Below, we explore some of the best practices for ensuring your multilingual paid campaigns don’t get lost in translation.

Multilingual keyword research

Keywords are really the backbone of your paid campaigns, so getting this right is essential. It’s tempting to think that you might be able to simply duplicate your successful English-language campaign across all your desired languages by simply translating the keywords into your target language – but this approach should be avoided at all costs.

Culture, linguistic nuance and societal norms have a huge role to play in search behaviour and intent, and a blanket approach that simply translates keywords from one language to another is likely to miss this entirely or result in keywords that do not convey the intended meaning in the target language.

What’s needed isn’t simply an understanding of the language, but also the knowledge of how particular keywords are used, placing them in their proper context.

It’s often a good idea to begin with a broad list of keywords in the target language that you know accurately reflect the intention and targeting of your ads. From here, this broad list can be expanded into more detail with keywords and search terms that more closely match how real people may structure their search around these keywords in your target language.

Don’t translate – localise!

An effective paid multilingual strategy relies on much more than a one-to-one translation of ad content. Getting your keywords right is crucial for ensuring your ads are served to users in your target language, but beyond this, the content and copy of your ads needs to engage and resonate with your audience.

A good ad might rely on copy that employs humour, wordplay, emotion or a particular sentence structure to create impact with audiences. A 1:1 translation, even when it is possible, risks losing the way messaging is conveyed, or may be unable to properly capture the nuances of the target language in the same way. The result is ad copy that is at best bland and uninspiring, and at worst, completely different from the meaning that was intended.

This is where localisation plays an important role. It works by significantly adapting your content and keywords to fit both the nuances and culture of your target audiences, ensuring your ads and messaging are being conveyed optimally. Because of how localisation digs much deeper than a surface-level translation, often restructuring phrasing and linguistic conventions, it usually requires the talent of a native professional who not only speaks the language, but who can also provide local insights into your target markets, create more compelling ads in the process.

Finding the right ad channels

Once you have your keywords and carefully localised ad creatives for each of your target markets or languages, you need to consider the ad channels that are best suited to each of these campaigns based on language and location.

This is fairly straightforward if you’re targeting European countries, as Google has retained its dominance here as the leading advertising platform. However, it can be easy to fall into this Euro-centric view even when targeting other countries, and it’s important to be aware of this. There are several countries where the preference remains for native search engines, such as Baidu in China or Yandex in Russia, as these search engines have been developed with non-Latin alphabets in mind.

As with your keywords, when it comes to finding the right ad channels for your international paid campaigns, detailed research is needed for each of the individual markets you want to target. Failing to take language or location-specific ad channels into account, and instead focusing on Google can exclude a huge fraction of your potential target audience.

Ensure you have not only done your research, but also consulted with native speakers and professionals in your target language, who will be able to offer a far greater understanding of local ad platforms.

Final thoughts

Employing paid advertising campaigns in new international markets offers a cost-effective way for many businesses to reach and engage with target audiences across the world – but doing so successfully means overcoming the challenges of any multilingual campaign.

Doing your research, avoiding lazy translations and working with native professionals are key to creating paid campaigns that truly resonate with your target audience.