NIO Cocktails

The Challenge

NIO Cocktails was introduced to the UK market in 2019 and we started working with them at the beginning of 2020. NIO’s objective was to focus marketing efforts on longer-term brand growth whilst differentiating themselves from smaller competitors who were entering the market with aggressive short term tactics. In addition to this, the ‘cocktails at home’ market was relatively new, and had new competitors appearing every week. We didn’t have a massive amount of historical industry data to base our strategy data on and the UK site had only recently launched so the domain had minimal authority and had limited ranking for any key competitive keywords.

Our Strategy

Our focus was to identify a niche that had the most natural interest, from which we would then aim to position NIO as the authority for this niche and to dominate it before demand started to pick up.

To achieve this we conducted our own primary research and asked potential NIO customers what they would search to reach NIO’s products.

We then combined the above with our own research of competitors’ social media ads and analysed the most popular term they were using to describe their products. Examples of terms were ‘cocktail delivery’, ‘premade cocktails’, ‘cocktail delivery service’ and ‘cocktail home delivery’.

In addition to identifying and focusing on a niche we also achieved the following:

• Built out a site architecture to target spirit related keywords
• Transformed the internal linking site architecture
• Build out PDP pages to become key traffic drivers
• Consulted on building out key EAT features of the site such as imagery, about us and customer reviews
• Generated ongoing backlinks and worked with NIO’s existing PR agency
• Renamed all products inline with SEO data and created templates for all future product releases
• Created a how-to & ideas hub for all SEO led content
• Briefed in strategies for managing occasion and seasonal pages like Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Valentines Day and Christmas.

The Results

Organic overtook paid as the number one digital channel for NIO Cocktails. NIO Cocktails now rank on the first page for 90% of all pre-determined head terms.

The number of referring domains has grown significantly, in no small part thanks to NOVOS’ dedicated digital PR team.

Not only was NIO Cocktails achieving links on high DA publications like iNews, Metro, heart.co.uk and scotsman.co.uk, but lots of relevant food and drink publications like Food and Wine magazine, and Crave Magazine.

Incredible coverage secured in 2021 so far includes –

• Theweek.co.uk
• The-sun.com
• Abouttimagazine.co.uk
• Standard.co.uk
• Refinery29.com
• Realhomes.com
• Funkypigeon.com

Other great links built to the site included –

• on-magazine.co.uk
• aliceinsheffield.com
• plutoniumsox.com
• goodto.com
• tempusmagazine.com
• fadedspring.co.uk
• summerfruitcup.wordpress.com

NIO Cocktails now rank on the first page for

• Premade cocktails
• Cocktail delivery service
• Italian cocktails
• Online cocktails
• Ready to drink cocktails
• Cocktail pouches
• Alcohol free cocktails
• Cocktail gift set
• Cocktail box

All of which have had a massive impact on visibility

[Note: numbers above are hidden to protect the data and rights of the brand, growth uplifts and percentages are representative of this case study). Visibility data has been taken from external tools Sistrix and do not represent real traffic numbers]