Everyone Can’t Be Everywhere

Some products or services can only be offered to people within a certain distance from your actual physical location, so you better only show your ads to people either within that distance, or who are using search queries that contain your location. This is important to remember for local businesses, who often also have small PPC budgets, and for larger businesses with multiple locations. Targeting the people searching in a certain area with keywords and ads that are specialized for that area is much more likely to return success.

The World is Not Homogenous

In addition to the somewhat specialized case above, some…many…all? products or services are going to have geographical locations in which they sell better. If you use the data available to you properly, you can determine where these are and devote more resources to a population you’re more confident will convert.

There are a few ways to find out where your high-value location targets are. For one, you can use analytics data to determine continents, regions, or cities where your conversions are concentrated. Depending on the analytics package you use, you’ll have different levels of detail available, but in any case, this can be a helpful place to start. For those without analytics availability or who just want more detailed information, sourcing this information directly from your conversion data can be a viable option if you have the right tools.

For some people, leads come in the form of form submissions that ask for data such as city, state, and zip code. On top of that, for sales or revenue-based clients, you have shipping and sales address information available.  That means that you have all sorts of potential to geotarget your PPC campaigns.

So What to Do?

Almost everyone can get this data compiled into a spreadsheet, which is great but can be overwhelming. A year’s worth of conversion data? This could be 32,428 rows in excel, and sounds completely daunting to sort through to try and find conversion location patterns. Which basically gets us to the point I’m trying to make: the idea overwhelmed us, too, until a team member discovered this very neat website: BatchGeo. You just paste in your properly-formatted spreadsheet information and it maps the locations of your whatever- sales, leads, high-value customers- on a Google maps map. It can even handle missing information and can map city/state combinations, address/zip code combinations, and zip codes only. It’s free, and it has been an extremely helpful tool for us in identifying areas in which leads are concentrated.  Whether you’re using this kind of raw data for geotargeting now or not, it won’t hurt you to plug the data in and see how the map looks- you might get a useful surprise!

It’s important to pay attention to click-through rate in your PPC campaigns, as it’s a factor in Quality Score and can be an indication of the general quality of your keyword structures and ad messaging. But it can change over time, and it’s not always something to freak out about- the RKG blog explains why.

Did you find something in your ad group that’s really working? Now that it’s really working have you tried to replicate it within the ad group and across all of your campaigns? Perhaps your ads are over optimized. Matt Wagner takes a moment to explain why he thinks a diverse group of ads are better than highly optimized.

Once you’ve completed your keyword research and created your target list, it’s important to take some time to understand how you should be conversing with audience. As this post from PPC Blog explains, you can utilize Google’s related search function to help you discover the language patterns of searchers so you can attract your target audience, and communicate with them more effectively through your ads and landing pages.

Stop spending your daily budget if you want to get more clicks! This may sound counter-intuitive at first, but after reading this post from E-Marketing Performance, you’ll understand how spending your daily budget could actually be preventing you from getting your full potential of clicks. The goal is to find your spend sweet spot so you gain the most PPC visitors for your money.

The ideal candidate…

• loves the Internet;
• obsessively makes to do lists;
• possesses a “whatever it takes” attitude;
• feels comfortable talking to a CEO or Joe the plumber; and
• is eager and willing to tackle new experiences and situations.

Hanapin is an award-winning and fast-growing Internet marketing company, located in Bloomington, Indiana – we’re also the folks that bring you PPC Hero & SEO Boy. We have an open position for a Search Marketing Specialist, who will work with clients on both search engine optimization and pay per click advertising. We have a comprehensive and intensive 12-week training program to get you up to speed on how we manage search marketing and meet the needs of our clients.

