International PPC: How Do You Take Your Brand Global?

Performance marketing at scale as you take your brand global. Learn the 4 reasons you should consider doing international PPC and how having the wrong strategy & budget can hurt your chances of success. We will show you how to look at your strategy and what to consider including localization, holidays and languages in each new country. Plus, one bonus tip to help you set your growth into over drive.

The Why

What are some of the reasons you want to grow your brand internationally?

Growth: You have saturated the market in your home country and see international growth as a new opportunity.

Customer Demand: You may find that customers are already demanding your product in another country then where you are based.

Sales: Similarly to customers, you already have sales coming in from another country. It’s easy for your brand to start selling in that country next.

Money: You want to make more money and see international growth as that next opportunity.

How

If any of the 4 reasons above resonates with you and your team, then you need to overcome a few common problems that we see brands have when they want to start working in a new country.

Wrong Strategy: Many brands pick the wrong strategy when they are going international. A common mistake is taking the current Google Ads account they have and simply adding every English speaking country to each campaign that already targets your home country.

Budget: A failure to  set aside enough budget to help test and grow a new market. Under funding any project makes finding success a challenge. Many brands wrongly assume that the performance they see in their home country is going to be mimicked in their new country for growth.

If you make these two common mistakes. it’s going to be twice as hard for your brand to compete in a new country and unlock any unmet demand you could be missing out on.

Individual Google Ads Accounts

When we work with any brand that wants to enter a new country, we always give that new country their own Google Ads account – making reporting easier by isolating performance. We know that each country is unique and they won’t all convert on the same keywords and ad copy. A one size fits all approach will not work for most brands.

Generally, we’ll give the top 6 – 10 countries that make up 90% of a brands business their own Google Ads account. Each account will focus on brand and competitor campaigns (to help with the ad copy testing we mentioned above) and build out a good understanding of the market. Within 2 – 3 months we launch campaigns focused on generic search terms and keywords.

When setting up each Google Ads account, set the currency to the one you use in your home country. I’d set the timezone to the local time for each country while setting the global account to your local time. This means data will be reported in local time for each country.

Localization

Translation does not equal localization. 75% of consumers prefer to buy a product online in their native language. If you cannot offer that then at least make sure you are providing the right English language to the people in that country.

UK English vs US English

In regions like Hong Kong and Australia, UK English is the accepted form of English, but in the Philippines or India, US English is preferred. It is important to cater to your audience with the correct and appropriate language forms.

A lot of brands will make the common mistake of not offering as much of their product and content in a local language or even understanding the local culture. This will cost you in sales and CPA when acquiring customers.

Holidays Around The World

If you are going to work in international markets then you need to work at understanding the local culture, which includes festivals and holidays. Knowing when the major holidays are, what they mean, and how you might be able to capitalize on them will help your brand earn local trust. Some major holidays include:

China:
Nov 11: Single’s Day, In China, on Singles’ Day, ecommerce behemoth Alibaba sold $1.5bn worth of goods in just three minutes.
Dec 12: Double 12 (Cyber Monday)
Hong Kong
Late Jan to Early Feb (date changes): Lunar New Year
Japan:
Late Nov (Date Changes): Cyber Monday
Mexico
Nov 10 to 16: El Buen Fin
Australia & New Zealand
May and Nov: Click Frenzy
Germany
Dec 6: St. Nikolaus (German Christmas)
USA & Canada 
Late Nov (day after American Thanksgiving): Black Friday, On Black Friday alone, more than $5bn was spent online just in the United States, according to Adobe

If you follow all of the above then the only other thing to consider is local search engines: China has Baidu, Russia uses Yandex, and South Korea uses Naver. Each one is used by a majority of the corresponding locals. These are 3 countries where Google doesn’t dominate search, and if you do the math, they make up almost 20% of the world’s population.

Going Global

If you are going international, then you will want to look at building a strong conquesting campaign for your band.

If you have done the above and have 6 – 10 Google Ads accounts that make up 90% of your business, you should launch a global Google Ads account. This account will use worldwide location targeting to hit every country in the world. Then you’ll use location negatives to target countries you have in the 6 – 10 Google Ads accounts above.

By aggregating 180+ countries into one Google Ads account, you’ll see a lift in business that could compete for your home country and the amount of revenue you have coming in. This tip goes against what I said above, however, these countries would never warrant getting their own Google Ads account. They are just too small. Having this global account focus on brand and competitor campaigns, you can grow your business and find up and coming markets in your business.

That is it for now, see you next time!