How to approach an international Google Ads campaign

The challenge

Expand globally and you’ll almost certainly have to run Google Ads campaigns in overseas markets where English isn’t the first language.

Your aim

To maximize your online exposure in new international markets, optimize sales, and motivate users to return for more.

How to go about it

With Google Ads you reach potential overseas customers when they're in a purchasing mindset. You see how many people are shown your ads, visit your website, or call your business. You can even target specific sub-sections of people.

Once you’ve found what’s working and what’s not, you can tweak your ads and test your changes to see if they work better.

And you only pay for results. So, if a customer doesn’t click on your ad or take action from it, you don’t pay anything. Signing up for Google Ads is free. And, you set your own budget, so your costs will depend on what you are trying to accomplish with your advertising.

Once Market Finder has helped you find potential overseas markets, it’s time to identify and attract your target audiences. Knowing them helps you tailor your global Google Ads campaigns to work across Search, Display and Video, so your campaigns will connect with the right audience at the right time.

Insights from your own site and accounts:

Understand how you might connect with users based on what you’ve already done

• Google Analytics

• Display Planner

Take cultural differences into account and localize your keywords, ads and landing pages

Invest in professional translation services to make sure your campaign reads like a local. But, translating to a new language isn’t enough. The customer journey varies by market, and your ads should adjust accordingly. Develop your strategies to align with how your potential customers search. Their behavior will dictate how they connect with your brand, and you want to have the right content in place to capitalize on that.

Keep an eye out for cultural nuances

Things like symbols, colors and images on your site may need to vary. Think about your calls-to-action. For example, be more deferential in countries where politeness is prized. Even the medium that you use to connect with users can be modified by the market. What’s great video content in one location might be better as an image ad elsewhere. The preferred web browser of one market might affect how your landing pages are rendered. Consider average broadband speeds and design a site that will upload quickly anywhere.

Market Finder tools and guides can help

General marketing trends: Understand how different markets behave online and how that fits in with what you want to achieve and what you can realistically accomplish. Market Finder will help you discover how people use the internet around the world, and create customized analyses of online access and device usage in the countries you’re targeting. You can take a close look at metrics like online purchase behavior, purchase breakdown by product, use of smartphones in online purchase, and much, much more.

• Deepdive into Market Finder data

Display Benchmarks: Want to understand how your Display campaigns compare to the rest of the industry? Or how different ad formats and sizes perform compared to each other? This tool lets you pull up-to-date industry benchmarks to help you better plan and measure the success of your Display campaigns.

• Find out more about the Display Benchmarks Tool

Market Finder Guides

• Find out more about approaching internationalization & website localization

Decide on your international campaign goals

What do you want to achieve?

• Sell more products or services?
• Build customer loyalty?
• Engage with customers?
• Increase brand awareness?

Search or Display?

The Google Ads has two main networks: Search and Display. The Search Network reaches people when they’re already searching for specific goods or services. The Display Network helps you capture someone's attention earlier in the buying cycle, with a variety of ad formats across the digital universe. This network spans over two million websites reaching over 90% of people on the Internet. It’s designed to help you find the right audience across millions of websites globally.

• Find out more about deciding whether a Search or Display campaign will best support your goals.

Pick and stick to an account structure

Reaching new countries makes your accounts more complex, but you can manage that through your account structure. Whichever you decide on, commit to it as consistency gives you a strong foundation for control and specialization, and allows for better reporting, budgeting, automation and account management — however many campaigns you have in your manager account.

There isn’t one right way to structure your account, but there are three approaches we see most often:

• One CID (customer ID) for each country and language. Products live within campaigns.
• One CID for each country and product. Languages live within campaigns.
• One CID for each language. Products and countries live within campaigns.

There are pros and cons to each. One CID per language might be easier to manage, but make it more difficult to manage budgets at a product line level. One CID for each country and product may allow for prioritization and optimization of top markets, but it’s a lot more to manage.

If you start by knowing your management limitations and preferences, you can identify the right approach for you. Think about things like your internal structure and how it would align to your campaigns. How’s your team organized, and how can Google Ads best match up to that? How are your budgets handled — across teams, products or countries?

Analytics

Once you have a larger international expansion strategy in place, you’ll need to reflect that within Google Ads. Start with what’s already working. Although no two markets are the same, replicating your home campaign structure and tactics can help you gauge how new markets respond comparatively. But user value, competition and costs of goods sold can all vary, so take this into account when setting performance targets. Regularly test so you’re ready to change course as performance dictates (see 'Automation' below). And remember, while it’s good to keep a stable goal, it’s fine to revise your performance targets in response to results.

Naming conventions

Even if your naming feels simple as you expand to one or two countries, it gets trickier the more you expand. So, across campaigns, ad groups and labels, use a consistent naming system. Come up with standard abbreviations and inclusions in names. Things like country, language and targeting method should be in your labels wherever possible.

Automation

The more you expand, the more you and your team need to manage. Google automated tools can also help. A consistently organized account will also help you take better advantage of tools like these as, once you put the framework in place, many day-to-day optimizations are taken off your plate.

For instance:

• Automated bidding gives better, more informed bids and time-saving.
• Ad customizers adapt your text ads to what someone is searching for, on which device, in which location, or even the date, time of day or day of the week. They can insert a price, the time left before a sale ends, and any other text that you define.

Automation can help you test new markets. Testing is key to see what best works in your new market. Again, Google has automated tools to help.

• Dynamic Search Ads for text ad campaigns
• Shopping campaigns for retailers
• Display Campaign Optimizer for display campaigns
• App campaigns for app promotion

Sign up for our Best Practices newsletter to get advanced Google Ads tips and updates right to your inbox.