JOB DESCRIPTION

• Account Management - You’ll work with 5-10 clients on SEO and/or PPC. Some are short-term consulting arrangements, while a vast majority are long-term engagements. You’ll be responsible for communicating with clients via email, phone, and/or in-person.
• Tracking and Goal Setting – You’ll work with your clients to establish goals and to implement tracking for those goals, which can vary greatly in nature: rankings, traffic, leads, sales, and/or revenue.
• Research, Analysis, and Problem Solving – You’ll get your hands dirty with website audits, competitive research, keyword research, analysis of web analytics, and much more. Additionally, you’ll research best practice strategies for both SEO and PPC and implement the best tactics to help your clients achieve their goals.
• Blogging – 25,000 people each month read Hanapin’s blogs. After 6-12 months, you’ll write for both SEO Boy (www.seoboy.com) and PPC Hero (www.ppchero.com), our blogs that cover the search engine marketing industry.
• Marketing and Publicity – All Hanapin employees help grow the company through writing articles for the blogs, making content updates to our corporate website, writing proposals, speaking at conferences and seminars, networking and referring new clients, et. al.

REQUIREMENTS AND QUALIFICATIONS

• Ability to work on site at our Bloomington offices
• Ability to put in extra time at nights and on weekends
• Minimum of 1-2 years experience in any of these fields:
  • SEO and/or PPC, either in-house or at an agency;
  • As an account manager at a traditional advertising agency;
  • As an in-house marketing manager;
  • Or any web-related field (examples include, but aren’t limited to, blogging, email marketing, social media, web analytics, and web development)
• Eagerly willing to tackle unfamiliar problems and research “best practice” solutions
• Innate sense of urgency to complete projects quickly yet thoroughly
• Ability to prioritize tasks and focus on the vital few instead of the trivial many
• Keen critical thinking skills and problem solving abilities
• Excellent oral and written communication skills and demonstrated ability to “think on your feet”
• Can easily toggle between working independently and with others

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

• Competitive annual salary, paid every two weeks via direct deposit
• Paid time off for vacation and holidays
• Summer hours (office closes at 3 pm on Fridays during June, July, and August)
• Simple IRA
• Health, life, vision, and dental insurance
• Additional benefits such as tuition reimbursement and adoption assistance
• Use of company laptop plus a second monitor
• Casual dress
• 1 on 1 review with the President and CEO at 30/60/90/180 days and annually thereafter
• Opportunity for raises every 12 months

HOW TO APPLY

1. Send an email to pat.east@hanapinmarketing.com.
2. As the body of your email, include a cover letter, which includes:
   1. A short but sweet bio/intro;
   2. A blog (personal or work related) you read regularly and why;
   3. Why this job position and why Hanapin interests you;
   4. Where you learned about the job opening;
   5. If you’ve applied for a position here more than three months ago, please denote that and also include two examples of areas you’ve improved in or skills you’ve acquired — since the last time you applied — that would make you more valuable to our organization.
3. Attach your resume as a PDF.
4. Apply no later than 8 pm (EST) on Sunday, March 21, 2010. No phone calls or walk-ins, please.

HOW THE APPLICATION PROCESS WORKS

1. Within 24-48 hours of submitting your application, we’ll notify you if you’ve made it to the first round.
2. Due to the number of anticipated applications, we cannot respond to everyone who applies.
3. If you are selected for the first round, for all subsequent rounds, you’ll be notified via email if you do or don’t move on.
4. There are four rounds to our interview process: written questions/answers via email, a telephone interview with two team members, a reception and information session, and a one-on-one interview with the President and CEO.
5. While we will accept applications until 8 pm (EST) on Sunday, March 21, 2010, we’ll begin the first round as soon as we begin receiving applications.

