Managing a Google Ads Campaign in Another Language
Adding keywords in a new language to your Google Ads campaign is a great way to reach users who may not find you through your current campaign. However, if you don’t speak the language, a campaign in another language can be a bit difficult to create and execute.
This was a problem I encountered when a client asked that we add a list of Polish keywords to their campaign. I foolishly thought it would be as easy as throwing this list of words into their campaign and seeing what happened. It wasn’t until I went to complete this apparently frivolous task that I realized it would take a little more work than that.
In order for these new keywords to actually have an effect on the campaign, I had to:
- Create a new Campaign
- Write the keywords AND ad copy in Polish
- Adjust the language settings
- Monitor the campaign
Create the campaign!
Simply put, if you are writing new ads in a language other than that of your primary audience, you need to make a new campaign. You cannot just put Polish – or any other language – keywords into an English language campaign and expect it to work. It won’t. Seriously, please don’t do this.
You can create a new campaign either by duplicating an existing one or creating a new one from scratch. Since I needed to adjust some settings and create new ad groups, I opted to create it from scratch.
Write some ads!
If, like me, you’re creating a campaign in a language you don’t speak, you’ll want to keep it relatively simple to start. I started by taking the keywords our client gave me and – with a little help from Google Translate – separated them into five different ad groups.
When you create the ad groups, the sensible thing would be to name them in your native tongue to avoid confusion. I, however, foolishly decided to take a different route. Since the keywords were in Polish, I simply named the ad groups in Polish as well.
And if, like me, you don’t speak Polish, then having ad groups with Polish names can be difficult to navigate. I was constantly having to translate these words so I knew which ad group I was working in. I ended up renaming the groups in English after realizing it would be much easier to work with in the future. LEARN FROM ME.
The next step is to create the ad copy. To do this, create the copy in English, and then translate it into the desired language. For the translation, I once again opted to use Google Translate. Then, knowing that this translation probably wasn’t accurate, I had a coworker (THANKS JILLIAN) who was more familiar with the language look it over.
After creating your new campaign, you simply need to upload it to Google Ads, check the work, and change some settings. I did this through the Google Ads Editor but depending upon the size of the campaign, you can also do it directly in Google Ads.
Change those settings!
Firstly, you’ll want to make sure basic settings like location and ad schedule are correct. Since I wanted this campaign to run in the same place and at the same time as the account’s existing campaigns, I simply copied the settings over.
Creating a new campaign allows you to control the language settings for that specific campaign. If you’re running on Polish keywords, set the language to Polish. If you’re running on English keywords then set the language to English (obviously).
To customize the language settings, first ensure that you have selected the proper campaign, and navigate to ‘Settings’ in the left-hand bar. Next, select ‘Languages’ and type your desired language into the search bar, and select it when it pops up. As I created a campaign in Polish, that was the language I selected.
Lastly, ensure that you stop the use of any other languages, and hit save.
Monitor!
The last step, of course, is to monitor the campaign! Here at Adster, we don’t like to “set it and forget it”. That’s a rookie mistake (OMG PLEASE DON’T DO THIS). There’s nothing worse than letting your campaign run rampant for months only to realize that it’s been doing absolutely nothing for your business.
For new campaigns, we like to check back quite frequently in the first couple of weeks. As this was my first non-English language campaign, I wanted to keep a close eye on it and make sure nothing wack was happening.
Check-ins allowed me to see how users were triggering these ads. This was very helpful as it gave me a lot of insight into what Polish speakers were actually searching. With this new data in hand, I was then able to further optimize the campaign.
Too complicated?
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