Creating Conversations Across Multiple EU Markets for Preply

Preply was looking to boost search visibility across its four largest language markets: English, Spanish, Italian, and German, grow authority in its category, increase brand awareness, and drive new users to the site.

Given the target markets, our primary focus was undeniable, European travel.

In order to create something that would translate across markets, we had to carefully consider the differences in media landscape for each of Preply’s target territories to ensure we had a campaign that would deliver broad appeal at a regional level. We needed something that was timely, data-led, and that would tap into trending news stories.

Seasonality – needed to launch in time for the summer holidays when travel is of higher interest to journalists, the general public and to our Preply customer segment.

International data – had to include data that covered Europe to be of interest to our key market audiences and to showcase Preply as an authority across different markets.

Unique data – needed a unique insight to get cut through with journalists during a busy season. We also wanted to provide useful and interesting content for the audience.

Evergreen content – to grow brand awareness, we wanted an idea that would continue to build links after outreach had finished.

We conducted extensive social listening, ideation, and rigorous research to develop concepts poised to achieve our objectives with precision.

We came across a trend online where travellers were sharing how many steps they had done whilst on city breaks – this sparked an idea around which European cities require the least steps to explore, and from there, the concept of “the most walkable cities in Europe” was born.

We knew this campaign would hit the brief and could be localised and tailored to perfection for all four of Preply’s key target markets:

– Relevant to our audience

– Timely for summer trips

– Incorporated a regional hook

– Offered journalists a unique narrative

Considering limitations in budget and timing, we used a straightforward yet impactful storytelling approach that would allow for easy adaptation.

We compiled a list of European cities by scraping online blogs and forums, holiday booking and travel sites. The top 30 most frequently mentioned cities were then selected for the study.

We used a leading travel review site to reveal the top five tourist attractions in each city based on customer ratings.

By city, each attraction was analysed on Google Maps ‘route planner’ to find the quickest walking route to visit all top five attractions in one trip. The miles and time taken were then recorded.

Additional research gave us the average step length of an adult and this was used to calculate the total steps it would take to explore each city exploring its five most popular sights.

We also calculated the average number of calories burnt per 2,000 steps, to provide us with another angle for outreach.

Implementation:

– Crafted onsite content, designs and press assets localised for each of the four markets.

– Onsite content was optimised to target Preply’s keywords and category pages

– Expert commentary giving tips for ‘immersing yourself in local culture on foot’ was included to enhance EEAT signals.

The campaign launched in June 2023 tailored for a range of press including international, national, regional, travel/lifestyle and health.

174 media placements to date, with 127 Follow or Nofollow links to the home, campaign or product pages achieving an average DR of 54 – delivering above our KPI’s for increasing the volume and quality of backlinks.

Well researched, expert content which was published across multiple markets, enhancing Preply’s authority and brand awareness with over 35.6K engagements and 4.71 million estimated views.

We succeeded in driving new users to site:

– 2534 New Visitors

– 2931 Total Visitors

– 698 Referral Traffic

Coverage highlights:

• The Express (DR 89, link)
• Daily Star (DR 83, link)
• Elle ES (DR 89, mention)
• Economia Digital (DR 72, link)
• Vanity Fair IT (DR 80, link)
• SKY IT(DR 83, mention)
• Reise Reporter DE (DR 70, link)
• GEO DE (DR 81, link)