Pay per click management in foreign languages: where culture and context is crucial

It might seem as impossible as finding a needle in a haystack, but the only way to guarantee success with foreign language pay per click campaigns is to hire a professional translator or language specialist who also happens to have experience in pay per click management.

Your search is likely to take a long time, but it’s more than worth the effort. Hiring the right Google AdWords manager for this role is the key to your international marketing success. It’s the single factor which will distinguish you and your business from the rest also trying to break out into the foreign market.

Professional translator or a native with impeccable language skills?

When looking for the right person to help you build your foreign language pay per click campaign, you have two broad options to choose from: the professional translator or the native who is highly skilled in language use and grammar.

Native speakers are excellent in terms of capturing local phrases and the rhythm of a language. They can also be very useful in paid search management when it comes to noticing whether or not advertisement copy appears offensive or aggressive or whether the tone of the text is just not quite right for the target audience in question.

However, it is important to remember that not all native speakers have impeccable grammar skills and therefore you do need to be sure that the native you hire to translate your keywords and advertisement text for you is someone who has  strong, academic understanding of his or her native language too. Spelling, for instance, is still important, and any mistakes you make must be deliberate and part of the style of Google AdWords advertisement you choose to run.

Professional translators are going to be highly reliable in terms of perfect grammar and spelling, but unless they are also native, they might not have the cultural understanding necessary to take your foreign language ppc campaign to a level that surpasses all those you are competing with.

Either way, the worst choice you can make is to employ a paid search management expert to translate using a dictionary without any knowledge of the foreign language whatsoever. Choosing to go down this road is asking for online marketing failure to come your way.

What can your new paid search management language specialist help you with?

As mentioned above, your language specialist is going to help you translate keywords and advertisement text. However, he or she will also be able to come up with alternative versions of the translated keywords which might end up driving more traffic to your site through your Google AdWords campaign. It’s also possible for your language specialist, if he or she is a native, to share contextual information with you about the target audience of your paid search advertising campaign..

The worst thing you can do is offend someone via your Google AdWords marketing campaign. For instance, you might have adopted the color red in your company logo as a way of presenting your business’ values to the US market. >People in other countries might react to your red logo in different ways and it might affect the success or failure of your international paid search campaign.

For instance, in the Middle East, red is associated with danger and evil. In Japan, red is thought to be an important symbol of female reproduction. Only native input can help to pick up on these essential differences between cultures and prevent possible online marketing errors which produce severe consequences for you and your advertising budget.

Why must he or she also be trained in pay per click management?

Access to a deep understanding of culture and context when running international pay per click campaigns is vital, but you do also need to be surrounded by trained paid search experts if you really want your foreign language ppc campaign to start generating serious conversions. This is why the native you find to work on your ppc translation must also be an online marketing specialist and, preferably, trained in pay per click too.

English and Spanish are two different languages. There are many different cultures which use a range of languages that online advertisers must get to know and understand for marketing purposes. However, pay per click has a language and culture of its own too. It’s different to print, TV and radio advertising. It’s also different to SEO.

Ariel Rosenstein was absolutely spot on for saying, “An international PPC campaign “has its own currency, language, culture and demographics.”” If culture and context truly hold the key to international ppc success, you’ll need to find a language specialist who speaks “ppc” too.

This is a guest post by David Chapman, Director of Webrageous Studios, an online marketing company specializing in online marketing, PPC campaigns, SEO and online marketing. You can read more about David’s writings on the Webrageous Blog.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily bgTheory. If you would like to write for Certified Knowledge, please let us know.

Improve your PPC CTR Using Google Ad Site Links

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What are Ad Extensions?

Google ad extensions allow you to create more powerful PPC advertisements by providing additional information such as location, phone numbers, seller ratings or additional links to your site, all at no additional cost.  It is not a widely publicized tool, yet it can yield huge boosts to your click-through rate (CTR), it can make your advertisement more relevant and by taking up more real estate, the advertisement tends to invite more clicks versus competing advertisements.  If implemented properly, ad extensions can help lower your advertising costs while reducing bounce rates and increasing conversion rates.

Of the eight ad extensions currently offered, sitelinks may arguably provide the best opportunity for increased qualified traffic.  When activated, sitelinks allow you to create up to ten additional link URLs per advertisement, each one of which should point to a different landing page on your site. Up to six of the ten sitelink URLs could show up underneath an advertisement, on either one or two rows, with a maximum of three links per row.

How do Ad Site Links work?

Triggering two rows of sitelink URLs is not easy. To do so, Google must decide that your advertisement is the top ranking advertisement for the given query and that the keyword, the advertisement, and the landing page are all 100% relevant. On the other hand triggering only one-row of Sitelinks is not as demanding, your advertisement merely needs to be in one of the top three. In both instances, sitelinks must of course have been activated for the relevant campaign.  Getting your Sitelinks to actually show, however, is a bit more difficult.

Google utilizes several factors to determine if your advertisement qualifies for Ad Site Links and if so, which links should show.  Some of the factors include:

  • Your advertisement’s Quality Score.
  • Your advertisement’s position on Google SERPs.
  • The content of your landing pages and the relevance of your selected sitelinks.
  • Any additional ad extensions enabled in your campaign.
  • The search query.
  • The relevance of competing advertisements on the SERP.

Results – What to Expect

By having a larger advertisement, with up to six additional links to relevant products or services, you have a much greater chance of answering the user’s query more accurately with specific advertisement text.  If your landing pages are closely related to the advertisement text (as they should be), you should have highly engaged visitors, interested in following your sales funnel to an eventual conversion. Simultaneously your bounce rate will drop, your CTR will rise and your Cost Per Click should eventually go down.

Lastly, according to Google the following practices will help increase your chances of having your site links actually show:

  •  Your sitelink URLs must lead to a unique landing page, with unique content. Sitelinks pointing to the same content will not be shown.
  •  Your advertisement should show in one of the top three positions above Google search results.
  •  Your advertisement needs a high Quality Score.
  •  Your sitelink URLs must be relevant to the product or service you offer.
  • Add the maximum amount of sitelinks you can to your campaign. Your campaign needs a minimum of two approved sitelinks in order for sitelinks to appear with your advertisements.

Sitelinks is a great gift from Google for those advertisers with excellent quality scores who already have a high PageRank. If you are already placing in the top position, imagine what your CTR will be with six additional links to your site embedded in two additional rows below your advertisement.  All for absolutely no additional charge.  It would be madness not to take advantage of it.

This is a guest post by David Chapman, Director of Webrageous Studios, an online marketing company specializing in online marketing, PPC campaigns, SEO and online marketing. You can read more about David’s writings on the Webrageous Blog.

       
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily bgTheory. If you would like to write for Certified Knowledge, please let us know.