Don't Pay for PPC Clicks that get Blocked
This post could also be called, “Clearance for Landing Denied, Go Around.” It’s a common occurrence for pilots, but not a great scenario for pay-per-click advertisers. You take the time to design a killer campaign complete with performance keywords, strong calls to action, and high conversion landing pages but you don’t see a single sale. Why? Geo-targeting gone bad.
Many marketers drool at the thought of expanding their campaigns to prospects in foreign countries because everyone is talking about globalization. However, if you’re opening your campaigns to all the countries available through search marketing programs, you’re setting yourself up for potential problems.
I’m not going to discuss foreign policy at length, because I do not fully understand the concepts behind certain economic superpowers of the world blocking and/or filtering online content. Let’s just say, it happens, so deal with it. What online marketers need to know is simple, search engines will do what we tell them to do, for the most part. Even if that means shooting ourselves in the foot.
I’ll give a classic example that illustrates my point. Let’s say you have an e-commerce site that specializes in custom automotive accessories for Toyota Tercels. In order to get the most exposure possible on your neatly organized search campaign, you target the whole world by manually adding every country on the list in your chosen search engine’s geo-targeting options. You notice that you’ve been getting a lot of clicks from China, but that they don’t really translate to purchase conversions on your site.
This is a classic example of “Good Idea – Bad Idea”. It’s a great idea to try to open your campaigns up to the most impressions you can get. It’s a bad idea not to research your target markets first. The Chinese Government has pretty much closed off most of it’s mainland internet access to larger and sometimes smaller US and Canadian websites. The problem is, it’s pretty difficult to test to see if the URL redirect in your ad actually works in foreign countries.
Most marketers I know employ a handful of their favorite proxy servers to sneak a peek at their competitors in different geographical locations, or to test whether their ads are running properly. My current personal favorite for snooping on the United States search market is MegaProxy. It’s a great way to find out how your ads appear, what ads your competitors are running, and if your links work properly. Various other proxy servers are available that enable you to surf (virtually) as a local in every country.
If you’ve fallen for ad clicks displayed in countries that block your site, the best course of action is to give Google, Yahoo, or MSN a call to see if they can credit your account.
Until next time!
