In today’s digital age, the world is your marketplace. But successfully reaching a global audience requires more than just having an online presence; it’s about making the right impact. International Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns offer a unique opportunity to connect with customers across borders and drive your business growth worldwide.
A Step-by-Step Guide to International PPC
This guide explores the essentials of setting up your PPC account and campaigns for international audiences, ensuring that your message resonates with diverse customers across the globe.
What is International PPC?
International PPC refers to online advertising campaigns specifically targeted at users in different countries or regions. The challenges here go beyond language barriers. Local cultural nuances, trends, and even search engine preferences play significant roles. To make your campaigns work, it’s crucial to understand these differences, and when done right, the potential for success is vast.
Setting Up Your International PPC Account
Paid Search Platform Selection
While Google Ads dominates in many parts of the world, don’t ignore regional platforms like Baidu in China or Yandex in Russia. However, in this guide, we’ll focus on setting up international campaigns using Google Ads, as it has the broadest global reach.
Structuring Your International PPC Campaigns
When organizing your PPC campaigns for international audiences, proper structuring is key. Avoid targeting every country in one campaign, as this can lead to poor performance and wasted ad spend.
Instead, set up separate campaigns for each country or group countries by regions or languages, such as North America, Europe, or Asia. This approach allows you to manage budgets and bidding strategies more effectively for each region. For example, you may choose a Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) strategy in one country and a Cost Per Action (CPA) strategy in another, depending on what works best in each market.
By segmenting your campaigns, you can also tailor bidding strategies to match the profit margins or shipping costs specific to each country. This method offers greater flexibility and control over your ad spend, allowing you to allocate resources where they’ll be most effective.
Additionally, setting up campaigns by country allows you to target specific languages. For instance, if targeting Spain, you can select Spanish as the language, or if focusing on English speakers in Europe, you can target all European countries but specify English as the language.
Structuring International PPC Ad Groups & Keywords
Once your campaigns are structured, it’s time to focus on ad groups and keywords. One effective method is Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs), where each ad group has just one keyword and at least one responsive search ad. This approach ensures that your ads are hyper-relevant to users’ searches.
Make sure your ads naturally incorporate the keyword and consider using Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) to further enhance ad relevance. This can improve your ads’ quality scores, leading to better performance.
Conducting International PPC Keyword Research
When conducting keyword research for international PPC campaigns, it’s essential to select the right country and language in tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMRush. Failing to do so could result in missing crucial keywords and valuable data.
Also, be mindful of local spelling variations. For example, use “color” for the USA but “colour” for the UK, or “fall” in the USA and “autumn” in the UK. This attention to detail ensures your ads resonate with the local audience.
Writing Effective International PPC Ad Copies
Your ads should be written in the language of the country you’re targeting. Incorporate local expressions and terms for a more authentic appeal. Google Ads allows up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions in responsive search ads. Avoid repeating similar headlines and provide a range of calls-to-action, unique selling points, and promotions.
Finally, ensure that your landing pages match the language of your ads. This not only improves user experience but also boosts your ad’s quality score, making your ads more visible and cost-effective.
Google Ad Assets (Sitelinks, Callouts, Structured Snippets)
When setting up ad assets like sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets, tailor them to the language and culture of the regions you’re targeting. For multilingual campaigns, organize these assets at the ad group level rather than the campaign level, ensuring consistency with the language of each ad.
International Google Shopping Campaigns
Setting up a Google Shopping campaign for international audiences involves more complexity. You’ll need to create separate shopping feeds for each country, ensuring that your product listings, pricing, and shipping options are accurate.
Customizable Inventory and Pricing
Creating a separate feed for each country allows you to customize your product inventory and pricing based on local regulations, shipping costs, and taxes. For instance, shipping and product pricing may vary between countries due to import fees or regional taxes.
Shipping Costs and Local Currency
When targeting different countries, set distinct shipping costs and delivery timeframes for each territory. Additionally, offer pricing in the local currency where possible, providing a smoother customer experience and avoiding unexpected exchange rate fees.
Language Targeting
Ensure that your shopping feeds and product listings are in the local language of the country you’re targeting. This improves user experience and boosts the chances of conversion.
Using Custom Labels for Google Shopping
Custom labels are a powerful, yet often underutilized, feature in Google Shopping campaigns. With custom labels, you can segment your product inventory by top sellers, categories, or brands, allowing for more targeted campaigns and refined bidding strategies.
Campaign Types for International Google Shopping
There are several campaign types available for Google Shopping, including Standard, Smart, and Performance Max. You may want to start with Standard Shopping campaigns before moving to more advanced campaign types as your strategy evolves.
How Red Light Digital Can Help with International PPC
Navigating the complexities of international PPC campaigns requires a blend of strategy, expertise, and experience. At Red Light Digital, we have a proven track record of helping businesses succeed in global markets. With over a decade of experience, our team understands the unique challenges of international PPC and can craft tailored solutions that drive results.