Tips on Global Google Ads
Most of the best practices in terms of paid search tend to remain the same, however, companies that are looking to expand into international markets for the first time, or simply want to grow their local presence, should be paying attention to certain strategies and details to get better results.
Location Research
One of the frequent mistakes that most companies make when targeting a brand new location is not doing any research into the details of what that location encompasses. For example, plenty of companies in the UK are looking to target the entire country, and they simply look to input the country’s name into their new campaigns.
However, they tend to forget that the UK includes Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, the Isle of Man, as well as England. These are essential details that companies should understand, especially businesses that ship products to different locations. This is because there are different costs for shipping and transporting those products, which will affect the overall advertising return on investment (ROI) with those promotional efforts.
The best way to go about targeting a new location is to look at the largest cities where a company can see a large search volume, and reach a wider demographic. Additionally, companies that are looking to expand into other cities within the same country should first start targeting the cities that are nearest to their own location. Furthermore, they should also use location-based keywords which can help in developing audience segments that are based on those keywords, and prepare those groups with different marketing strategies.
Language
When expanding into international markets, language is always key. That’s why companies should prioritize language consistency, which means creating landing pages, content, and ads that are written in the local language. Everything across ad copy, keywords, and other tactics should be consistent, because Google heavily relies on it and takes this into consideration when ranking websites. Furthermore, when possible, companies should be targeting multiple languages. For example, if the original ads are in English, but Spanish is included as another target language, people that speak both languages should be targeted with that promotional campaign.
Meanwhile, companies that are looking to create complete campaigns in a different language can get plenty of use out of Google Translate. Google has created this tool for free, which allows its users to translate between different languages, which is beneficial when creating ad copy in foreign languages. One thing to keep in mind when creating and translating copy is to be mindful of the character limits in descriptions and headlines, and to make sure that all the landing pages translate well into the target language. These are key elements that will improve the ease of conversion and the likelihood of people converting with the new target audience.
