Marketing directors and the linguistic and cultural strategy of international businesses
Armelle Jaclot: “I’ve always worked in education and digital technology. I started out in a subsidiary of a French group in Madrid, before switching to EMLyon Business School in France. I then returned to Spain, joining Learnlight in Madrid. Learnlight is a multinational that specialises in blended learning courses in soft skills and languages. While there, I contributed to the international expansion of the organisation. And after that, I was recruited by ISDI.
As the marketing director of ISDI, my role is to oversee the organisation’s marketing strategy, specifically in France, Spain and Mexico. The goal is to develop a coherent strategy at group level but tweak and adapt that strategy to the culture of each country. Another way of putting it is that we want to roll out a shared vision across the group while respecting the cultural differences of each of our local markets.
While working in this role, I’ve realised the importance of cultural differences and the impact they can have on the performance of a company. I’ve noticed many organisations simply roll out the same comms and marketing strategy in every market. But it is in fact essential to adapt and localise content to each audience and each culture.”
Contentactic & ISDI – the beginnings of a partnership
“It was back when I joined Learnlight that I first heard about Contentactic. Our marketing department already regularly worked with Contentactic on SEO-optimised content writing and translation. The only thing was that compared to the Spanish market, Contentactic, being a French agency, had higher prices.
We thought about switching to a cheaper local supplier. But we quickly abandoned the idea because my team were having none of it. The fact was that the content being delivered by Contentactic was simply superb. There was no need to go back over it or edit it. It perfectly aligned with our communication objectives. And even though the topics were technical, Contentactic had it all under control.
I like developing a long-term relationship with my partners. Even when I change companies in my career, I like to keep the best cards tucked up my sleeve. So when I arrived at ISDI, I knew exactly what I had to do – build a team of external partners who could help me take on the challenges that lay ahead. This is how ISDI began working with Contentactic. And our partnership has now been going for more than 2 years.”
What kind of multilingual SEO content does an international group need?
“Our needs vary at ISDI. Sometimes we need SEO-optimised translations. Other times it’s content creation. Then there’s SEO strategy. I think this is where Contentactic really started to gain our trust. We had put in a basic order for blog posts, but Contentactic went the extra mile. They guided us, advised us and, in the end, persuaded us of the need for a personalised multilingual SEO content strategy based on quantifiable data.
During many meetings with the Contentactic team, they shared with us their expertise in on-page SEO, search marketing, multilingual ranking and other skills that we didn’t have in-house. My role quickly shifted to championing the project, bringing our teams on board and persuading Management to invest in the advice Contentactic was giving us.
The first step was to get Contentactic to write our blog posts. But they also insisted on the need to optimise these pages for search engines (especially Google), and even to optimise any content they were translating for us. In the end, we decided to ask Contentactic to conduct an SEO audit of our French website, which was basically a translation of the Spanish website.Contentactic carried out an SEO audit on the website and a full-spectrum semantic analysis of our sector. They then began rewriting our content for the culture of each market and optimising it to rank in local search engines. The results are fantastic. Our French website now ranks better than the original Spanish one, even though the Spanish website initially performed better. Traffic from France is up and the new content we’re developing – especially our success stories and customer interviews – are ranking quickly and gaining traction.”
The importance of a personalised long-term partnership
“The gradual nature of SEO has to be taken into account whenever we do any kind of digital marketing, whether that’s SEO, SEA, SEM, link building, or whatever. These are long-term projects that take time to deliver results. Contentactic educated our teams on the key benefits of organic ranking and the key metrics to look at. They also showed us exactly why SEO is a long-term investment that requires patience.
Also, Contentactic showed us why there’s no point publishing content for content’s sake. The goal of SEO is to attract qualified organic traffic. For a website to rank well in search engines, the content strategy has to be relevant to the needs of your target audience and the problems they face. If you want results, an audit and analysis phase is essential to start off on the right foot.”
Organic search – there’s so much more to it than people know
“Even today, there are businesses that are still not aware of the importance of high-quality content, both in terms of what it says and how it says it. So many organisations still go for quantity over quality, publishing low-cost content that is almost entirely made just for Google. Whereas what they actually need is to create content that speaks to the target audience and that meets their needs. I have the proof that this works.
And on a personal level, I also think that when the focus of SEO is to give people the information they need (rather than tricking them), SEO becomes quite a noble profession. It’s also more respectful of the user and end customers. By bringing them onto your website and giving them relevant information to read, basically you’re offering them a fair trade – your information for their attention.”
