Digital PR campaign focusing on water-related fines for Vaarbewijs.nl

The approach

Step 1: Ideation based on data sources

In Digital PR, it all starts with the question: which topic has enough news value and the right data to build on? Ivo and Leanne didn’t start brainstorming at random, but by first looking at which public data sources were available. They based their brainstorming on that foundation.

Each idea was rated by three people (on a scale of 1–5 per person), and then discussed with Vaarbewijs.nl during a video call. Four topics received the highest scores:

In the end, several top ideas were ruled out. The topic of boating without a licence lacked public data at local authority level, as boat licences are not registered by postcode. The emission zone topic proved too difficult to measure on a per-waterway basis. What remained: water fines and it turned out that the data was readily available.

Step 2: Data collection via the CJIB

The Central Judicial Collection Agency (CJIB) publishes annual public figures on fines issued by offence code. Ivo used three annual datasets:

• Fact-coded cases 2025
• Fact-coded cases 2024
• Cases with case numbers 2023

Not all fact codes are recorded every year. To ensure fair comparisons, every offence code that appeared in 2025 was also included in 2024 and 2023, even if the value was zero in those years. This allowed offences to be compared year-on-year by type. The dataset also included breakdowns at municipal and provincial level. This proved to be the key to widespread media coverage.

An important lesson learnt along the way: When analysing the data, a small discrepancy was found between the total number of national offence codes and the total calculated at local authority level – a difference of sometimes 4, sometimes 9, sometimes 11 fines. That represents a deviation of 0.048 per cent. Nevertheless, that is enough for a journalist to raise questions. The team adjusted the figures to a single consistent value of 10,687, so that all communications were consistent.

Lesson learnt: ensure that every figure in every press release, every table and every visualisation is exactly the same. Journalists immediately see inconsistencies as a cause for doubt.

Step 3: From data to story: the local perspective

The initial analysis revealed something interesting: in the Netherlands, in 2025 fewer water fines issued in 2023, but the average fine was higher. The total fell from 3,857 to 3,153 fines (−18.3%), but the average fine rose from €179 to €204 (+14%).

All right. But not good enough for a successful campaign.

So, back to the drawing board. The conclusion: this is of interest to subject specialists, but it lacks the local angle that regional journalists need. An editor at a Limburg news platform doesn’t write about a national trend, but rather about what has changed in Roermond or Maasgouw.

The data was supplemented with figures at municipal and provincial level: which municipality has the most fines? Where are figures rising, and where are they falling? This suddenly made the story highly relevant to every region in the Netherlands. A concrete example from the research: the number of water-related fines in Medemblik has almost tripled compared with two years ago. That’s the sort of headline a local journalist would use to start their article.

Step 4: Building the research page

On 26 May 2026 the research page went live on vaarbewijs.nl/research-on-water-fines-vaarbewijs.html. Mitchel invested a great deal of time in the technical development. The page contains:

• HTML tables showing the data by type of offence
• Interactive visualisations via custom-coded iframes
• LocalFocus maps for comparisons between municipalities and counties
• An interactive quiz: how much does a traffic offence cost compared to a driving course?

That quiz deserves a moment of its own. The average fine for “sailing without a Class I sailing licence” is €424. The Boating Licence 1 course costs €69. That is 6.1 times the course fee; with that fine, you could have taken the course six times. This means that the data is not only informative, but also directly relevant to Vaarbewijs.nl’s target audience.

Step 5: Press releases by province (with AI assistance)

Following publication, the media outreach campaign began. In total, the following were produced:

• 11 provincial texts: each province with sufficient data received a bespoke press release containing local figures
• 1 general press release for the national media
• 1 press release for the water sports sector: a website such as motorboot.com or schuttevaart.nl takes a different approach to a daily newspaper

AI was used to generate the provincial texts: the regional variants were automatically created on the basis of the data structure and the national template. They were then checked manually.

Lesson learnt: always check the terminology in every press release. Some texts used the term ‘water fines’, whilst others used ‘fines on the water’ or ‘traffic fines’. Journalists who simply copy-and-pasted this resulted in different search terms appearing in publications, which makes tracking more difficult. Choose one standard phrase and use it consistently.

The campaign was managed via Smart.pr, with a targeted contact selected for each media outlet.

Step 6: Second outreach: the personal approach

After the first round, placements started coming in quickly. However, not all provinces had responded. Ivo found out which media outlets had previously reported on water fines and contacted them personally.

Not a mass email, but a message such as: “Good morning, Jolanda. I see that you previously published an article in 2022 about water fines in [province]. We’ve now carried out a new study. Would you be willing to publish this one as well?”

That resulted in three more placements, in less than half a morning’s work.

Objectives and results

The objective was clear: to earn high-quality backlinks from media outlets that are not normally accessible through paid placements, and thereby structurally strengthen the domain authority of Vaarbewijs.nl.

A note about the AD: The article on AD.nl is a canonical version of the BD.nl article — the same piece, visible on the domain with a DR of 88 and nearly 7 million visitors per month. It does not count as a separate backlink in Ahrefs, but it does provide additional visibility for Vaarbewijs.nl as a cited source.

Initial visibility in Google Search Console

The page went live on 26 May 2026. In the first 14 days, Google Search Console shows the following:

These are early signs. Backlinks continue to have an effect for months. These are the first two weeks.

Notably, several existing URLs on Vaarbewijs.nl – covering the ‘dead man’s switch’, Boating Licence 1, Boating Licence 2 and speed on the water – improved their rankings after the study went live. The increase in authority at domain level had an immediate impact on existing pages.

The impact on LLMs

As mentioned, digital PR is far more effective when it comes to boosting ‘old-school’ authority for Google. And, indirectly, visibility and ranking in Google naturally have a major impact on visibility in LLMs (via RAG / Grounding). But it is also important for us to see that we can grow the visibility of this domain and this brand name within various LLMs in the long term. And that, in the short term, we see an impact on the topic targeted by the digital PR campaigns. Fortunately, we were able to see the latter clearly:

In terms of visibility, this domain and brand name saw a dramatic increase in relation to the topic of ‘water fines’ within AI Overviews and ChatGPT. This is a subject which, incidentally, is quite closely linked to the revenue model (obtaining a boating licence).

How much this cost

Approximately 20 hours’ work, shared between Leanne, Ivo and Mitchel. No purchased links. No advertising budget. The media value of €3,562 is comparable to what you would normally pay for the same visibility via paid channels, with this difference: the links and mentions remain permanently in place.

And the study is reproducible. The CJIB publishes new figures every year. The same approach can be repeated next year using up-to-date data.

Digital PR as the foundation for organic growth

This campaign demonstrates what digital PR can do for a website that is already in good shape, both technically and in terms of content. Vaarbewijs.nl had the foundations in place. What was missing was authority — and that is precisely what you can build up through well-researched, newsworthy investigations.

No paid placements, no temporary boosts. Just sustainable links from domains with genuine journalistic value, where Vaarbewijs.nl is recognised as a source of expertise in the media.

Are you curious to find out what Digital PR can do for your website? Then please feel free to get in touch with us!