SEO strategy and in-house enablement delivered a 24x increase in conversions and lasting internal capability

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What we do
Telecommunications
Planning, development, sale, rental, operation and maintenance of telecommunications equipment and peripherals
All work incidental to the above

Providing services that meet the needs of the times, centred on Daredemo Smartphone, a low-cost mobile service Arlalink Inc..
『Daredemo Smartphone is a service that addresses a social problem: people shut out of mobile connectivity.

About the low-cost mobile business, Daredemo Smartphone
A mobile service that people who cannot sign a contract with a major carrier, for reasons such as a credit event, can take out easily and with confidence, without a credit check.

A phone is essential to everyone – for renting a home, for work, and for staying in touch – and owning one supports a person’s independence.

Working with local government, Arlalink has built its own scheme and grown the business.
It also runs other businesses, including mobile phone rental for companies.

To reach more people, Arlalink runs a range of marketing activity including web advertising.
We asked Mr Matsuoka, head of the digital marketing division, about the background to taking on SEO content marketing.

About your role, and about Daredemo Smartphone

Could you tell us about your role and about the Daredemo Smartphone business?

I have been in the digital marketing division since 2023 and now head it.
We run Daredemo Smartphone, a low-cost SIM service that people shut out of mobile connectivity can take out with confidence.

We originally ran a phone rental business, and pivoted to Daredemo Smartphone as we worked to set ourselves apart from competitors.
Around five million people in Japan are said to be shut out of mobile connectivity, which is a social problem.
We provide a service that supports those people.

Marketing and SEO begun by trial and error, and the goal as a marketer

― What was Arlalink’s marketing goal?

Simply growing user numbers. Daredemo Smartphone is effectively a SaaS business model, so more users and fewer cancellations produce steady profit.

But when I first got involved in marketing, turning the goal into concrete KPIs was difficult, and we worked by trial and error.
Web advertising makes it easy to set targets such as cost per acquisition, but SEO was vague.

With NowVillage’s support, the first article delivered produced a conversion in its first month, and from there clear targets emerged, such as how many enquiries to win through SEO. That was around November 2023.

The problem before coming to NowVillage

What marketing problem lay behind taking on SEO?

At the time we depended on advertising, and there was a worry that if we stopped advertising, acquisition would stop. Then we were shown that SEO leaves an asset behind, and we decided to take it on.

We also wanted to stop outsourcing everything and do it ourselves in detail, so when in-house enablement was proposed we began.

What NowVillage did

What NowVillage did for Arlalink
1. SEO content marketing
　Producing SEO content (articles) that brings users to the site
　Designing the path to conversion

2. Bringing SEO in-house
　Support so that Arlalink can do SEO themselves, covering
　Keyword selection
　Writing article outlines
　Writing
　Designing and wording calls to action

The numbers from bringing SEO in-house, and a stronger marketing team

What results did our support produce?

The first three articles delivered produced 18 conversions in their first month, at a cost per acquisition more than 1,000 yen below advertising. We could feel it working and saw the potential, so we went at SEO properly.

As of March 2025 we are a little under 18 months in, and SEO is now one of our main marketing activities.
Some of it comes from working alongside advertising and offline sales, but page views are around 15 times higher, and monthly conversions around 24 times higher than our previous best month.

The marketing team is now four people.

Making a user-first way of thinking part of the service, as an asset

Were there qualitative changes in the marketing team or the company?

The habit of forming hypotheses from the question of what users want has taken hold.
Planning and structuring SEO content depends above all on the user’s point of view, and through this work we learned the steps for thinking that way.

That user-first thinking goes beyond SEO: it feeds into service design, improving operations and hiring, and I see it as an asset。
Because our business addresses a social problem, many of our people want to be useful to others in the first place. Pursuing the user’s point of view and delivering value to customers fitted well.
That thinking then fed into improving the service and improving operations.
A culture of sharing knowledge also grew, through outlines and checklists.

Where the business is going: social infrastructure, and the marketing goal

― What are your plans?

I think we need branding and awareness work to reach a wider audience.
In practice, family members often sign up rather than the user themselves, so designing information for the people around them will matter from here.

We are aiming at close to double the conversions by the end of 2025 and five billion yen in revenue.
Around five million people in Japan are said to be shut out of mobile connectivity, and we want to reach those who need the service.

As a marketing team, we want to be marketers who genuinely love our own product and always put the customer and the user first.

Telecommunications is our main business today, but in future we plan to move into real estate, employment support and the essentials of daily life.

What NowVillage is like

― What would you say characterises us?

First, it is easy to build trust with the people you work with.
Mr Nagasawa, who looked after us, was not only in a sales role but produced content end to end, so his suggestions – here is how I would think about it – were concrete and immediately convincing. He supported us in bringing the work in-house with a real sense of what the people doing it are up against.

― Nagasawa: Thank you. Working with Mr Matsuoka was a pleasure. It is because he pursues the user’s point of view so thoroughly that Arlalink’s site grew as it did.

Who would you recommend NowVillage to?

Which companies would you recommend our support to?

Consumer-facing service businesses.
For care homes, hospitals and clinics, for example, SEO and bringing it in-house matter a great deal.
Companies with a clearly defined target segment will get particularly good results.
Our Daredemo Smartphone is not for the general phone user; it is for people shut out of connectivity and about supporting independence, so the target is somewhat niche. NowVillage took the time to understand that target before proposing how to talk to them.

That avoided aiming at everyone and blurring the message, and made what we said far more effective.

― Nagasawa: I am glad to hear it. I look forward to continuing to work together.

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