Hill Care
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PR
Hill Care operates 38 care homes across the North of England, offering residential and dementia care facilities to elderly residents.
Promoting activities, events and other news from those homes has proven highly effective for generating enquiries and increasing occupancy rates. Working with Schofield Communications, Hill Care chose to focus on homes in the North East initially but, after continued success, has broadened the scope to include all homes within the group.
Local news coverage was identified as the primary objective to raising awareness among those who may be looking for somewhere for their elderly relatives to live. Coverage in the care industry press, as well as national and other specialist media, was also identified.
Schofield Communications was initially employed to provide two days’ PR service per month but this has since increased to four and then six days per month, which includes:
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Identifying news stories from the Group's homes
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Writing and selling in press releases to the relevant media
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Handling media enquiries
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Uploading news to the Hill Care website
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Monitoring for news hits across print, broadcast and online media
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Producing monthly PR reports.
Crisis management PR support was also provided on an adhoc basis – with 24/7 availability in the event of a breaking news story.
“Working with Schofield Communications, we’ve been able to generate more press coverage than we’ve ever had before. Sam’s expertise in finding, developing and distributing news stories has resulted in wide spread coverage every month. We are delighted with the results.”
Marcia Crossland, Customer Relations Manager at Hill Care
Key achievements
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​Almost 500 news stories on national and regional television, radio, newspapers, magazines and online in 2019
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More than a 1,300% increase in the number of news hits since 2015
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More than 52 million viewers, listeners and readers reached from January to December 2019
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Over £450,000 advertising equivalency value for news coverage from January to December 2019. ​