While a great deal is made of local call volume for US-based businesses, not every company is looking to target only certain geographic regions. Larger companies or those with a product that offers a broad-based appeal may want to reach beyond the shores of the United States. You can take your Pay Per Call campaign international to spread the reach of your brand across the globe. With just a few subtle adjustments to your Pay Per Call strategies, you can achieve greater global recognition and attract international callers.
Start with an International Toll-Free Number
Some consumer behaviors transcend cultural backgrounds. For example, it is generally accepted that the best practice for winning local calls within a region of the United States is the use of local phone numbers. Rather than generic 800-numbers, consumers feel better about calling a business with a local number. Now, you’re not going to set up a branch office just to answer phone calls in a place like Sydney or Melbourne, Australia, but the goal is different here.
You aren’t trying to fool consumers into thinking your business is based somewhere like Australia. What you want to do is make it easier for international callers to call you. To do so, assign an international toll-free number to your Pay Per Call campaigns. These numbers allow consumers in locations such as Australia to call your company without incurring any charges for doing so. The cost of calling a US toll-free or local number is often the greatest hurdle to getting international callers to pick up the phone.
Read More: What Your Miss When You Don’t Add Phone Numbers to Your Ads
Consider Cultural Differences When Localizing Keywords and Ad Content
With the right phone number in place for consumers to place toll-free international calls, it’s time to focus on making sure your ads are visible to consumers in different regions of the world. Moreover, it’s time to focus on the content of your ads, landing pages, and other marketing materials. There are often subtle, but very important, differences in the meaning of words across languages. Take Americans and Australians, for example.
Although Americans and Australians both speak English, regional dialects and diverging cultures have resulted in words that have different meanings between the two. The most commonly cited example is Barbie. Cliché though it may be, there is the fact that Barbie in America refers to the doll and in Australia refers to a grill. Another example is the word cactus. To Americans, it means the pointy desert plant, while it means broken or dead to Australians. This tells you just how important it is to understand cultural and linguistic differences.
If you want to successfully take your Pay Per Call campaign international, your ad content and the words on your landing page need to make sense to the readers. Make sure you are targeting keywords with proper local terminology and that you craft landing page content that conveys your message effectively.
Read More: How Many Keywords Are Too Many keywords?
Schedule Ads Strategically for Different Time Zones
Finally, you’ll need to take into account a much broader time scale when scheduling your ads to appear overseas. The last thing you want is for international callers to see your ads and call your toll-free number only to reach voicemail. To avoid this problem, make sure you strategically schedule your ads to display in the regions you’re targeting at hours that you will be able to answer those calls in the US.
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