Foreign Google Ads campaign for e-commerce. How to prepare for it?

There are no limits online. If you have e-commerce (because this is what we will focus on in this post), there is nothing to stop you from selling your products abroad. One of the easiest methods of developing to other countries is a foreign Google Ads campaign. However, the fact that it is the simplest does not mean that you do not have to meet the relevant requirements. Before taking off, we need to take care of a few things that will affect the success of foreign Google Ads campaigns.

What is worth taking care of before launching a Google Ads campaign abroad?

Below I will try to describe a few important things that, in my experience, affect the proper operation of Google Ads campaigns abroad. Do you have to meet all the conditions that I will describe? Probably not, but the more you put into it, the better your store’s campaign on foreign markets will perform.

Translation of the website and product descriptions

The first thing we need to take care of is a good translation of the website, product descriptions, and titles. Depending on which language we target, there should be a translation in this language. Even if you are the translator, I recommend that you hand it over to a person whose native language is the language of the translation. Why? After that, it will look more natural, and the names of the products will correspond to what users of a given country enter in the search engine, and not what the dictionary or translator tells you. Remember that in campaigns for stores, Shopping campaigns are the best solution, in which the description of the product and its title are the most important in displaying and clickable ads.

I often see the approach that the store is translated only into English. Unfortunately, even in countries where the knowledge of the English language is at a very high level, stores convert poorly. A shop in the native language of a given country inspires much greater trust.

Product feed for Google Merchant Center

As we are talking about the product descriptions, you must remember that you need to generate a product file in the appropriate language from the newly translated store and add it to the Google Merchant Center. It will be a separate file that can be used for campaigns in countries where the language is used.

Delivery information and customer service

If our store / warehouse is located in a different country than the one in which we advertise, it is worth adding clear delivery conditions. As a result, our future customers will be more willing to buy even if they know that the store is not located in their country.

Customer service should also be in the language of the country where you intend to sell. It is also worth taking care of the telephone number in the network of the country in which you want to advertise.

Competition and prices

Before entering a new market, it is worth checking our biggest competitors. What their stores look like. What are the shipping costs. How the products are described. What are their prices, what photos do they use, etc. This way you will find out where your strengths and weaknesses are and you will know what needs to be improved in the store itself and in the descriptions to best fit the new market.

Additional costs

Unfortunately, in some countries, you have to take into account additional advertising costs. Google has been charging additional fees for some time to serve ads in certain countries. These are not large amounts, but you should be aware of them. The list of countries and more information about additional costs can be found in the support at THIS link.

Relevant settings for a Google Ads campaign abroad

Above, we have discussed how to prepare for an e-commerce campaign. Now it’s time for some important comments about the Google Ads campaign itself.

The structure of the Google Ads campaign

I wrote more about the structure of product campaigns in the entry “How to split a Google Ads shopping campaign“. However, in the case of foreign campaigns, it is worth mentioning that each country to which we target our advertisements should have separate campaigns. Why? Firstly, because it will be easier for us to control the budget we spend in a given country. In addition, each country has different cultural, social, and market conditions, which will definitely affect the products or attributes of products purchased in a given country. Such a divided campaign will be much easier to manage and further divide, taking into account the types of products that bring us the most transactions. Each market is different and we have to adapt to it.

Text campaigns are very often used as additional campaigns in online store campaigns. In that case, we need to create appropriate campaigns for a given country again. In addition, we need to take care of keywords in a given language as well as ads and ad extensions. This is important because when we run out of one of these things, our Ad Quality Score will be so low that there will be limited or no ad serving.

Location and language

Two basic campaign settings, but very defining their operation. After activating the campaign, it is worth checking again if the location is set correctly and if the language was not set automatically. I know these are the basics of the basics, but more than once I have audited accounts where I saw badly set languages ​​and locations. Probably because we do the simplest things automatically and we don’t pay attention to them.

When it comes to language, I apply the same principle to foreign campaigns as to domestic campaigns. I target campaigns in all languages. Why I do this, I described in the post “Are you sure you target your Google Ads campaigns in the right language?“. I recommend taking a look there.

Click costs and budget

When it comes to setting the budget and CPC, we must take into account the currency of the country. If the currency of our country is “worth less” (eg PLN in relation to the EU), you can be sure that the cost of clicks will be much higher. Maybe it will not be a 1:1 cost with your currency, but from my experience, you have to prepare for about 2 times more expensive clicks on ads if we operate in PLN and advertise in a country with euro. With this in mind, you need to plan a correspondingly larger budget.

Should I create a separate Google Ads account for foreign campaigns?

It all depends on how you want to divide your advertising expenses and whether you create a separate company that will serve the foreign store. If you don’t want Google to invoice your Google Ads ads for a different company data than it is today, it doesn’t make sense to create a separate account. You can easily use one Google Ads account for a campaign targeting several countries. By maintaining a good structure, we will be able to easily manage the budget allocated to a given country.

It was supposed to be easy, and it turned out that there were quite a lot of these requirements. However, if you get through them, a new market and users will be open to you. I still argue that Google Ads is the easiest and cheapest way to check if a given store is relevant to a foreign market. Most of the steps in the first paragraph should be completed anyway before trying to enter a new market in any other way. So why not go a step further and customize your Google Ads campaigns? In my opinion, opening up to new markets is definitely worthwhile and it is worth testing how our store will perform in another country. Maybe it turns out that the competition is weaker there and you start earning a lot more from a new source of traffic? You won’t know until you check it out. I hope my tips will help you with this.