FIVE REASONS TO WORK FOR HANAPIN MARKETING

1. Culture. You want to work for a firm that has a friendly, results-oriented culture.  Our people are intelligent, dynamic, and fun.  We support one another, and we are invested in the success of our staff and clients. We are receptive to new ideas, and we encourage and value input from our staff.
2. Knowledge. You want to work for a company that emphasizes training and on-going learning within the SEM field. We invest significant time and resources into training our staff and promoting their professional development. Our CEO is an adjunct professor at Indiana University, teaching one of the nation’s few courses on search engine marketing. Our employees routinely speak at Internet marketing conferences, such as Get Your MBO and Blog Indiana. Additionally, more than 25,000 people each month read our blogs on SEO and PPC to gain insight into SEM.
3. Trust. You want to work for a firm that is trusted by successful companies to meet their SEM needs. Hanapin boasts over 80 clients nationally. Our clients include three Inc 500 winners, two Fortune 500 companies, and significant brands such as Author Solutions, Cook Medical, and French Lick Resort and Casino. Some of our clients have even started new divisions because they knew we could support their search marketing efforts.
4. Growth. You want to work for a financially stable company that’s growing quickly, but intelligently. Hanapin was founded six years ago, has been profitable since our inception, carries zero debt, and has grown revenues no less than 50% each year.
5. Leadership. You want to work for a company that is a respected authority in SEM. Business experts have recognized Hanapin’s leadership. We won the 2007 Fuse award for Innovative Business of the Year, sponsored by the Small Business Development Center and inVenture. We were also a finalist for the 2008 BKD Indiana Excellence Awards, one of only five companies in the service category. In 2009, we were one of nineteen companies chosen by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and SBDC for their first economic entrepreneurship award.

The process usually starts with researching and compiling extensive, wide-ranging keyword lists. Next, comes building and launching campaigns with those keywords. The goal of this phase is to get a sense of which keywords have potential. The final, and ongoing phase is optimizing the campaign, which includes: trimming the unprofitable keywords, expanding the profitable ones, adjusting ad-copy and keyword bids until you find a profitable combination.

Once you’ve found your profitable keywords you need to guard them like a hawk, because they don’t come easy.

To build a successful PPC campaign, you need to have a “marathon” mindset, instead of a “sprint” mindset.  It is an ongoing loop of: analyze-adapt-get results-analyze-adapt-get results. This process is certainly much easier if you have the right tools in your tool kit. At iSpionage we have designed a unique tool that helps you with this process. Our tool kit contains:

1. Keyword & Domain Research
2. Keyword Monitoring
3. PPC Campaign Builder

1: Keyword & Domain Research Module

Using iSpionage Keyword & Domain Research, you can leverage your top competitors’ keyword research and campaign optimization efforts.

With just one click, you can learn which keywords your competitors use.  With that same click, you will receive access to all of your competitors’ keywords, as well as estimates of the   keyword search traffic, ads, ad positioning, and CPC data.

Below is a screen shot of what you get when you enter the domain “Godaddy.com” in the search bar.

With the advertiser summary, you will get:

• An estimate of their PPC budget
• # of clicks per month
• Google & Yahoo PPC keywords
• Working ad-copy associated with each keyword

Here is a screen shot of the advertiser’s ad copy history with first seen and last seen dates.  This information lets you see which ad copy was effective for which keyword.

If you are interested in generating more keywords for your campaign, you can just type in a keyword and iSpionage will give you the top competitors in both Google and Yahoo.

Additionally, you will also get a list of strongly related keywords that you can further expand upon.

Screen shot of keyword results: web hosting

The nice thing about iSponage’s keyword research tool, is that you have access to data from Google as well as Yahoo.

To have an optimal PPC campaign, you should understand the competitive environment. This tool can be used to analyze competitors’ keyword-ad copy-landing page strategy, so you can out-strategize the competition.

2: Keyword Monitor

Whether you are entering a new market, or you want to monitor certain keyword groups like your profitable keywords, you will find the Keyword Monitor from iSponage to be your best friend.

With Keyword Monitor you will learn:

• Who are your top competitors are in each keyword group.

• The impression share that goes to your website, and your competitors’ websites. Which you can use to measure your ad coverage compared to the other advertisers.
  

• Competitors’ ad copy tests and results.

You can also set email alerts so that you are notified when your competitors change ad copy, add more keywords, or when a new competitor arrives on the scene.

