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Which Countries Should You Target With Google AdWords?

September 28, 2009 on 8:22 pm | In Google Adwords | 52 Comments

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If you’re selling a product internationally (particularly a digital product) and you’re using Google AdWords, one of the factors to consider is which countries to target.

My preference is to duplicate campaigns and target them toward specific countries or country groups — this accounts for the different market dynamics within different regions and allows you to optimise independently.

My typical market groups are:

USA
Canada
UK (plus Ireland)
Australia (sometimes with NZ, sometimes separate)
Middle East (UAE, Qatar, Israel, Kuwait work best for English language)
South Africa
Northern Europe (Sweden, Norway, Denmark etc)

Beyond that you have the option of targeting other country groups, but it’s important to track ROI for each group.

In my experience, most other country groups don’t have the purchasing power to buy USD-denominated info products, but you really do need to test on a per product basis.

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52 Comments »

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That’s quite true , and analytics and addwords report are very powerfull tools to track wich countries are the most profitable.

For exemple i used addwords report to look how well worked my campaign and realised that click from India never got me a single Lead and REALLY looked like fake click

I then stop advertising in this country and got more quality clicks for the same daily budget

life’s beautifull isn’t it ^^

Comment by téléassistance — September 29, 2009 #
Actually, I find sometimes it’s good to target poorer countries. The results you get from them will only be the elite. Where people in the US might search “New York City” apartments looking for a vacation or rental or something like that. They’re not your market and may potentially eat some of your funds. Someone from a country like Brazil searching in English for that term may not be as common, but they are almost certainly an elite and the kind of person I’d be looking for.

Comment by Manhattan — September 29, 2009 #
That’s a good point Manhattan — I guess it depends on click volume vs management burden per region. A country like Brazil is probably a good one to try because it has a large population and a very wealthy elite.

Comment by Will Swayne — September 29, 2009 #
I have had some luck with Canada as the costs are less while the traffic is decent.

Comment by Steve — September 29, 2009 #
At the end of the day the more relevant your targeting is to your product the better ROI you will generate. It is that simple and Google ensures that it is that simple.

Comment by Al Williams — September 30, 2009 #
In my opinion most of EU have enough money to buy USD-denominated info products..UK isn’t any richer than France or Germany..

Comment by slovenia rent apartment — September 30, 2009 #
Not so sure about that list. It depends greatly on the kind of bussiness and, of course, the language.

As Manhaattan wrote Adwords can provide a greater volume of traffic when targeting poorer countries. If volume matters, trying to target the US market can be very expensive.

Comment by Algernon — October 1, 2009 #
South and North Asia are recommended.

Comment by Thailand Limousine — October 3, 2009 #
I feel like you are eliminating large market sectors with this method without a lot of good reason. It seems like a very risky proposition to me.

Comment by Wheelchair — October 4, 2009 #
I have not seen a very good ROI on countries outside of US, UK, and Canada. Click fraud is pretty big in many of the Arab countries and Russia. The purchasing power of countries using the Euro keeps getting stronger so I could see many internet marketers starting to target those countries.

Comment by Biz Consumer — October 4, 2009 #
I only target english speaking countries so, US, Uk, canada, australia etc

Comment by godaddy coupons — October 4, 2009 #
I like to stick to US, Canada, UK & Australia.

Comment by Find A Plastic Surgeon — October 4, 2009 #
I think you should only targert the location that you feel you can profit most from, or else it will become extremely expensive to compete for these keywords

Comment by Olney Maryland Personal Trainer — October 5, 2009 #
I target english speaking countries only.
Very interesting post

Comment by chitosan — October 8, 2009 #
I don’t currently use AdWords, though I have been looking into it every now and then in my free time. I have a few friends that get a lot of leads from 3rd world countries for some reason, more so than the USA or UK. They seem to think, even though it’s rather stereotypical, that only the “richer” people in India have Internet access and therefore may have more money to buy products online. I can’t really comment on it yet, as I haven’t used AdWords myself. Anyone else see things like this occuring?

Comment by Free Domain Name — October 11, 2009 #
I think targeting UK and USA will be best option. I always try to do that only.

