Before we begin, let us quickly mention that paid marketing requires immense experience and effort. If you want to maximize your return on investment (ROI), we recommend that you hire professional digital marketing services. However, a detailed understanding of the same will help you track the progress and determine if the service providers are working diligently. Let us begin.
How to Run International PPC Ads: A Detailed Guide
Location
Targeting an entire country for each campaign cannot always generate results. Depending on your business and campaign, you may serve a specific location. Displaying it in a wider region will only generate clicks that won't convert and will only eat up your PPC resource.
For example, if you own a restaurant, target localized traffic so your restaurant can appear in “near me” search results. Likewise, if you sell furniture (which includes shipping), you may not be going nationwide. If you're a UK-based business looking to expand to the US, targeting the big cities at first is ideal. Once you gain popularity and substantial ROI, consider expanding to more cities.
However, if you provide digital solutions (e.g. website development, graphic design, digital marketing, or other SAAS solutions), this rule may not apply to you. It can guide the entire country.
Language
When running an international campaign, it is essential to take the language into account. As time progresses, English is not the only search language. People can search in different languages. This is further boosted by voice search. Since people prefer to speak in their native languages, an international campaign should be optimized for the language of the target location.
Maintaining consistency is the key when it comes to language. Make sure your ad copy and landing page are written in the same language. For the landing page, look for keywords that have a high search volume in a specific language. We will discuss it in more detail in the next pointer.
Check out this blog to get a clear understanding of how to design a multilingual website.
Keyword
If you ask PPC service experts “What is the most important element in a campaign?”, most of them will say “keywords”!
We have already argued that it is important to find keywords with high search volume in a specific language. Simply translating a high-volume English keyword into German will not maximize the result. That's because Germans and English people use different expressions when searching for the same thing.
You can use a keyword research tool to find some effective keywords for your campaign. Additionally, analyze your competitors' ad campaigns to explore new ideas for keywords and copy.
Time zone
PPC is all about reaching the right people at the right time. It is important to take different time zones into account when running an international advertising campaign. When you first create a campaign, it will automatically be set to run 24/7 unless you specify otherwise.
Go to the Ad Scheduling section in Google Ads and customize the schedule to show your ad at the most opportune time of day in each location.
Information about your audience
The pay per click campaign is not something static. If you want to get the most out of your investment, it's important to regularly monitor the performance of your campaigns. Google Ads offers an observation mode to help you with this. It will allow you to get an idea of the demographic makeup of all the people who click on your ad. You can get adequate data from the following by observing these people for a certain amount of time:
- Remarketing Data – Website Visitors
- Affinity: things that people usually do or search for
- Detailed demographics: education level, parental status
- In the market: what people are actively looking for
This information will help you segment the demographics that have the highest conversion potential. You can also create custom strategies to attract these segments.
Responsive Search Ad and Expanded Text Ad
A/B testing is crucial to realizing which ad copy drives the most traffic. For that, we recommend using one responsive search ad and two regular expanded text ads. It will allow you to test different headlines and descriptions and monitor your CTR (click-through rate).
Please be aware of spelling differences when creating your copy. For example, color is the standard spelling in the UK, but in the US it will be written as color.
Graphic ad
It is daunting to establish a brand in a new market. Images can help you with this. Text ads are not ideal, especially if your vertical business has a lot of local competition or expensive keywords.
Display or video campaigns will help you get the most out of your investment. Display ads typically have a lower cost per click than search ads. On the other hand, these have a greater potential to attract people.
Way forward
Adopting these best practices will help you run international Google ads without a hitch. However, transforming them into practice requires adequate experience and knowledge. If you don't want to waste time and focus more on your core business, it is better to hire professional digital marketing specialists.
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