If you’re looking for five solid reasons as to why you should start running a global PPC campaign, you won’t find five better than the five listed below. English may well be viewed as the international language for commerce and business, but the general direction of things and the type of activity online paints a different picture.
All online advertisers must be looking to the future in order to stay one step ahead of competitors. Recent study and reliable figures suggest that the most important step for advertisers to take in the future is to develop a global PPC campaign and start reaching out to non-native English speakers whenever possible.
Still dubious? Keep reading. Here are five indisputable reasons for putting your business on the international map with a global PPC campaign that targets prospective clients and customers in languages other than English.
1. ComScore Figures show Internet Growth is highest in non-English Speaking Countries
The most recent scores available from ComScore reveal that Venezuela, India and Indonesia have seen the highest growth in Internet use this year so far. Italy found its way to fourth place on the leader table. What does this mean?
This means that the majority of people using the Internet at present do not speak English as a first language. This means they are not searching on Google or any other search engine with English keywords to find the information that they require. You may well be selling iPads at discount prices in Kentucky, but that does not mean that you cannot ship your stock and it doesn’t mean that people in Venezuela aren’t going to be interested in your products if the price is right.
An iPad for sale on the Internet is an iPad for sale in any language. The only thing is that you need to make sure that speakers of other languages (those people who spend more time on the Internet than English-speaking consumers) can access the information in their own language.
A global PPC campaign is essential for companies with products of international interest to sell.
2. Only a Quarter of the Internet Population are native English speakers
ComScore reveals that Internet growth in Spanish speaking countries is on the rise, for example, but we must also remember that only 25% of people who use the Internet speak English as their first language anyway.
When we combine what we know about the developing nature of the online consumer on the Internet given to us by ComScore with the fact that only 25% of Internet users are native English speakers, it will come as no surprise that this percentage is also dropping.
More and more non-native English speakers are using the Internet and this means that the English speaking market available to the PPC advertiser is dropping all the time. Will there come a time when the English language PPC campaign is a waste of money? Probably not, but it is clear that the need for a global PPC campaign is huge if you really want to expand your reach and increase your sales online.
3. PPC Campaigns in Foreign Language are Cheaper
Native English PPC advertisers are stubborn. We refuse to believe that any other language could ever really be dominating any kind of commercial market and so we continue to invest our advertising budgets in English language PPC campaigns.
The huge investments made in English language PPC campaigns means that this market remains highly competitive and relatively expensive when we compare how much it costs to run a PPC campaign in any other language.
If the online Internet market is dominated by Spanish speakers in Venezuela, why are we spending more money to advertise in English to a much smaller proportion of the world market available? It simply doesn’t make sense. Global PPC campaigns are the future and one of the best ways of cleverly spending your advertising budget in all the right ways.
4. Competition from other PPC Advertisers in the global market is low
Most PPC advertisers continue working on English language PPC campaigns and this means that competition on certain keywords is much lower when advertising on the equivalent keywords in other languages. Why, therefore, are so few PPC advertisers taking advantage of this fact?
It is highly advisable to at least do a little research into the subject. Find out who the main competitors are for the keywords you would likely want to use in a foreign language. You might be pleasantly surprised to find that activity on your keywords in the language you are focusing on doesn’t even exist and that you could benefit from some really effective, competition-free advertising in another country. It might prove to be really profitable for you in the long run.
5. Internet Marketing was built to create International Connections and Possibilities
Offline marketing is highly restrictive by nature. People throw leaflets in the bin, brochures take time to develop, the reach in a newspaper classified listing is low, and TV advertising is really expensive.
Online marketing changed the face of advertising forever. Online advertising gives a local business the instant opportunity to become international at an incredibly affordable price. With the chance of global expansion at your fingertips, why settle for local and national reach when the campaigns are more expensive to run and the percentage of English speakers using the Internet considerably lower too?
Use the Internet for what it was made for… making international connections possible. Start a global PPC campaign today and don’t look back. Advertising must always look to the future and the future is global.
David Chapman, Director of Marketing at Webrageous, is an expert in the management of Global PPC Campaigns.