Keyword Monitor allows you to zoom into other advertisers’ PPC campaigns, allowing you to analyze: how they structure their ad groups, ad copy history, ad positioning, landing pages, etc.

With this intelligence you put your business into position to grab the market from your competitors.

3: PPC Campaign Builder

The PPC campaign builder helps the user create a PPC campaign, starting by generating keywords, continuing to creating keyword groups and writing ad-copies, and ultimately finishing with launching campaigns onto Google, Yahoo, and Bing in a quick and effective fashion.

Start by typing in your base keyword and let the tool generate the list of related keywords. Your next step will be to select those keywords you want to focus on (like in the previous steps, average search volume and advertisers’ competition will help you to choose).

Clean Up Keyword Lists

You can now go to the “Keyword Clean Up” tab to sort and clean up the list:

• Sort the list & Remove duplicates
• Keep / Remove lines containing any specified word
• Remove the specified characters (e.g. @$#/%^&*~_=+)

Group the Keywords

Start by giving a name to your campaign for further reference. Then, provide the grouping criteria:

• Create a group by base word (Keep lines containing this word); AND / OR
• Create a group by excluding some words from the list AND / OR
• Create a group based on the number of words in a phrase (Keep lines with the number of keywords).

Don’t forget to give each group a name (I suggest giving each a descriptive name based on the grouping criteria: e.g. “3-word”, “no-stop words”, etc):

Build PPC Campaign

When you are done grouping your keywords, you can go to the “Campaign Builder” tab to create your PPC campaign:

First, set up ad group pricing:

Then, go to the “Ad Setup,” where you will write and create your ad details (each ad headline, text and destination URL). You can also populate the same ads to your other ad groups and make minor edits to differentiate them. These are all nice features and designed to help the user save time when creating PPC campaigns.

Once you are done, generate the output and you can upload it to Google, Yahoo or Bing directly.

This module streamlines all aspects of your PPC campaign building process, from keyword research, grouping and ad copy writing for all 3 search engines. What used to take hours, or even days, now can be done in just a few minutes.

iSpionage is a useful tool for search marketers looking to get competitive intelligence data to improve or optimize their campaigns. It will also shorten the time it takes to create campaigns, especially for keyword research and launching campaigns in the three major search engines.

By using it you, can spend more time developing a better PPC strategy that will save money and time, and increase ROI of your PPC campaigns. Anyone who is serious about PPC advertising needs to check out this tool.

Click here to learn more about iSpionage Keyword Research tool

BEFORE

AFTER

We hope you love it as much as we do. After all, this redesign is for you, our readers. So in addition to the spiffy new look (and chiseled biceps), you will find the following new features to make browsing and interacting with our blog much easier:

1. Get the best of both worlds, all in one place! The Twitter feed will enable you to stay connected with @ppchero special news and announcements that may not appear on the blog.
2. Finding our best content just got easier with a dedicated section for PPC Hero’s Most Popular blog posts.
3. Can’t get enough of PPC Hero? The new Connect section in the footer provides an easy, one-stop portal so you can connect with the team via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other cool stuff.
4. Looking for help on a specific topic? Quickly find the most relevant content via the new Categories page.
5. Spread the PPC Hero love! Easily share favorite blog content with your social network via the social media bar.

Of course we hope that you enjoy the new look and features. However, with every redesign there are some growing pains. Please reach out to our team if you have any technical issues with our new site!

Google has made it easy to implement search campaigns on mobile phones, but many search marketers are still hesitating to take the leap into this new space. Search Engine Watch’s Parks Blackwell encourages search marketers to leverage low CPC’s and test mobile search campaigns.

This post from SEO Scoop gives some great suggestions on how to use your PPC data to gain insight into your SEO strategy. By digging int the data, you can find the best keywords to go after, and if you are showing ads on the content network, you can use that data to help build your link building strategies.

