So, are you excited to grab the attention of the international audience? Well! Your excitement is obvious, but international PPC branding is not only about copying the campaign and changing the geographic location, but it’s also more than this.
Take a deep breath and plan your international campaign. Before jumping into international PPC management, you must consider budget, account structure, regional concerns, channel allocation, and localization. Also, some countries learn English, but when it comes to spending money on sites, they might prefer their native language. This article talks about all of such things, which will help you create a framework for targeting foreign countries.
Tips for Creating International PPC Campaigns
Research your competition
Do the groundwork and understand the competition level to adjust your PPC management strategy. For instance, traffic levels, keywords, and CPC rates are different in Germany and the UK. Thus the same diversity exists in different territories, and you should be aware of that.
Accurate account structure planning
Different campaigns for the different company will facilitate better bid control and accurate reporting. This strategy will also allow you to spend less on countries with cheaper CPCs with high volume. Thus, you can spend saved amount on countries with higher CPCs, but quality leads.
Targeting different countries separately will also allow you to make effective use of time-based bid modifiers. For example, if you run a single campaign for Europe and the US, then lower bids during the US’s night time can result in lower bids during Europe’s daytime. Hourly bid modifiers can be applied for the separate campaign of different locations. Thus you will never miss leads as your campaign will run as per the respective time zones.
Focus on translations
You can either use Google Translation Toolkit or any other tool to know proper language translation. It’s better to take help from someone proficient in the native tongue so that he can either translate English to the native language or check the grammatical errors. Non-English speaking countries will have very low search volume for English keywords. And in such countries, blindly translation of keywords without taking advice from a language expert can put you in trouble.
Proper translation will allow you to come up with exact long-tail keywords for a new customer base.
Make proper asset localization
This work includes the translation of keywords, ad copies, and landing pages in respective languages. You may come across an audience whose native language is English but use a different word for any product as per their dialects. For example, if you are marketing diapers in the UK, then it will be fine if you use the word ‘diaper’ in the US. But in the UK, they usually call it ‘nappies.’ Hence keep a note of this, as the name of the same product may vary as per the country.
Consider regional concerns
Never copy paste a campaign for different countries, as it may not be effective. The different regions may have different times for particular product demand, and this time may differ as per the situation. For example, a cybersecurity organization may feel the need for DDoS services after experiencing a surge in cyberattacks in other countries. Or a company dealing with ski supply may experience a surge during the cold season.
You should consider all such aspects before starting international PPC management. You can know about such factors by talking with your contacts who already have experience in a particular region and research monthly search trends in your target region. Google Trends can let you know about seasonal trends in a particular region.
For instance, if you are selling woolen cloths, you may want to know peak winter times in the USA and UK.
Know customers’ behavior
Customers’ behaviour differs as per the region. In many regions buyers love to talk with the salesperson, while in many countries people love to read the content first. Based on this you need to structure your sales funnel and should decide how much content you must put at the top and in the middle based on the consumers’ interest. This step may require some testing to determine what works well in a particular country. Also, never assume a perfectly structured funnel in one region will work better for the other region.
Final Words
So are you ready for an international experience in your PPC campaign? Remember that your website should look professional and trustworthy for connecting with the buyers. And for this, it should be in the native language with no errors for a better user experience. A visitor will never trust a website that is in a foreign language. Think about the different factors in different countries and adapt them in your campaign for better results. Also, track performance of your campaign region-wise to know the strong and weak points of your campaign.