Ad copy is essential to any PPC campaign, no matter the target audience or the language. Think of it as a shop window to any website – it needs to be enticing, written in such a way that shows you what you want.
The main aim is to get customers to ‘pop in and buy’ or in digital marketing terms, click on the ad and convert. Whether your target audience is a mum-to-be shopping for baby products, or a 20-something looking for the latest hot off the rail fashion, the expressions used and different cultural behaviours need to be incorporated into every ad in order to be accurately localised.
So how do we do it?
At Croud, we are able to cater to both the target audience and the local language efficiently, without losing the relevance of the campaign.
But how can we scale up localised ad copy across hundreds of campaigns and ad groups quickly, without losing relevancy you ask? Well, not only do our teams at Croud use some of the best copywriters worldwide to create the content for our English-speaking markets, but we have a dedicated team, Croud Local, that can localise ad copy into many different languages at scale.
Using in-market native copywriters to localise the current tried and tested best-performing ads from your English campaigns, Croud Local will bring them to life across various markets, taking into account any cultural behaviours, expressions and idioms that are used – which is far better than simply translating ad copy from one language to another and hoping it works!
The process
As the first step, we’ll review the current best-performing ads within an account for localisation relevancy, which includes considering whether the copy is appropriate for the chosen locale and if not, suitably adapting it so that it will fit the local market.
Following this, the localised ad copy will be reviewed again to ensure it makes sense, sounds natural and is appealing to a native speaker. Factors such as expression, price points and delivery times will be taken into consideration. We’ll then go onto websites of the target market in order to check if there are any phrases or slogans that are being utilised which can be incorporated into the ads.
Once the ads are localised, the ad copy is double-checked for grammar and spelling.
Maintaining the relevancy of your PPC campaigns
In order to ensure the process of using the now localised ads remains relevant across the entire account, Croud Local take a selection of steps, starting by adding the phrase [insert] within the ad text in such a way to ensure it will make sense when the ads are built out across the account with tailored keywords. We’ll create a list of keywords that can be inserted into the ads, and this is how each ad will become relevant to each ad group.
Once this list is complete for the account, it is checked for spelling and casing. Campaigns and ad groups are then duplicated several times until there are the same amount of rows as there are ad copy variants. This will result in the already localised ad copy being added to the first ad group.
Using Excel formulas we can simply pull into each of the ads, the keywords or phrases just created. And once these ads are perfected for one ad group, we can copy it throughout the whole build-out; by keeping the formula dynamic, tailored keywords can be pulled for each of the different ad groups.
Final review
The review is the longest part of the process, but it’s absolutely necessary for the success of your localised ads. Croud Local have perfected the review process, using a selection of steps starting by pasting the formulas and reading through each of the ads to ensure they all make sense. Not only does this include ensuring the ads are relevant, but also that the tone is correct, cultural differences have been taken into consideration and any technical language has been converted appropriately.
Following this, alterations are made to prepositions as and where they are needed, for example, is it ‘an envelope’ or ‘a envelope’ – when it comes to many languages, words can be either masculine, feminine or neuter, so this review is essential.
Finally, the ads are reworked if necessary to ensure they’re within the permitted character length.
What’s the point of it all?
So why do we go to all this effort of tailoring each of the ads in an account?
Well technically, this improves the relevancy of your ads, and relevancy is important to Google Ads. The higher the relevancy, the higher the quality score, and the higher the quality score, the higher the visibility, giving your ads more chance of conversion at a lower cost-per-click. Think about it – would you click on an ad that doesn’t contain the word shoes, if you were looking for shoes?
Once everything is complete, these ads can be uploaded and activated in your Google and Bing accounts and after a period of time, ad performance can be analysed to identify the converting copy – which is essentially the most enticing phrases. These learnings can then be used to tweak any underperforming ad copy.
Tweaking ad copy doesn’t mean that the ads weren’t well written during the initial process, it is more because consumers’ search behaviours are always changing and by doing this, you’re consistently optimising, improving click-through-rate and thereby conversions to align with this.
However, the important thing to remember is that your ads are correctly localised to suit the target audience in a tone reflective of the client from the start. This includes relevant keywords across each of the ad group themes within the account, which can only be improved upon – so it’s a win-win!
If you’d like to know about Croud Local and how Croud can help you scale your PPC campaigns globally, get in touch.
