AdWords 101: Targeting the right customers (Part 1 of 2)

One of the biggest reasons why AdWords can be so effective for your business is that it provides the ability to target your ads specifically to your prospective customers. AdWords offers a variety of targeting options, such as language, location, distribution (where your ads appear), and criteria (by keyword or by site). Today we’ll cover the first two: language and location.

English? Español? Estonian?
In this increasingly global marketplace, you may find that your customers don’t necessarily all speak the same language (literally). You can take advantage of the language targeting options within AdWords to display ads to users in 56 different languages – everything from English or French to Icelandic and Thai. You can choose your language targeting preferences when you create a new campaign, or change existing preferences under "Edit Campaign Settings." To target multiple languages in a single campaign, hold down the CTRL key and click the languages of your choice.

Note: many advertisers ask if Google will translate keywords and ad text into different languages—and no, we do not. The ads will appear just as you've written them. So, for this reason, if you have, say, German customers but don’t feel comfortable creating campaigns in German, we recommend that you seek help from professional translators in order to come up with the best ads and keywords for your customers.

Advanced example: another question we often hear is whether or not the ad text must be in the same language as the one(s) being targeted, and the answer is no. For example, if you wanted to target French-speaking prospective customers using an ad written in English, you could choose "French" in your language targeting preferences and still submit an English ad. We can't guarantee that the ad will receive a good response, but when Google detects that a user's language preference is French, and he or she types in one of your chosen keywords, your English-language ad may be displayed.

Local, Regional, National or International?
If you sell your products or services to customers in a particular area, you may want to consider creating location targeted campaigns. AdWords allows you to target your ads to potential customers in cities, regions, territories, countries, or any area that you define by points on a map. For more detailed explanations, check out our previous post about location targeting.

Homework: you can learn more about these targeting options by reviewing these resources below.

Learning Center
Language & Location Targeting

Help Center – FAQ
Targeting by language
Targeting by location: Country or Territory targeting
Targeting by location: Regional or Customized targeting

Stay tuned for part 2 of this lesson, in which we’ll tell you how to target the search and content networks, as well as explain the difference between keyword and site targeting.

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew