselves and the natural world. They approached Fishtank Agency in 2023 with a goal of increasing their online and brand visibility in the search results.
The Challenge & Strategy
While the “Thomson” brand name was well recognised in the environmental compliance sector, their website struggled to compete with other big players. Seeing this competition and Fishtank’s reputation for crafting strategic marketing campaigns that boost brand reputation and drive converting traffic, Thomson appointed us to plan a six-month PR strategy.
What started as a digital PR strategy soon evolved to encompass the entire marketing mix, including social media, onsite content, newsletter creation, and creative assets. This cross-channel marketing approach allows us to amplify reach and visibility across multiple channels and craft content that appeals not only to potential clients but also to journalists seeking expert commentary on relevant topics.
Thomson’s service offering spans multiple areas of ecology, such as arboriculture, freshwater, habitat, GIS and mapping, and species surveys. Therefore, it was essential that their marketing strategy was both seasonally relevant and appealed to their selected target markets.
A combination of business news and thought-leadership PR would help them meet their goal of increasing search visibility while ensuring their brand appears credible. We meet quarterly with our clients, including Thomson, to plan their strategies considering their business priorities, topical sector news, and seasonal opportunities. Over the years, we have fostered strong relationships with Journalists across a variety of sectors and have especially close connections with environmental news and business publications, as well as local and national news outlets, which was a clear selling point for Thomson.
Quarterly Performance Monitoring
Each PR campaign starts with a deep dive into the performance of the previous quarter. We evaluate what worked, what could be done to maximise their visibility, and competitor gaps we can tap into. From there, we pitch our campaign ideas to the client, which are derived from performance data and their business priorities.
Our Digital PR Service
We manage the entire PR process for Thomson, including data collection, crafting press releases, building a media list, liaising with Journalists, and crafting supporting on-site content. Once campaign outreach has taken place, we’ll monitor coverage and results for the next month to ensure all data is captured and we have a complete picture of its impact.
Coverage That Leads To Conversions
Over the years, we have planned many PR campaigns for Thomson, including “Yorkshire Named One of the Country’s Top Flood Risk Areas,” “Thomson Environmental Consultants Appointed to Environment Agency EcoSF4 Framework,” and “Top 10 Greenest UK Cities: Does Your Home Make The List?”, all of which were hugely successful.
Thomson now ranks for 1.8K keywords, has secured 5.4K backlinks, and is increasing in AIO visibility. Their year-on-year growth has been impressive too, with a healthy 755% increase in ‘generate lead’ conversion events to the website.
The Results
A standout campaign has to be the promotion surrounding the invasive species, Japanese Knotweed. We anticipate seasonal themes and conversations. Japanese knotweed is a recurring issue for homeowners and property developers. As an invasive species, Thomson has expertise in its removal. We created and published a seasonal blog on their website, including expert comments from Thomson, FAQs and a strong call to action, in preparation for media requests.
Results during the coverage period compared to the previous period:
• 180 pieces of press coverage, all including backlinks to the site.
• 160% increase in referral traffic.
• 53% increase in new users.
• 144,913 impressions and 648 clicks.
• Securing over 200 new relevant organic keywords.
This campaign continues to deliver year-on-year growth for Thomson with an additional 6 backlinks secured this summer (2026). As we continue to build Thomson’s topical authority in this area, we have added the creation of additional invasive species blogs to the strategy. We will update their invasive species service page with links to and from the blogs to transfer authority. The first in the series, the Himalayan Balsam blog, was published two months ago (May 2026) and has already generated 10 new ranked keywords and is appearing in the AIOs.
Watch this space as we continue to build on that early success.
Fishtank Agency have brought a significant return on investment to us for the PR and marketing campaigns they have delivered. The wealth of skills they bring are beyond anything we expected from an external agency. We would encourage anyone to partner with them.
Dan Reynolds, Director of Business Development
Thomson Environmental Consultants