Comment by Aditya SEO — October 11, 2009 #
I only target USA CANADA and EURO countries.

Comment by brutus — October 12, 2009 #
Where I am a local real estate agent but I have clients who buy from out of town and state I just use the US even though I bet I could narrow it down and save some cash by limiting my area even more.

Comment by Saint George homes — October 12, 2009 #
Hey Will, I m using Ad-words since past few days, though I have been looking into it every now and then in my free time. i don’t think so only richer people from middle-east and Asia are using ad-words, each and every one are now getting aware of this and many of them are using it frequently.

Comment by David Adams — October 13, 2009 #
USA is usually the best to target – much higher rate of actual buyers from here.

Comment by Robomaster — October 14, 2009 #
Generally speaking I’ll target UK, USA and Australia (English speaking).

I have different campaigns setup for France, Germany etc.

Comment by Sale Electronics — October 15, 2009 #
Gathering data is definitely important, knowing how each campaign is doing separately and optimizing specifics to cater to certain countries will definitely boost results, couldn’t agree more. Nice article, thanks for sharing.

Comment by Porter — October 15, 2009 #
What about Japan, China, India and South Korea? Will they be separate group all together?

Comment by Vocab Builder — October 15, 2009 #
I agree, that it depends on what you are trying to market. You have to be careful as fraud may be more prevelant in some countries or in reality many could not afford the product or service.

It will be curious to see Will, now that the Canadian dollar is almost par with the US, if you see an increase in clicks and purchases from the US?

Cheers

Comment by Darrell — October 16, 2009 #
I side myself with Aditya SEO. UK and USA are great targets. But we should not close our doors to other opportunities in other countries.

Comment by Telesales Tips — October 16, 2009 #
I am from Croatia, it seams no one is targeting us, although we will be in EU very soon. Balkan is very specific and I think it is a market worth of exploring. Whoever comes here first will benefit, and yes, we do speak other languages besides english and our native language.

Comment by dodo — October 16, 2009 #
Algernon raises a good point. How can you effectively target all these countries without knowing all the vernacular and cultural differences in languages?

Comment by Case Ernsting — October 17, 2009 #
I didn’t have much success with Adsense so far. Competition is fierce and prices are high. My target area is US, even Canada does not seem like a good choice. I’m surprised Bing’s prices are not much lower then those of Google – it has a fraction of Google’s searches.

Comment by Stock Brokerage Ratings — October 18, 2009 #
It is important to really know your target market. I think Google Trends is a good tool to find out how popular a topic is in a certain country. Just throwing ad money all over the world without doing any research isn’t smart.

Comment by Rap Downloads — October 21, 2009 #
Hello,

I am the webmaster for Data Analyzers and a few other websites. I have had much success with Adwords in the US and the UK. One thing to keep in mind is that although google is the 800 pound gorilla when it comes to search engines. Goolge is not as popular in every country, therefore It pays of to research the countries that you are marketing too, before starting large campaigns.

Comment by Data Analyzers Data Recovery — October 21, 2009 #
Ours is an international b2b trade portal so we’re interested in visitors from most countries. What you say about purchasing power is very true though. Whilst we get many Chinese (and other Asian) traders, they aren’t really the best converting.

Comment by Chris Moore — October 22, 2009 #
Is there really much difference between Australian and New Zealanders to justify separating the two into separate ad groups?

I only do Australian adwords currently but looking at expanding to NZ. I guess it doesn’t take much effort to duplicate a campaign for NZ and monitor results.

Comment by Zhen — October 22, 2009 #
great post. i am targeting in us market. unfortunately it is very costly.

Comment by psd to html — October 23, 2009 #
In my experience, it is usually better to refine on the local level rather than approach large geographical areas within a single targeted market. I agree about segmenting by country, but it is even better to go deeper. Some products do better in “blue states”, some in “red states”, etc. The more you understand and segment your market, the better you’ll do.

