2 replies to this topic

[RKB]

Hi,

I am new to Ad words. I have a website that i want to promote in different countries. Because of this i am questioning if i should make different campaigns or ad groups for these countries.

I have set up some keyword phrases in English that i want to appoint to its own ad group. The next step would be to apply them to a set of countries. This is all still straightforward, but, what if i want to translate these ad groups to different languages for some other countries? Should i make a new campaign for every language?

Maybe even more important, I assume the following search behaviour:

English: Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Scandinavian countries, and maybe the countries i make translated keywords for (see below)

French: France

German: Germany and Austria

Spanish: Spain and Portugal

Dutch: Netherlands and Belgium

So i expect that French people and the others search in their own language as well as in English.

Is this an effective way of targeting European customers? And, do you think that people tend to search in their own language rather than English?

My website sells products from China in bulk quantity, a truly third party supplier.

Thanks.

Rudi

[MakeMeTop]

Searchers in Continental Europe normally not only search in their own languages but also in different ways in the same language, depending on the country being targeted. For example, the German used in Austria or Switzerland can be different to that used in Germany. Belgium uses French, Dutch and German.

You not only need the copy to be in the correct language (if you are targeting native speakers) but it must be translated by native language speakers to ensure that it will make sense to your target audience. Also, the appropriate landing pages must be constructed for these surfers.

A fairly low % of European searchers (apart from the UK/Ireland) use English to search for information in their countries - but those that do will tend to use the .com versions of the international search engines rather than their local (default) version. Of course, this will depend on the products or services you are selling.

If you are an exporter wishing to sell to wholesalers in these countries - the probability is that they will be searching on the international version of Google or Yahoo rather than the local version - and may well be already searching in English.

In the list you gave, English is only used in the UK and Ireland (although other people from other countries may understand it and use it for business purposes). In Scandinavia, each country has a different language - Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish. Although similar, they are written quite differently and words can have different meanings in the individual countries (I've just completed campaigns for Norway, Sweden and Denmark and was amazed at the differences for the same products or services).

Spanish and Portuguese are different languages and people in Portugal would be pretty offended if you spoke to them in Spanish!

It is highly unlikely that anyone in France would search in English. They love their own language and think it is far superior

So, my advice is, if you don't have the knowledge to target the individual countries correctly (and it is not easy) - then stick to English. Simply set up a campaign in English and select the countries you wish it to appear in. As the majority of searchers filter for their own language in that country (or search in their own language) - your adverts will really only appear for people searching in English.

[RKB]

Thanks for your comment, very useful.

I will start with two campaigns, one with English language for all European countries and one in French for France. I think indeed that using English for the campain will be a good filter for most countries to get rid of people with no business purposal. Later on I wil add a campaign for Germany and Spain.

I know that the countries in Scandinavia all speak their own language (i am dutch) but their English ability is much better than many other EU countries. To my opinion English is sufficient to target Scandinavian customers.

You are asserting that most people that use English as their non native language to search on google have the .com version. I think that is a mistake. People use google for private as well as business purposes, they won't change the version so quick. Also, google sets the page in its own language as default, and does this even after someone changes to .com when cookies etc. are cleaned.

So by only targeting with the English ad on English google versions I would miss a lot of potential customers. I will target on all countries mentioned in the first post (even France) and make a seperate one for France. Once i have control over this i will start adding more language specific campaigns.

If you have any comments then please let me know