Maintaining a great client relationship takes skill. SEMGeek thinks the first meeting “discovery phase” is the most important. It certainly helps to make a good impression when first meeting with a client and set the tone for the rest of the working relationship. In their report, they have some great tips for starting things our right.

Microsoft adCenter Desktop Tool
As an avid user of the Adwords Editor, I was delighted when Microsoft launched their adCenter desktop tool. Sure, I knew it wouldn’t be as robust or user friendly, but at least it was something! Over the past year I’ve stumbled upon a few things that I hope will help streamline the use of the desktop tool, and make it a little more effective for editing and optimizing your campaigns.

When using the desktop tool, there are a few things that I think are important to keep in mind:

• Your entire account will be downloaded when exporting. Unlike the Editor, you are not able to choose specific campaigns, ad groups, ads, or views to download. You get the whole enchilada every time. However, when uploading, it is not necessary to have every row of your account in your spreadsheet, nor do you have to have every column accounted for. You do however, need to have enough information included so the level you are editing can be identified. For example, if you are editing your keyword status and bids, you need to include the campaign and ad group columns along with the keyword columns that contain your changes. When in doubt, more information is better.
• Your CSV import file can’t be more than 10,000 rows. Though a rep gave me this threshold, I haven’t seen an official limit documented. I have, however, had more success uploading when I kept my file between 5,000-8,000 rows. I also prefer to break up my account by campaigns, and upload them separately when possible, but that’s just a personal preference.
• You can edit multiple rows at once. Like the editor, you can select multiple selections at once within the tool. This is helpful, because you can quickly change things like the CPC, status, or match type for multiple rows in one step (assuming you want them all to the same).
• There are multiple account views. When viewing the various sections of your account, you have multiple choices about the data you are looking at. You can see the entire account, pending changes, errors, etc. However, as you change between the levels of your account (campaign, ad group, ads, keywords) the view doesn’t hold. This isn’t a big deal, but it’s something to keep in mind so you ensure that you are always looking at an accurate view.
• Your CSV Import file layout matters. When importing, I’ve found that I have fewer errors when I start with an export file instead of the template you can get online. As I mentioned above, you do not have to have all of the columns or rows from the export file, but you do need to make sure that headers you are using are in the same order, and are called the same thing in order for your import to be successful.

In addition to editing your campaigns offline, the desktop tool can help you with your keyword research, and you can automatically add the relevant results to your ad groups, or add them as campaign or ad group negatives. There are four tools that you can use, but it’s important to keep in mind that the data in these tools is based on US Traffic Only, and the only metric you will see is last month’s impressions.

1. Similar keywords: enter a word or phrase, and it will come up with (you guessed it!) similar keywords.
2. Extracted keywords: enter a website, and it will give you a list of keywords that are the most prominent and/or relevant from that site. This tool can be very helpful for competitive reviews.
3. Frequent keywords: this tool gives you keywords that have a lot of impressions, but they are EXTREMELY broad (think Google and Yahoo), so they probably won’t be very relevant to your business.
4. Category Keywords: This tool gives you keywords that generate impressions within categories created by MSN. For example, in the Animals category, the term “dogs” was returned. Again, the results from this tool are more than likely too broad to be of any real use to you.

Microsoft Advertising Intelligence
We all understand that quality keyword research is what helps not only get our campaigns off to a great start, but that it is vital for their ongoing success as search evolves. I’ve been able to use this Excel plug-in to create new keyword lists, have more insight into the Bing content network, and identify search trends. It’s very easy to use, and it’s incredibly fast considering the amount of information that is returned. As with the desktop tool, there are a few things that I’ve found while using the tool that you might want to keep in mind:

• Make sure that Excel 2007 is installed on your computer.
• The data that is returned comes from Live.com index and adCenter. It’s important to keep in mind that Bing accounts for less than 10% of the traffic share right now, so you can’t assume the data is applicable to your Google or Yahoo! accounts. Instead, use the information as a guideline to understand the relative search volume, relevance, and pricing for one keyword over another, and combine it with other research efforts.
• If you’re all of a sudden unable to access the toolbar after using it for a while, change the time on your computer/server. We found that by changing the time by about five minutes we were able to once again verify our account, and regain access.
• Once the plug-in is installed you can access the three tool sections through your Excel toolbar.