Multilingual SEO as a must-have for international businesses
“One of Contentactic’s strengths is the international, multilingual approach they incorporate into their services. The linguistic and cultural dimensions are an intrinsic part of the SEO work they do. At ISDI, we had considered working with one agency in Mexico, another in Spain, another in France, and so on. But this would have cost us more and complicated budgeting, as prices differ between France, Mexico and Spain.
It’s a huge advantage for marketing and comms directors to be able to deal with a single agency that can deliver high-quality SEO-optimised content across markets and languages.
We’ve seen Contentactic grow as an agency over the years, because we are one of their first clients. We’ve seen them diversify their services, add new languages, expand their team, and more. What we really love is that despite the significant changes the agency has gone through, the quality of service and content have remained as good as ever. ISDI and Contentactic have grown side-by-side, in a way, and Contentactic’s new positioning makes total sense because it meets a growing need among businesses. After all, how many agencies do you know that offer content and SEO in multiple languages?
Obviously, all this expertise comes with a price tag. So it’s worth making managers and marketing teams aware that good content doesn’t just have a positive effect on traffic and visibility – it improves customer relations. Because when you capture a reader’s attention with a promise of high-quality information and then deliver on that promise, the reader feels so much more respected than if you reel them in with empty promises.”
If you want international visibility, you need multifaceted expertise
“I’ve tested many translation agencies during my career and I’ve come to the conclusion that translation is a job best left to the pros. It doesn’t matter if you’re bilingual – that’s no guarantee that you are a good translator. In-house teams must realise how important it is to partner with professional, experienced translators. Especially with SEO translators, because so much of the content being translated nowadays is published online.
And then there’s SEO, another profession that requires a high level of expertise and that is constantly evolving. This is why it’s so difficult to find professionals who can translate and optimise for search engines. And why it’s even harder to find professionals who can translate, optimise and write great content. This is what makes Contentactic’s hybrid expertise in SEO writing & translation so relevant.”
Easy project management in multilingual environments
“It’s also a huge advantage to be able to run meetings in English, French, Spanish and other languages between the agency and our teams and external providers. The communication just flows so much better between project stakeholders. That’s a weight off our minds at ISDI, in that we don’t have to project-manage so much.”
A shared passion for learning
ISDI runs training courses on Salesforce and the digital transformation, and as such is a pioneer in this space. At our end, Contentactic has an online academy – the Content Academy – which runs SEO translation courses for translators and translation agencies and multilingual SEO courses for marketing and comms professionals.
Armelle Jaclot: “These first 2 courses with the Content Academy meet a growing need in the market. They also totally align with courses on digital transformation, which is our core service at ISDI. When you think about it, translation, marketing and communication have all gone digital. That’s why it’s so important to train yourself and to train others in these crucial skills. This is how you stay relevant in the market. Digital transformation reaches into every sector nowadays.”
Practical courses delivered by real-world professionals
“Another point I admire about Contentactic – and one we’ve implemented here at ISDI – is that they build their courses around real-world experience that is directly applicable in the daily work of translators and marketers. Their courses aren’t just theoretical – unlike so many of those still offered by training bodies, schools and universities.
That said, the main point of difference of the Content Academy is that Contentactic teaches these skills through the prism of multilingualism. It’s worth reiterating that multilingual content and SEO is a rare skillset that has huge added-value.
Lastly, it’s important to understand that nowadays the culture and objectives of translation and communication are changing. This is really important to get across to future translators and marketers. This isn’t to say that the day-to-day job of translators and writers is being degraded as it goes digital. But it is changing, and the culture and attitudes of the profession must change with it.”
In a word – how would you sum up your collaboration with Contentactic?
“If I had to describe the relationship between ISDI and Contentactic, I’d do it in 3 words: trust, empathy and connection. I feel like the Contentactic team back me up in my daily work. It’s like they’re a trusted partner I can count on in an emergency. I’ve seen our 2 organisations grow side-by-side. I just get the impression that there’s this commitment on both sides to help each other move forward.
I’d also add that the Contentactic team really put in the effort to understand and get to grips with each business and each challenge that comes their way. This is how they internalise brand messages and align with the tone of voice of their clients. Over the years, what we’ve built is a relationship based on trust. And that’s exactly how I like to work with agencies that partner with ISDI.”
