How AS Marketing Supported Live&Breathe with Localized SEO Strategies in 9 Languages for Pulze
Pulze is a new player in the tobacco game.
But they aren’t just any tobacco product…
Pulze tobacco doesn’t burn or produce smoke, which means that it contains lower levels of harmful chemicals compared to cigarettes.
But with big boy competition like iQOS which dominates almost all European markets, they needed an extra set of hands to break through the noise.
Pulze hired Live&Breathe, a well-known London-based marketing agency to craft their marketing plan.
However, Pulze was eagerly seeking to permeate Europe – starting with the Czech Republic and Greece. To ensure they would be crafting the perfect game plan for these markets, Live&Breathe looked for localization experts to help piece together the moving parts of their strategy.
How AS Marketing Supported Live&Breathe with Localized SEO Strategies in 9 Languages for Pulze
Cue– AS Marketing White Labeling Services.
Live&Breathe hired us to help localize Pulze’s website and SEO strategy for each target market, find the top digital platforms to expand their reach, and use insights to help them engage with their people.
This fruitful partnership helps Pulze operate a global SEO strategy that speaks directly to each local market, resulting in a stronger brand.
How we work together
We provide holistic account management support: We handle everything from client discovery to project management, delivery, and presentation of the completed project to the client
We cover any gaps in your resources: We fully execute the project using our agency’s resources and expertise
Your brand stays at the forefront: We do everything under your own agency branding
Perks for agencies who want to collaborate with us and avail of our white label services
We help your clients win, so you can too: Our strategies and services drive business growth and we keep the client’s marketing and business goals top of mind
Projects guaranteed delivered on time and on budget: You can be confident that the project will be delivered on time, within the budget, and according to scope. You’ll also avoid “bloating” your agency, because you won’t need to hire more team members, so you can simply reap the profits.
A true win-win-win
Your client gets a valuable strategy that helps them break into new global markets and expand their customer base, while you get a highly capable and trustworthy partner to ensure top-notch quality.
How We Work with Live&Breathe to Launch and Scale Pulze’s International SEO Strategy Across 9 European Markets
Our native-language SEO strategists did a comprehensive target market research to uncover the top brand and search competitors, understand the search landscape, identify unique content needs, and find quick wins and growth opportunities for Pulze to quickly and sustainably grow in each target market
6-month content strategy ready for Pulze’s local teams to implement, highlighting their top opportunities for quickly ranking and building an online brand presence, despite the tough competition
We gave recommendations on how to use the Pulze digital ecosystem to grow their online reach through other platforms like social media and local digital forums
To maximize the success of our localized SEO content strategies, we provided Pulze’s local marketing teams with resources and training materials to better understand how they can leverage SEO to inform and improve their overall marketing strategy
Here are the overall results:
Our teamwork reaped some extraordinary results including a successful launch (see visuals below) and momentum used from key insights for Pulze to penetrate into a wider European market.
Since working together, AS Marketing has crafted nine localized strategies for Pulze in:
This blueprint has guided Pulze’s local teams to develop and launch their local websites, SEO strategy, and digital marketing campaigns.
Currently, Pulze’s website ranks for 5,282 organic keywords and receives 53,859 organic monthly traffic, as well as shows accelerating growth in terms of traffic and ranking keywords.
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Create your own success story!
How We Helped Pulze To Localize Their SEO Strategy in 9 Markets
Google can help you find the nearest pizza spot or when the next available appointment at your dentist is. What it can’t always help you with is how to translate your SEO keywords and strategy correctly.
You see, each language has its own slang, nuances, and contexts that aren’t available while using Google Translate. So, if you simply copy and paste your SEO strategy into a translation app, chances are your message will get diluted (or worse– completely lost)!
So, how do we fix this problem?
By using SEO localization, we ensure keywords match search intent and have a decent search volume in each local market.
Even if you’re an emerging brand in a highly-competitive space like Pulze, gathering local insights becomes your superpower, because it’s an angle many brands overlook.
In addition to using SEO localization, exploring the local digital marketing landscape should be top of the list, too. This way you’ll have a fully optimized presence and be able to actually talk to the local audiences online.
Step 1: Research Local Brand and Search Competitors and Search Behavior
We started by peeling back the layers and got into the nitty gritty while searching for their competitors in each target market.
Because Pulze was initially aiming to market in the Czech Republic and Greece, we started with a competitor and content gap analysis to inform our SEO strategy.
Here are some questions that helped guide our research:
- Who are Pulze’s local brand and search competitors? What strategies are they using that works particularly well in the target market?