The Keyword Research section gives you access to a variety of tools that allow you to perform the following tasks:

• Identify keyword categories to help your campaigns and ad groups stay organized.
• Recognize trends by spotting traffic spikes. This tool can help you analyze seasonal trends, and help you prepare for upcoming shifts in traffic.
• Find high volume keywords across different business verticals to help with competitive research.
• Gather demographic and location information on searchers.
• Forecast keyword volume for the month to help you manage your spend.
• Analyze content network statistics so you can identify high volume keywords and potential relevant domains.

The Pricing section contains tools that help you:

• Access pricing estimates for the search and content networks.
• Create benchmarks based on key performance indicators (KPIs) for various verticals that have been pre-determined within the tool.

The Content section, while currently only for the US, gives you tools to:

• Identify most frequently seen keywords within various verticals.
• Analyze pricing estimates by vertical for both the search and content networks.
• Gather content network pricing and impression estimates.

Effectively Using adCenter PPC Tools
Overall I think Microsoft has come a long way in helping advertisers better manage their campaigns, and I look forward to seeing how the merger will further enhance these tools. At the end of the day it is our responsibility as advertisers to understand what our data represents, and know how to use it to effectively grow and optimize our campaigns. No matter what tools you use to streamline your account changes, or conduct keyword research, take a few extra minutes to try and understand what you are looking at, and what, if any, shortcomings the data might have. Combining data from multiple reliable sources will always help ensure that you are making the best decision possible.

Doing this can really help narrow down your keyword list and prevent unqualified traffic from seeing your ad and not clicking – which prevents your impressions from skyrocketing and therefore lowering your click-through rate. But negatives also can prevent people from clicking on your ads, costing you money and lowering your conversion rates.

However, if you’re only relying on the search query reports you’re really only being reactive in preventing your ad from being shown and clicked on by irrelevant traffic.

Before you even start a PPC account, you should be running basic keyword research reports to find potential keywords that could cause irrelevant traffic from seeing your ads and/or clicking on them before it even happens.  This is a more proactive approach in keeping unqualified traffic out and therefore increasing click-through rates and Quality Scores. For example, you could be doing PPC keyword research on ‘vacation in Paris’ but find keywords that have search volume for, ‘weddings in paris’, or ‘paris movies’. At this point you would want to add in ‘weddings’ and ‘movies’ to you negative keyword list to weed out that irrelevant/unqualified traffic.

You can run keyword research reports in Google, Yahoo, MSN and several other free keyword tools to find potential negatives.

Every PPC firm should have an on-going list of potential generic negatives that could be used across all of their accounts. Some of these terms can include:

Free

Sex

Comparison

Reviews

Diagram

Pictures

Career

Job/Jobs

Bargain

Discount

Cheap

And much, much more.  **Note that some of these generic keywords may be relevant to your business.

Really, the search query reports are for finding negatives that you miss from your initial keyword research. Get in the mind of searchers and find those negatives before they find you!

The problem with most multilingual pay-per-click campaigns is laziness. Many advertisers will launch international campaigns without consideration for accurate translations and culturally relevant messaging. Thankfully this problem is easy to overcome with a little extra consideration and planning. So before you launch a multilingual pay per click campaign, take to time to focus on the following best practices:

