In the initial years of the internet, the language of the world wide web was exclusively English.
However, the current state of affairs indicates that other regional languages are competing heavily for this space. A report on most used internet languages shows that Chinese is fast catching up with English and other languages like Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese are not too far behind!
A good starting point for you to see if it is worth venturing into foreign lands is to assess your Google Analytics visitor data. Once you have analysed and made a decision that this makes good business sense, you can start looking at website localisation, SEO and PPC marketing. SEO is an on-going process and it can take time to succeed and yield results. PPC, on the other hand, is a quick and cost-effective means to build brand awareness.
Here are a few tips to help you with multilingual PPC
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Keywords Research
When it comes to multilingual keyword research, do your homework thoroughly. Do not use literal translations of your English keywords as they may not be accurate or mean something entirely different in a foreign language! As a starting step, you can refer to the search console or your existing search terms on paid search to identify the foreign language keywords that visitors to your site are using. Also, look at the competition and analyse their ads and landing pages to get an idea of their keywords. Once you have a starting set of keywords, use a translation agency to translate them into the required language. And as a final check, run it past a native speaker. You are now all set to use your foreign language keywords.
Accurate And Relevant Ad Copy And Landing Pages
Translations are crucial to the success of a multilingual pay-per-click campaign. Localisation needs to be a key consideration while writing ad copy or landing page text. Literal translations should be strictly avoided. It shows a lack of effort on your part to woo the native speaker. Native speakers will trust and respond naturally to a campaign that understands them and speaks to them in a language they understand. Investing in a good translation agency and vetting ad copies and landing pages from a native speaker can help you make the most of your multilingual campaigns and yield you better results.
Campaign Structure
With Google Adwords, you can only set language and geographic targeting at the campaign level. So, it is best to have a campaign for each language you wish to target. You can duplicate the structure of your English language campaign, but be sure to use language specific keywords and ads as discussed above. Another reason to have multilingual campaigns split by languages is that different languages and regions can also have drastic differences in CPCs and you may want to test each region for different keyword bids, bidding strategies, ads scheduling and other metrics.
Summary
Running a foreign language PPC campaign is challenging. However, once you have planned well a clear execution strategy along with ongoing optimisations can help you reap wonderful results. If you need help with your multilingual PPC Campaigns, please feel free to contact our Google Adwords and Bing Ads qualified experts at SocialB.