- What are the local market’s content needs?
- How does the local market consume and engage with digital content?
- What can we learn from analyzing search volumes according to search intent about the maturity and “readiness” of our market for the product we want to launch?
Looking into these allowed us to focus on content opportunities that help Pulze break through a new market faster, while also setting them up for sustained growth.
After we got down in the trenches with our research, here’s what we came up with:
- We identified their top brand and search competitors from seed keywords that their target customers are most likely to search at different stages of the sales funnel
- For this market, we observed that one brand dominates the market, while another one has recently just launched their own website and digital marketing campaign
- We also noticed that non-brand competitors get a large chunk of the search traffic for heated tobacco. This informs us of the content opportunities Pulze could immediately rank for.
Step 2: Localized Keyword Research and Defining Content Pillars
Ever travel to a different state or country? If so, you’ve probably noticed vast differences in food, language, culture, and even style. This situation is no different.
It became evident that each market had different content needs.
For instance, one market had a marked interest in flavors, device features, and integrating smoking into daily life. On the other hand, another market was more interested in how heated tobacco devices could serve as alternatives to tobacco smoking and how convenient it is to use.
There were also several markets that were only starting to become aware of heated tobacco, as shown by the majority of SERPs showing only informational, top of funnel (TOFU) intent.
Each market had different TOFU themes they were searching for: one was focused on finding health/harmfulness information, while another was focused on understanding the process behind heated tobaccos.
Pulze also planned to launch different marketing programs for each target market, based on each market’s collective motivators and expectations. For example, for one market they wanted to launch a referral program, as that particular market heavily relies on word-of-mouth recommendations to make purchase decisions, while another focused on influencer marketing.
Due to these nuances, the best approach was to build our content pillars based on our local keyword research and competitor analysis findings, to ensure that our content strategy would match each local market’s content needs.
Here’s an example of primary content pillars we identified for one of Pulze’s target markets:
Top of Funnel
- General information on heated tobaccos
- Health concerns
- Integration into daily life – ex. smoking indoors
- Cigarette smoking alternative / how to quit smoking cigarettes
- Differences and advantages to cigarettes
Middle of Funnel
- User experience, reviews, and influencer-generated content
- How it works
- Cost and promotions
Comparison to competitors - Which tobacco heater to choose/how to choose
- Best flavors and vape devices
Bottom of Funnel
- Product pages
- Where to buy in [specific cities]
- Maintenance / how to take care of the device
After identifying the core topics that were important, we did extensive keyword research and grouped them into clusters (keywords that are semantically and intent related).
Here’s a sample of what our content pillars and keyword clusters looked like for Bulgaria:
Here’s a sample of what our content pillars and keyword clusters looked like for Poland:
Step 3: Keyword Mapping
Once we have a bird’s eye view of the local keywords that fit into the content pillars, we can move forward in identifying the most applicable keywords and turn them into a keyword map. This keyword map groups related keywords and organizes them into individual content pieces.
This information is the core for every piece of content. Now that the hard part is over, content production should be a breeze! The keyword maps for each market also contain notes such as content pieces from other markets that can easily be localized and any necessary redirects to avoid content cannibalization.
Here’s a sample of the keyword map for the Slovakian market:
Step 4: Set Clear Content Production Priorities
Up next: setting priorities.
It’s easy to get lost during the content production process, so we prioritize content pieces for every market to help the teams achieve quick wins.
Based on feedback from Pulze regarding their local teams’ capacity for content production, we broke down our content strategy into what they can produce each month over six months time.
We also added our suggested SEO metadata to further assist the local marketing teams who will be implementing the content strategy.
Last but not least, we also identified the next most effective steps they could take for their overall international SEO strategy.
Here’s an example of what that looks like for one of the target markets we worked on:
Step 5: Provide the Local Market Teams with SEO Content Brief Templates, Best Practices, and Training
To ensure our SEO strategy is implemented successfully, we further supported the local teams with SEO content brief templates, best practices, and training sessions.
The content brief templates and best practices sheets were designed to streamline their content production process by ensuring that their strategists, editors, and content writers all understood what search intent each content piece should fulfill.
Our content brief templates include:
- Structure for URL, H1, H2s
- FAQs in schema markup
- Meta title and description
- Image alt text
- Local market messaging guidelines
- Best practices for internal & external links
- Anchor text
- CTA placement recommendations
- Media suggestions
- General page structure outline
Here are some samples from one of our content briefs:
The Greek content strategy was set up as a base framework for the project. In this content strategy, we developed the:
- Brand story
- Vision statement
- USPs
- Buyer personas
- Customer journey map
- Pain points
- Demographics
- Suggested content types.
