How we placed Finnmark
front and centre of
Britain’s sauna boom
PR approaches: thought leadership ◠ REACTIVE PR
Working alongside Finnmark’s in-house SEO team, our digital PR strategy focused on building brand authority, earning relevant backlinks and expanding Finnmark’s visibility far beyond the sauna industry.
The goal? To turn Finnmark’s existing expertise into a voice journalists actively sought out in the rapidly growing UK sauna market.
The Belta approach
Finnmark knew saunas. We knew how to turn that expertise into stories journalists would actually want.
So, we stopped thinking like a sauna brand.
We found the unexpected places Finnmark belonged, jumped on the conversations already making headlines and created original stories they could own.
The result? We secured features in:
Euro Spa Pool News / Spa Life / Financial Times / Ideal Home / Grand Designs Magazine / Homebuilding & Renovating / MoneyWeek / Livingetc / Marie Claire and more.
+62% increase in keywords ranking on page 1 of Google
90+pieces of coverage, and growing month-on-month
+66% increase in transactional keywords ranking in positions 1-3
+116% increase in keywords ranking in positions 1-3
The sauna boom gave us a story.
We made Finnmark part of a much bigger one.
When we started working together, Finnmark already had the credentials.
Its team had created authentic Finnish saunas for some of the UK's most impressive locations, including the UK's highest sauna at Shangri-La The Shard, the UK’s largest at Arc, Canary Wharf and the country's first floating sauna, Wyld, in Liverpool.
At the same time, Britain’s relationship with saunas was changing fast.
Public sauna sites were opening across the country, outdoor saunas were appearing in more gardens and conversations around recovery, wellness and heat therapy were bringing the practice to entirely new audiences.
For us, that meant opportunity. Lots of it.
Rather than waiting for a journalist to decide to write about saunas, we looked for interesting ways to make Finnmark relevant to the stories already filling the news agenda.
What do marathon runners, heatwaves and winter colds
have in common?
We found a sauna story in all of them.
Rather than waiting for journalists to write about saunas, we looked at what people were already talking about and found interesting ways to bring Finnmark's expertise into the story.
Ahead of marathon season, for example, we found existing research showing that regular post-exercise sauna use could improve running performance. But the study wasn't the story we pitched.
We took the findings and calculated what that improvement could actually mean for runners, working out how much time regular sauna use could potentially shave off a 10K, half-marathon and marathon, including how the figures differed between men and women.
Suddenly, an academic study about heat acclimatisation became a timely, easy-to-understand running story with Finnmark's expertise at the centre of it.
And we applied the same thinking throughout the year. Heatwaves gave us opportunities to explore how the body responds to extreme temperatures, while winter cold and flu season gave us completely different questions around sauna use when you're feeling unwell.
They may all be different news stories and have different audiences but they gave a credible reason for Finnmark to a part of them.
Taking the sauna boom into British gardens.
We also saw another opportunity developing: saunas were becoming something people wanted in their own homes and gardens.
So, we started thinking like homes and interiors journalists.
Ahead of spring and summer, we developed stories around the questions their readers would actually have, from where to position an outdoor sauna and what to consider when designing one to whether planning permission might be needed.
It gave Finnmark a credible route into an entirely different set of publications, including Ideal Home, Grand Designs, Livingetc and Homebuilding & Renovating.
And importantly, this was an audience most likely to buy a sauna themselves.
Today, many journalists come to us directly for sauna-related commentary.
The more consistently we gave journalists useful stories and expert insight, the more familiar Finnmark became.
Over time, something started to change.
Journalists began approaching us directly when they were already working on sauna stories and needed an expert, whether that meant commentary on the growth of the industry, advice for consumers or insight into a developing trend.
That's where we wanted to get to: Finnmark becoming a source journalists actively sought out, rather than a brand we constantly had to introduce.
90+ pieces of coverage,
and counting:
Our ongoing work has secured more than 90 pieces of coverage across national, homes, interiors, wellness, fitness and trade media.
And, working alongside Finnmark’s in-house SEO team, the results go beyond the headlines:
+116% increase in keywords ranking in positions 1-3
+62% increase in keywords ranking on page 1 of Google
+66% increase in transactional keywords ranking in position 1-3
Don’t just take our word for it:
Bekki is an exceptionally talented Digital PR freelancer, and operates just like a full-time team member. Although saunas are a niche, fast-growing category, it's genuinely tough to secure relevant coverage in it... That said, Bekki has consistently found smart angles (case studies, wellness trends, home & interior tie-ins, product PR) that have landed us links and coverage in titles like Ideal Home, Grand Designs Magazine, Living Etc, Money Week and the Financial Times. She's proactive, communicates brilliantly, and always uses her initiative rather than waiting to be told what to do. I couldn't recommend her more highly!”
Phill Lumley
Commercial Director
Finnmark Sauna