Google.de Low Ad CTR Issues

Hi

I have two identical websites promoting specific electrical goods - one in the UK and one in Germany. The UK site is in English, the German one is in German, and promoted in according languages via adwords.

With identical products, almost identical ads, and similar ad positions I'm seeing a big difference in ad CTR's between both campaigns. The UK site is doing much better than the German.

Does anyone have any suggestion as to why? Or are there any Germans that can offer some possibilities?

Smellycat

Feel free to send me your german ads via PM and I will check them for grammatical errors , I suppose you place the UK ads only in UK market and not all english speaking markets?

Thanks Jkrillah

PM sent.

Why?

The answer is really easy:

.) different markets
.) different people
.) different language and also
a differnt click behavior

I have many campaigns the work in GE perfect, but not in US/UK.
But i also have campaigns they work in UK/US but NOT in german...so huge differents in the markets

Thanks.

I had considered it could be down consumer differences in German.

The UK has much more PPC competition in the niche I'm working in however it gives a much higher CTR. 4 times more in fact. It seemed a little high to just be down consumer psychology and differences in buying behaviour.

The conversion rate is higher in Germany however less people click on my ads.

Tami beat me to it and is right. I once ran a campaign for a client, almost exactly same site, one targeting Americans, other targeting Canadians. Ads similar, if not same. Canadians ads in higher position and lower CPC because of less competition. CTR was of course higher too and they converted better.

You can't expect same behaviour in two different markets, especially two markets in different languages.

In the same language its a little bit easier, but with a complete different language (english/german) ists much more harder.

@smellcat
Try it with a german speaker how knows the market, language and people - you save time and money.

Hi Lucid

The scenario you mention of course makes sense. Higher positions, less PPC competition translating in to higher CTR.

What im seeing is the oposite. Higher positions, less PPC competition translating in to lower CTRs. And im talking about less than 1% CTR at campaign level.

I had thought about replicating my well known competitions ads to see if they manage to do much better.

What matters is Quality Score. QS, QS, QS. So what is your QS?

QS is a relative calculation of your CTR against those using the same keyword. The baseline is 5 so below that, your CTR is worse than the competition. Higher than 5, you are doing better than them.

Even using the same keyword in different languages, they are different keywords. The baseline CTR will surely be different. The standard deviation calculation - that's how QS is primarily figured out - will be different. Your CTR will be different so your QS will be different.

Always used a native speaker to write your ads, one that understands the nuances of the language as well as understanding advertising. Simply translating is not sufficient.

What you see is likely your German ads having been poorly translated. I hope you didn't use one of those online translation tools. It might say the equivalent of "your ads German poor translation". See how awkward that is and reads? People don't click on that sort of ad.

Ghahga translating? Bad QS is not a surprise here.

You are better of, copying all the AdWords campaigns from your competition's and learn from them, they have already done the job.