Tips to manage Global PPC Campaigns

International paid search offers the unprecedented ability to break into new markets with low upfront costs. However, a common mistake made by companies and marketers when launching a campaign to a new country is that they only translate ad text without taking into consideration all of the additional complexities involved. Here are a few tips for a Global PPC campagin.

An international campaign in Adwords or any other PPC platform is not simply an extension of an existing local campaign. It has its own currency, language, culture and demographics. The campaign has to have the ability to customize parameters for local tastes and also to create common data that can be rolled up to a central location for analysis and optimization.

Here are some tips to successfully launchpaid search campaigns in different countries:

1. Choose your targets carefully. Search engine marketing makes it easy to expand to every location, but analytics need to be checked carefully to identify visitors who search in English no matter where they are located geographically, whether from Roma, Moscow or Brazil. You need to make sure you have an accurate set of data on your tagret market before you strategize for a new country.
2. Make sure nothing is lost in translation. People don’t trust ads that sound like they are written by a non-native speaker. However, native speakers alone can’t do the work as well as native speakers with paid search experience. In addition, little things that give the local flavor such as accents or spelling can also have an impact on search results.
3. Harvest local keywords. Keyword research should reflect the local culture of your target market. It is important to understand which words have the most positive association and are the most “clickable” in the given context and location. The best way to include what locals look for is to capture their actual search queries and turn those into effective keywords. Search queries can be captured using most tracking systems and web analytics platforms. Google Keywords Tools should  be used.
4. Don’t forget to regularly review your keywords. Through regular reviews you can remove keywords which are not providing value and learn from the success of your top performing keywords. The quality of the ads will improve.
5. Take into account different country demographics. Do not assume that different countries have the same culture and internet usage habits as others. For example, in markets where internet penetration is particularly low, ad scheduling doesn’t always work the way you might expect since many people can only access the internet at work. Don’t forget to take into accoun differences in holidays, work hours and seasonal differences. For example, summer vacation in Argentina occurs during the middle of winter in Europe. The way people search, especially the device they use, and in which network where the ads are served ( search vs. search partners vs. display), can say a lot about what someone is looking for, and can vary from one country to another.
6. Advertise on local-market search engines. It is very easy to go multinational without branching out beyond Google, but remember that there are local search engines out there with huge market share, such as Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China, that can help expand your market reach. Even though time investment in local search engines may feel like a big hurdle, often local search engines are less competitive and offer higher ROI
7. Use Ad extensions with Adwords when available. Give potential customers more reasons to click on your ad by including additional business information upfront such as your address and phone number, more website page links, or product information. This extra information, called ad extensions, will appear with your ad on Google.com, and in some cases across the Google Display Network. Take into account that Ad extensions are not available in all countries.
8. Don’t forget to use the Display Network: The Display Network is a group of thousands of websites and apps where your ads can appear. The Display Network is available in all countries that AdWords serves. Search and display perform very differently. Sites in this network have partnered with Google to show relevant AdWords ads. The Display Network is part of the Google Network, the name for all the webpages where AdWords ads can appear. Your ads can be automatically matched to websites and other placements like mobile phone apps, when the themes in your keyword lists are related to the sites’ content and theme. You can also choose specific sites or pages about specific topics in the Google network where you’d like your ad to show. Other more advanced targeting options are also available.  The Display Network has the advantage of reaching potential customers at different points of the buying cycle. Not every potential customer is focused on conducting a search
9. Focus on quality. Advertising on Google isn’t a direct auction where the highest bidder automatically gets the top spot, because there’s no guarantee that the person with the most money has the most compelling ad: a combination of quality fit and economic fit is needed. Quality Score is an estimate of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. Having a high Quality Score means Google think your ad, keyword, and landing page are all relevant and useful to someone looking at your ad. The greater your reputation for getting searchers to click on your ads, the more likely you are to have your ads displayed in a higher position at a more favorable price
10. Manage the money. Having a common basis for currency is critical for conversion attribution and analyzing ROI. In the ideal case, all currencies will roll up to a master currency that is the most convenient for you. Manage conversions setting conversion tracking at a multlingual level. Once the ads are live they should be monitored to see how many impressions, click-throughs and conversions each one achieves. Even small adjustments such as altering a single keyword can have a significant impact on results. Try to produce reports that will enable you to see consolidated data by different time periods and days of the week to identify patterns that are unique to individual countries. See the whole picture. To optimally manage your program, it is better to be able to analyze results based on each location, region and geography across search engines and languages. We need to make sure your tracking system is flexible enough to give you the data that you need in order to manage multi-national campaigns effectively.

Call Openvalley now to set up your multilingual ppc campaign and break rapidly into new markets.