Localizing your website banner ad campaign

Localizing the banner advertising for your localized website can help attract the customers you want. But who do you target? What’s your content? And perhaps most importantly, what’s the ultimate goal you want to keep in mind?

With the right language partner, you can find answers to those big questions about international website banner ad campaigns. We’ve laid out a quick guide for you right here — or to go in-depth, read our full article on the five Ws of localized banner campaigns.

Who’s your customer?
You’ve probably already defined this, but when it comes to the highly targeted audience for an international banner ad campaign, you’ll want to go a little deeper. Market research can help you unlock the answer: foreign-language surveys, user-experience tests, and multicultural personas will help you get a better sense of your target audiences

What’s your content?
What tends to make your memorable website banners effective in English is the very thing that makes it so difficult to translate. You’ll need to try a little transcreation, which is what allows advertisers to create multilingual renditions of even the slangiest ads in English.

You’ll definitely need a language partner specializing in marketing translation to avoid potential transcreation disasters. And make sure your language agency takes a look at your graphics as well, so you can use globally neutral images to avoid offending your target audiences. For instance, images including hand gestures should probably be avoided, while smiling human faces are nearly always universally appealing.

Where to run your banner ads?
In the global arena, the answer to this complicated issue starts with a few important questions.

• Where do your potential customers spend time on the internet?
• Which search engines do they use?
• Which online pubs do they read?
• What do they buy online?
• What social media spaces do they frequent?

Your ad network or ad agency can help you get the data you need to make important online banner ad buys.

Why run localized banner ads?

Click-through rates are important. But remember, just as with domestic banner ad campaigns, the end goal of your ad is to motivate viewers to take action on your localized web site. That’s why you need to follow through with highly effective landing pages for every language version of your banner ad. That final step is critical—make sure those landing pages speak to your customer just as clearly as your banner ad did.