Comment by Benton Maples — October 27, 2009 #
USA is usually the best to target. EURO countries is very bad. imho…

Comment by Yarunya — October 28, 2009 #
For my business I have only ever targeted Australia as I don’t export any products. However, for my online projects I only target my Adwords campaigns to the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

Comment by camping tarps — October 29, 2009 #
You can make any country work in Adwords. Scandinavia, India, etc.
If you have a relevant website, the traffic is usually very good quality once your keywords are targeted. In countries where English is spoken by less then 30% of the population, do not advertise there.

Comment by Justin — October 30, 2009 #
@Yarunya – Why are Euro countries bad to target? If the product is truly international, what difference does it make?

Comment by Eric Beldstern — October 30, 2009 #
I find that targeting the US and UK workout the best. Especially in terms of selling direct ads on a site. Seems most advertisers want US and UK traffic.

Comment by TheGermz — October 31, 2009 #
Hi Will,

I think you picked the countries well assuming that you were considering English speaking countries.

They are all quite different even though it may not seem so at first glance.

The EU is very diverse and by language and it is true that the 3 northern countries you mention are quite fluent in English.

I would have included The Netherlands or Holland as well.

Vance

Comment by Vance Sova — October 31, 2009 #
I am not using Google adwords but as far as PPC is concerned i target USA as others dont convert as well.

UK comes second best.

regards,
Jimmy from HB

Comment by Hostel Booking — October 31, 2009 #
This is really tough. I mean if you want search from everywhere wouldn’t you want your search range open to everybody? Does targe GT means your site will receive more US visitors? I think this all needs to be determind before setting your site to just one area of the world. I know google webmasters lets you do it but you don’t want to do something that may hurt you in the long run (traffic). I guess if your site is only related to US people it would be ok to set it for America only.

Comment by Mike — November 1, 2009 #
I will really stick with the top 3 (USA, Canada and the UK), most of my sites really needs to be exposed to those big 3.

Comment by strategic internet marketing — November 2, 2009 #
It’s truly right that targeting most of the native English countries is profitable. Personally I think that these countries have affluent people who like to buy online. Other regions do have rich people but they don’t often make online sales. To some extent they don’t prefer to get involve in online sales.

Comment by William King — November 4, 2009 #
I have been doing Adwords for years and come up with some interesting stats for an affiliate yeast infection product I was selling.

The best 2 countries “bar none” for converting into sales were Ireland and Australia and not the USA and the UK.

Dont get me wrong the USA and UK were also good, just not as good as Ireland and OZ.

Comment by Bean Bag — November 9, 2009 #
This is why it is important to have separate campaigns for different countries until you figure out the ones that are worth the money.

Comment by Microsoft Points — December 6, 2009 #
Usually stick to USA, Canada & UK. No problem with those so far. However, been very horribly terrible experience uses with India. Too many fake clicks incurred.

Comment by Adwords Master — December 15, 2009 #
Balkan is very specific and I think it is a market worth of exploring. Whoever comes here first will benefit, and yes, we do speak other languages besides English and our native language.

Comment by bankowned — December 23, 2009 #
I wouldn’t discount the rest of the world. It has just been announced that China has the 2nd most billionaires in the world.

Comment by Camera Playsport — March 13, 2010 #
If you combine the campaigns into one, then

1. No reporting based on countries.
2. Only one bid for all the countries.
3. Forget separate bid strategies for each country
4. each country may have its own market and competition.
5. minimum bid also will vary based on countries.

but, you will save time if you combine the campaigns.

Comment by Cheap Ev SSL — March 18, 2010 #
What I usually do is try to find good campaigns in the US first, mainly because that is where I am, and then when I go to scale them out one way I do it is to test other english speaking countries, while also trying different ppc platforms. Sometimes you I will be really suprised by how a campaign performs in another country either good or bad.

Comment by Increase Download Speed — May 21, 2010 #
I believe targeting the right and rich audience is the only way to end up this discussion. In UK, USA, Canada and the other groups you have mentioned in your post, people buy online in most cases. But it differs when it comes to other parts of the world particularly Asia. But yes, there is an elite class in those third world countries too who still like to buy from the comfort of their home. So targeting them can be beneficial.

Comment by Compare Reviews — June 29, 2010 #