1. Translations. Translations. Translations. The success or failure of a multilingual pay-per-click campaign lies in the crux of translations. The quality of translation is the most critical component, and thus should receive the most attention and consideration. Many advertisers are guilty (often unknowingly) of translating ad copy in a literal sense without consideration for localization. When this happens, ad and landing page copy is often confusing to a native speaker, decreasing the effectiveness of your campaign. Not to mention, literal translations stick out like a sore thumb, native speakers can immediately pick up on the lack of consideration for their language, and will immediately dismiss your message.Don’t fall victim to this common mistake. Don’t use a simple online tool. You need a human! Spend time researching a quality translation service at the onset. A quality translation service will read the content in English, then rewrite the content to it conveys the same message and tone in your language of choice. Once you receive translated content, run it by a native speaker to ensure the job was done right.
2. Leverage Existing Campaign Structure. Campaign structure is very important with a multilingual pay-per-click initiative. Regardless of the quantity of languages targeted, campaigns and ad groups should be separated based on language. You can only set language and geographic targeting at the campaign level in Google, so your language breakdown must be at this level.Leverage your well-organized campaign structure from your English-targeted campaigns. To build a campaign in another language, duplicate the structure (but not the keywords) of your English campaigns. Next, modify the keywords (see multilingual keyword research below), ad text and landing pages accordingly.
3. Pay Attention to Your Campaign Settings. According to the AdWords help section, “the AdWords system looks at a user’s Google interface language setting to see if it matches one of the languages that your campaign targets.” If your campaign only targets “Spanish” for the campaign settings, then the ads will only serve to users who have designated “Spanish” in their Google account. For example, a user is searching on Google.com and has their personal account settings set to “Spanish,” then they will see ads from Spanish-targeted campaigns. Similarly, if someone is searching on Google.fr the language default is French, etc. If you are targeting users in a different country that speak one common language, then set your AdWords campaign to target that language.However, depending on your campaign objectives, this type of language targeting may narrow your search too much. Particularly when you are targeting a bilingual audience. In this case, you can expand your campaign targeting by changing your campaign settings to target more than one language.
4. Conduct Multilingual Keyword Research. Don’t just translate your keywords! In most cases, keywords or phrases can have multiple meanings when translated in another language. If you use a direct translation, then your keywords or phrases may not be relevant to your product. Conduct multilingual keyword research to best target keywords in the targeted language. Get started on your keyword list with the following:
   • Search Query Report. Run a search query report to identify existing foreign language keywords that are serving your ads.
   • Competitive Research. Refer to competitor ads and landing pages to identify keywords or phrases that are relevant to your campaign. Note, be aware you’re your competitors translations may not be accurate. Always run these keywords or phrases by a translation service or a native speaker prior to launch.
   • Translate Existing Keywords. Start with the keywords that you are targeting in English. Hire a strong translation service to identify the most common translation for that keyword or phrase—be careful of taking direct translations!
   • Ask a Native Speaker. Once you have completed your keyword research, run your list by a native speaker. This simple step will identify any red flags in the translations. It can also spark new keyword-targeting opportunities.

   If you plan to target a campaign in Spanish, you need to target keywords in Spanish. While some advertisers target Spanish speakers with English keywords and ad text, it is strongly recommended to cater your messaging to the native language. First, keywords in other languages are much less expensive, so you will see lower cost-per-clicks within these campaigns. Secondly, your campaign will be much more relevant to your target audience if you speak their language. Take the time to translate your entire language-targeted campaigns, this simple step may give you a leg up over your competition.

5. Use Language-Specific Ad Text and Landing Pages. Translated ad copy and landing pages are mutually exclusive. You cannot have one without the other. The landing page needs to play off of the cultural promise from the ad text. So, if your ad text is in Spanish, then your landing page needs to be in Spanish. To maximize relevance and effectiveness of your campaign, both ad text and landing pages need to be translated to the targeted language.As with keywords, both the ad text and landing pages should not be a direct translation of the English copy. I apologize if I am starting to sound like a broken record, but work with a strong translation company to translate your landing page and ads from English to your targeted language. A strong translation service will make adjustments to cater to local dialects and cultures. Landing page localization does not just stop at translations— incorporating culturally relevant images, design and color schemes also should be considered to improve relevancy.

Have your launched a multilingual campaign? Please share your experience and suggestions!