Can Foreign and Local Language work together in Search?

We all know that Yahoo and Google are the leading search engines in the world. We all know as agencies using these search engines there would be trial and error as to how we should run our campaigns for our clients.

All of you may agree that however we set up our campaigns in English for clients, everything from keywords to creative, match type and negatives must be relevant to the product or services. Same applies in a foreign language like Chinese, Japanese and Korean etc.

However you may challenge me if I was to run campaigns in Yahoo or Google using English keywords with foreign language creative such as Chinese, Japanese etc. You will tell me that it will have poor click-through-rate (CTR) because it lacks search relevance? It confuses the consumer because of the language barrier?

Logical as it sounds. I refuse to believe it. Reason being is, if you are to run your Google or Yahoo campaigns in Japan, for example, and consumers are searching in English keywords and find your ads in Japanese there’s a good chance the consumer will understand it. Okay, so how do we prove that? Well there is only one way to find out and that is to trial out the strategy as I have proposed.

I have a client who sells English-language products in 3 different regions in the Asia Pacific; Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea.

When faced with a volume challenge (how to generate more sales), we debated the value of testing the above theory.  On one hand, quality score may suffer.  On the other hand, couldn’t we assume consumers using a specific search engine have a higher propensity of being able to read that language? (For local language creative displayed against English keywords).  And, seeing as the products are in English, couldn’t we assume that if we targeted foreign-language keywords with English creative, we’d still attract qualified consumers?

The second question interested us more, as it obviously opens up more volume potential.

To confuse matters, the two major search engines in these regions (Yahoo! And Google) disagree on what they allow (given in both instances that the landing page is in English): Google will allow English-language creative against foreign-language search terms and Yahoo! will allow foreign-language creative against English-language search terms.

In both instances our landing pages were in English exclusively.

Okay now, this is the part where I cross my fingers.

And the results reveal…

In Google, 2 of the 3 territories showed a higher CTR for English ads displayed against foreign keywords (as opposed to English ads on English keywords).  However conversion rates did not follow, with only one territory (Japan) showing any decent volume uplift.  This could suggest that consumers searching in foreign languages are not as ready to purchase English-language products; however it can drive considerable interest and brand / product consideration.

In Yahoo, only one territory showed a stronger CTR for local-language ads on English-language search terms (Korea); however they did drive a considerable portion of total sales – more than half of the total on average. So, more people clicked through in English language ads, however more again signed up via the local-language ads. How does logic work sometimes?!

Conclusion:

• More work needs to be done to test these theories, and we’ll try to run as statistically-sound test as possible in the near future
• There are some positive results in both instances, however the Google approach showed greater consistency in results across markets
• You can drive more brand and traffic volume targeting local-language keywords with English-language creative, but be aware of conversion limitations
• Given a landing page in English, Google will allow you to target English-language creative to local-language keywords, whilst Yahoo! will allow you to target foreign-language creative to English keywords.
• Some countries may be more comfortable with, and have greater use of, the English language, as some may not.
• You can determine where you should spend your search money and see growth within your client’s business.
• Overall it can work for you depending on the product & how quickly you can monitor which country and strategy is driving the conversions. Not only that, it can definitely benefit your search by covering more traffic than with one language alone.

Tags: foreign, language, Paid Search, ppc, sem