China PPC: Managing the Mania of Mandarin Messaging

You've setup your PPC program in Baidu, you are running your campaigns, and you're in management, measurement, and optimization mode. You will soon find it difficult to constantly toggle from mandarin keywords to their english counterparts on a day-to-day basis. We have found a friend in query string parameters (or, UTM codes if you're more comfortable with the term).

UTM Parameters to the Rescue

Using query string parameters (such as GoUpward.com/?keyword=China+PPC) can really help you to bring order to your campaign parameters within your analytics platform. Many people prefer to use standard UTM parameters (originally established by Urchin, who was later acquired by Google). Using UTM parameters is a way to establish query string parameters in a predictable way - and - these parameters are recognized by many analytics platforms by default.

How did We Break the Language Barrier?

We simply use one of the UTM parameters as a "secondary keyword" parameter. For example, you can use the placehold for "content" as the English keyword placeholder. This allows you to view the mandarin keyword and the english keyword side-by-side within your analytics reports.

How Does this Look?

The URL would look something like this:

http://www.goupward.com/?utm_source=baidu&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=China+PPC&utm_term =%E8%90%A5%E9%94%80%E6%98%AF%E4%BC%9F%E5%A4%A7%E7%9A%84 &utm_content=Marketing+Is+Great (the mandarin keywords must be escaped so the url will remain valid)

Now you can see your mandarin and english keywords side-by-side in Google Analytics.

If you have tips on helping manage multi-language PPC campaigns, please hit me up on LinkedIn and I'll be sure to share them.