Improve Your Internet Marketing

Pay-per-Click is a large part of our business here. We generate a lot of our revenue through PPC, and we operate a limited PPC consultancy. All told, we manage over $100,000 in Adwords spending alone, and we are increasingly “expanding our reach”.

One of the common “mistakes” newer PPC marketers are warned about is “targeting the world” by choosing every country, or even too many countries, in their campaign settings. After all, customs, language, dialect, and preferences vary widely, and running ads for your latest “Cactus Growing for Dummies” ebook in Norway is rather pointless.

That said, for products & services that are appropriate, you will often find that markets outside the U.S. have little competition and unmet demand.

If the product or service you are promoting is English-language based, there are the “familiar” markets such as the Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. However, there are opportunites to be had by going ever “further” abroad.

Consider running small test campaigns in other countries where your product or service would be useful. English is widely used in many countries.

Consider having your landing page and ads translated as another option. I’ve had success hiring translators both on Craigslist, and Getafreelancer.com. It’s important to get native speakers, as dialects differ, and you might consider having them do some basic keyword research as well. Not all keywords translate as intended.

Finally, do some fishing. Be aware that if you are in the US, you will be seeing US ads only. In order to see ads running in other countries, Google provides a tool for previewing ads in other countries:

https://adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool

And while we’re on the subject of “expanding your reach”, consider local “geo-targeting” as well. Here’s an interesting tool for generating “geo-targeted” keywords and ads:

http://www.5minutesite.com/gen_keywrds.php

(SpeedPPC is a terrific tool to do hyper-targeted ‘location’ ads as well)