In search of new markets and lower pay-per-click costs from my paid search campaigns, I venture outside of the US with my keywords and ads. How tough can it be, right? You just translate your ads and keywords and launch, correct? No!

Yes, there are lower click costs, lower conversion costs and new customers to be engaged through PPC outside of the US. But, guess what? These countries and regions have their own languages, own phrases, and their own calls to action.

Here are some tips and tricks to optimizing your campaigns abroad:

• Utilize Google’s Ad Preview Tool: The preview tool allows you to run a search and see the search engine results page (SERP) from just about any geographical region including country, city, region or postal code. I particularly like using this tool to see what competitors are advertising in different countries. Are they translating their ads or hoping English is recognized? Are they using keywords we use in the US or something different?

• Don’t Speak a Foreign Language?: Find someone that does! If you’re launching in a foreign language country, run your ads in that language. Don’t assume English will be recognized. Your impression will be much more powerful when viewed in the in-country language. If you don’t have a representative in that country, consider using a translation service of some kind. Don’t risk using incorrect dialect or phrasing – languages are taken very seriously and a mis-step here will hurt your campaign.

• Watch Results Early: I find the first few days or weeks to be the most important. If you’re seeing poor results early on keywords that perform well in the your home country than most likely there is a variation or different word meaning the same thing. Find that word or phrase quickly! This recently happened to me in the UK. I launched a new ad group with the new keyword and a couple ads utilizing the more common phrase.

• The Landing Page: My feeling is that the landing page should also be translated to match the language of the ad. I’m finding that bounce rates are very low and call-to-action clicks are much higher on the landing page when visitors are greeting in their language. Does the whole conversion path need to be translated? No. But I think the first page should.

• Watch Your Costs: I’ve yet to find higher cost-per-click (CPC) numbers than in the US. So far, every country I’ve gone into is less. With that said, there have been some surprises. Higher cost, highly competitive keywords usually mean there is demand. Think about adjusting ad copy to match that highly competitive keyword. Your clicks should go up and costs should go down with the more relevant ad copy.

• Learn From Your Results: Don’t underestimate the research value of your analytics results. You can learn alot about the behavior of your target audience by how they interact on the SERP!

Whenever I do posts like this, I do a quick search in an attempt to find some additional information on other sites or even different points of view from my own. But, I could not find much on paid search outside of the US. Here is what I came up with:

• Paid Search in the UK – A Free Guide
• Translating Paid Search to the Multilingual Internet
• Drilling Down into Geographic Keywords

Do you have any good content I could add or is PPC not being utilized outside of the US? Your thoughts?