We also identified what the customer wanted from a heated tobacco product, challenges and questions, as well as the local messaging to use.
The Czech content strategy was also part of the first wave, so the content strategy we developed for this market had a similar format to the Greek one.
In the content guide, we also went deeper into questions such as:
- Health concerns
- Cost concerns
- Normalization
- Well-being
- Accessibility
- Maintenance
- Integration
These content briefs allowed Pulze to develop the first set of landing pages for the localized websites.
Once the framework was set and approved, we continued with more detailed content briefs for localized content.
As we entered Wave 2 markets, we steered from content strategy to content briefs, as seen in the content briefs developed for Poland to the right.
While only showing a snippet of the content outline, the full brief includes:
- Page title
- Word count
- Writer
- Focus keyword
- Related keywords
- FAQs / PAA
- Internal linking
- External linking
- Local guidelines
- Target audience
- Call to action
- SEO best practices
- Media suggestions
- Keyword research
- Meta description
- Content outline
For the Hungarian site, we focused most of our efforts on blog articles, as Hungary has regulatory challenges in regards to tobacco and e-commerce.
As such, our joint agency opinion was to focus on brand awareness in this market.
While only showing a snippet of the content outline, the full brief includes:
That is why we focused on more informational ToFu content such as “the difference between heating and electrical cigarettes”
During the Portuguese research, it was clear that IQOS and Glo dominated most of the market share and search landscape.
In order to turn the market share challenge into an opportunity, we developed content briefs for comparison articles between the three to rank for competitor keywords and steal some traffic share.
As value and convenience are key drivers in Portugal, the content briefs discussed different heated tobacco considerations such as:
- Battery Life
- Heating Time and Temperature
- Heated Tobacco Flavors
- Device Design
- Technology Used
- Cost
As identified by our native strategist, Portuguese buyers rely heavily on social proof, so the copywriters were recommended to highlight this when developing the content.
The Italian market was the most mature one out of the markets in Wave 2, meaning that the local Pulze team in Italy had already started positioning the brand for their target audience.
As such, one of the content briefs created for Italy was targeting the bottom of funnel audience segment.
The article highlighted to the right goes more in-depth into the first steps with Pulze and answers any uncertainties about how it works.
The article aims to answer the questions and objections that most often hinder an Italian buyer from purchasing heated tobacco.
Italian buyers rely more on USPs than other markets, so it was important to get Pulze’s USPs across in this article.
Most powerful is the heated-not-burned technology mentioned in the article multiple times, in combination with the device features and ease of use.
The Bulgarian and Slovak site initiated Wave 3 of the project.
For the Bulgarian site, we identified a need to dig deeper into how to buy heated tobacco.
There weren’t many sources online to explain where to buy tobacco heaters and refills.
Creating in-depth articles that are a source of verified and reliable information was therefore of particular importance.
Hence, one of the content briefs created for the Bulgarian site discussed the different purchasing options, both online and in-store.
In Bulgaria many people read forums and get information from social media. We recommended the local copywriters to keep this in mind when creating the content to speed up its distribution.
The Slovak online space didn’t include much information about heated tobacco devices.
iQOS, the main competitor, did cover it, but their brand had more or less become equivalent to heated tobacco.
However, as Glo entered the Slovak market in 2022, the term heated tobacco will less and less be interlinked with iQOS and more be seen as its standalone term.
So it was important to optimize the Slovak e-shop so it was shown among the first results when searching for heated tobacco.
Other keywords targeted within the e-shop were “new tobacco heaters” and other adjectives that positioned Pulze as the new, superior player on the market.
The e-shop was also reviewed and optimized from a UX perspective, for elements such as ease of navigation and readability, to improve SEO and conversions further.
Last but not least, the Canary Islands kicked off Wave 4 of the project.
This market was a bit different to the other as it’s a small market with unique buyer personas.
The language used was Spanish, but the content was localized for the Canary Islands.
The main challenge with this market is that Glo is already the established leader, as they are even located on the islands.
However, not everyone seemed to be satisfied with the customer support they received from the competitor.
So the opportunity presented here was to provide information about Pulze’s good customer support in case of any problems with the device.
The page goes about mentioning all the options the user has to request support from the company.
Last but not least, the content highlights how to make the best use and care for the device to push the quality angle of the product.
Are you ready to equip your local teams with the knowledge and tools they need to excel in SEO?
With accelerated growth in both traffic and ranking keywords, your brand is poised to conquer the digital landscape.
