Advanced Multilingual Google Geo-targeting Strategies

Approved Google Engage Agency

While everyone knows that you should target customers in their own language it’s actually more complicated than simply marketing in German for Germany. For instance, late last year I visited with friends in Munich. Munich is located in the southern part of Germany, commonly known as Bavaria, near the Austrian border. While I was acutely aware that there were differences between Bavaria, Berlin and Stuttgart from having worked and lived part time in Stuttgart, my friend, while discussing some of the cultural and language differences between Munich and the rest of Germany, pointed out that she did very well in Austria because the Bavarians and the Austrians had more in common than the Austrians and the northern Germans. This is quite common in Europe where borders have been rewritten many times throughout history and populations have been displaced, forced to move or where whole cities where evacuated and the local towns were taken over.

As Google’s Search tools and network continues to improve, advertisers and marketers have more granular control and can target buyers more precisely. So if you’ve prepared separate campaigns for Germany and Austria, you might want to run that Austrian campaign in specific cities in Germany where it might be more effect than your “Germany” ads.

Run the French campaign in Germany, run the Czech campaign in Slovakia, run the English campaign in almost every major cityWhile working in Stuttgart, I was told often how close we were to the French border city of Strasbourg. Strasbourg is a famous picturesque city on the border between France and Germany and home to the European Parliament. Like other cities, Strasbourg has changed hands between the French and the Germans more than once. As a result it’s truly a blended French and German city. With Google geo-targeting you can match specific ads in the languages of your choice to specific locations. So a campaign here might run variations of ads in several languages.

And the same is true throughout Europe. For instance there are many Slovaks living and working in the Czech Republic and many Czech’s have family in Slovakia while each language is understood by both. Here you might reach more buyers by running ads in Czech and Slovakian in Bratislava. While conversely in Prague you might run a campaign in Czech, English and Slovakian since Prague has many English speaking ex-pats and even publishes a daily newspaper in English; the Prague Post. Here’s an example of how you can run an English language Ad by city, province or country. In this case we have an English Ad. Since it’s directed at the automotive industry we want it to run in places that are automotive-centric. For instance Slovakia is a very strong automotive manufacturing location. With many car companies, including Porsche and VW which owns Slovakia’s only car manufacturer, Seat. So this English Ad will appear in Search results in Slovakia, Prague and Ottawa as well as other multilingual cities and countries where search results in English are appropriate for the audience.

While in Canada you can set the English language Ad to only appear in Ottawa and run a proper French language Ad in French-speaking Quebec. This type of advanced geo-targeting will improve the performance of your online advertising and impression-to-conversions ratio. It gives you far deeper control than just choosing a single language for a country.

You can run an English language Ad in a specific city, province or country.

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A three-dimensional approach to multilingual keyword researchHaving lived and worked part-time in both the Czech Republic and Germany I can tell you first hand that a monolingual approach for most multinational’s targeted locales is a simple-minded poor-performing solution to a more complex challenge. Today more and more people are living bilingual lives, regularly speaking several languages every day. Watching TV programs in their native language and English, listening to local music and American music with friends while working with English speaking colleagues. Search is no different with bilingual people performing search queries in both their native language and other languages regularly. Want proof? Just take a look at Facebook profiles throughout the world. Many profiles are in English even though they live in another country.

A three-dimensional approach to keywords applies here as well and should work hand in hand with your geo-targeting strategies. If you’re running a multilingual campaign you should have keywords in every language. In Prague, you might have Czech, English and Slovakian keywords to support an English language Ad campaign.

For effective international and multilingual SEO and PPC campaigns that rock, contact Rick Woyde at Language Arts & Science. Rick can be reached by email at rickw@languageartsandscience.com or at +1-248-246-0475.

Bilingual Billboard for a local radio station in Ostrava, Czech Republic near the Polish border