Creating an International Search Campaign

Congratulations! You've been running a successful search campaign in the US for some time and you are happy with the results. This is a great accomplishment alone - but now you are considering diving into the vast deep waters of International Search. Doing a multi-language search campaign is not as hard as you may think - it's mostly just understanding the languages, segments, opportunities and limitations of the target markets. In this article we're assuming you've handled the nuances of international shipping, currencies, customer support, etc, and that you have been serving the new target markets in some capacity already.

Step One: Identify Your Regions

This is fairly straightforward. Identify the countries/regions you will be targeting. You might start of as vague as "APAC and Latin America", or "just Europe". Some discussion of language will be needed here as well.

Step Two: Identify Your Languages

Example:  you will be running ads in Canada, will you use Canadian English and Canadian French? Will you only translate French in the targeted campaigns that are predominately french-speaking (such as Quebec for example)? Selecting the languages you will be supporting will help drive which regions you will be targeting as well. If for example you don't wish to translate your keywords, ads, and landing page copy into french, you might choose to avoid high-density french speaking areas such as Quebec. My suggestion - do the translation. Companies such as Vocalink (in Dayton)  or Asist (here in Columbus) are fast, good, and affordable for this type of work.

One caveat - if you use technical terms in your ads/keywords you'll need a local subject matter expert to translate. For example, a word-for-word translation of "Magnetic Resonance Imaging" will not be even close to what you think it means in the target language. We find this most pervasive with some of our defense and aerospace clients - some of their English technical phrases have no direct translation so the local expert in the target country gives us the proper nomenclature for the product or group of products to use in keywords and ads. Finding a local translator that knows how to properly translate "Radar Plotting Scanner" is going to be a tall order.

Step 3: Sorry about this, but Character Sets - there I said it

Character sets (encoding) are the instructions browsers use to display differing languages. I'm sure you've been to Chinese or Arabian sites and seen quite a bit of craziness in the characters - this is because your browser does not support their characters. Be sure you produce your ads, keywords and web pages in a character set that your target country can display. This is not difficult, but you need to know about it. Often translators may substitute characters with with 'US' characters - this can often change the meaning of a word. Use localized characters whenever possible.

Step 4: Create Your Keyword List

This is just like what you did for your English campaigns, but er, in another language. Again the tricky part here is to use the local dialect - especially for technical terms.

Step 5: Create Your Ads

Here again is an opportunity to use local dialect to show the searchers that you really know what they are looking for. Be sure that any translation has been run by local folks in the region where the ads will be displayed. We've all heard stories about "Finger Licking Good" translated in Chinese as "eat your fingers off", and on and on. Authors note - the 'Chevy Nova' story that we all read in so many marketing textbooks is not true - just FYI.

Step 6: Create Your Landing Pages

Of course, just as in English, your landing pages should match your ad text and keywords as closely as possible. If the remainder of your site is not translated into the local language, it's a good idea to mention that on your lander giving the visitor a way to contact a local rep for further information.

Launch, Measure, Tune, Measure, Tune, Measure, Ad Nauseum

Launch your campaign and watch. I'd watch it every day initially. Do keyword query reports and conversion analysis in conjunction with heat maps if possible. Really test tune and repeat.

Of course feel free to give me a call if you're considering this - we've worked a great deal in International Paid Search, ORganic Search, and Analytics Deployment and I'm sure I'll have some words of wisdom to get you started.