
If your online store lacks a global presence, running Google Shopping campaigns in other countries can help you reach customers abroad and generate more international sales.
But setting up international Google Shopping campaigns isn’t as straightforward as setting up such a campaign for your home country. There are language and currency issues to think about, not to mention logistics matters such as how you’ll ship your products abroad.
Here, we’ll walk you through six steps for internationalizing your Google Shopping campaigns and reaching more customers across borders.
While you may have cross-border ecommerce domination in your sights, Google supports the running of Google Shopping campaigns in only selected countries and currencies. These countries and currencies include:
*South Korea requires you to have a business registration number applied to your account to show your products here.
**Currently a beta target country
You can find the full list of supported countries and currency requirements on this Google support page. Check it out, then decide on the countries for which you want to set up Google Shopping campaigns.
Then, for each country on your shortlist, consider issues such as:
You’ll need to submit data on your products to Google before setting up your Google Shopping campaigns. Such data includes the product title, description, image link, and price (in its associated currency). View the full range of available product data attributes on this Google support page.
The product data you submit should be localized for your Google Shopping campaigns’ target countries. For example, you may need to:
Doing all this can be tedious if you’re localizing your product data manually – and especially if you intend to put up multiple Google Shopping product listings.
But if you’re using Weglot to translate your website, it can also help translate the product data in existing Google Shopping feeds (such as a product feed for your home country, for example).
Simply grab the XML URL for your product feed and add certain HTML elements to it. Weglot will then instantly translate your product data for use.
Which pages will users land on and visit after clicking your Google Shopping ad? Map out the entire user flow – from your product listings to your shopping policies, checkout page, and so on – and localize your web pages accordingly.
Such localization work may involve:
Strictly speaking, translating the landing pages associated with your Google Shopping ads isn’t a must. As long as your landing pages are in a language that Google supports (as mentioned above), you’ll be able to run Google Shopping ads with them.
Nevertheless, we’d recommend localizing your landing pages to help international customers understand your content and place orders with you. Just imagine you are browsing a page in a language you have trouble deciphering. Will you stay on the website for long, much less buy something from it? Probably not.
Although website translation involves quite a bit of work, Weglot can dramatically speed up the process. When installed on a website, Weglot detects its content and instantly translates all discovered text using a proprietary mix of machine learning translations. The resulting high-quality translations can also be fine-tuned by hand before being published. You can try Weglot on your website for free here.
With the foundational work out of the way, you can set up your international Google Shopping campaigns properly!
Log into the Google Merchant Center and set up a new feed for submitting your (localized) product data to Google. You can input your product data in various ways, such as via a Google Sheet or by uploading a file from your computer.
To increase the effectiveness of your campaigns, we suggest setting up separate product data feeds for each target audience based on their currency, country, and primary language. Doing so lets you localize your product feeds perfectly for each target audience.
For example, we’d recommend having separate product feeds for each of these audiences:
That said, it is possible to reuse product feeds across multiple countries if your target audiences speak the same language and pay using the same currency.
Following from the table above, for instance, you could reuse your product feed meant for English speakers in France for English speakers in Italy. After all, both audiences speak the same language and pay using the same currency (the Euro). They could therefore engage with the same landing page with few issues.
To reuse your feed in this manner, edit the feed settings for your product feed meant for English speakers in France to add a new target country of Italy.
In contrast, however, we wouldn’t recommend adding the United States as a new country to your product feed meant for English speakers in France. If you did so, you’d end up displaying Euro prices to people who pay using the U.S. Dollar. Not the best move for facilitating a smooth shopping experience!
After setting up your product feeds in the Google Merchant Center, head over to the Google Ads platform to create a new Shopping campaign. If you haven’t already, you’ll need to link your Merchant Center account with your Google Ads one.
When creating your Shopping campaign, select the product feeds you want to advertise using it. Also, fill out settings such as:
Create as many Shopping campaigns as you need for your target countries and audiences. To learn more about creating a new Google Shopping campaign, refer to this Google support page.
Let your Google Shopping campaigns run, then use their results to guide your next steps.
For instance, if your clickthrough rate seems low, this could suggest that your ad doesn’t sufficiently entice users to click it after they’ve seen it. In this case, try replacing your ad copy or images with something more compelling.
Alternatively, a low ready-to-serve percentage indicates that many of the products you’ve submitted to the Google Merchant Center are out of stock. That’s because Google does not display ads for out-of-stock products.
To raise your ready-to-serve percentage, increase your inventory for products that are out of stock.
You can also run experiments to optimize your Shopping campaigns. A/B-testing may be especially helpful here, where you run two versions of the same campaign to determine which one is more effective. You could play around with your ad copy, images, or even price, until you hit upon a winning combination.
Lastly, be sure to send Google updated product data at least every 30 days. Google has made a lot of changes in 2024, so make sure that the data abides by these updated standards so that your ads perform better and you give your users a better experience.
Google often reiterates that it’s committed to providing a better search experience for all. While this is obviously good news for users, that does mean that businesses need to stay on top of the multiple updates that roll out throughout the year.
For instance, in April 2024, Google introduced new attributes to better specify product data for AI-generated content in Shopping ads and free listings.
At the end of July 2024, they’re expanding the list of countries where they’ll require businesses to disclose the shipping cost to India and New Zealand. You can keep up with these changes here.
Does the above sound like a lot? Here’s a handy phrase to help you remember the steps for creating Google Shopping campaigns for multiple countries: “Decide, Localize, Set Up, Refine.”
Creating Google Shopping campaigns for multiple countries first involves deciding on the countries for which you want to run such ads.
You’ll also have to check what each country requires, its status as a beta target country, and other important factors.
Next, localize your product data and landing pages to foster a frictionless experience for users who interact with your ads. You’ll then submit your product data to Google and create your Shopping campaigns (again, we recommend setting up separate product feeds for each target audience!).
And after you’ve launched your ads, keep track of their performance. Refine your campaigns based on what’s working – and what isn’t – to get the highest returns for your advertising budget.
Weglot’s website translation solution will prove essential as you work on your international Google Shopping campaigns. It translates web content into over 110 different languages with a high degree of accuracy, and also offers media translation features for replacing images with more culturally appropriate variants.
Weglot can translate your product feeds too, freeing up more resources for you to craft the highest-quality Google Shopping campaigns for your online store.
Weglot is compatible with WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, and other leading eCommerce platforms, and you can test its translation capabilities on your website at no cost. Sign up for a free Weglot account here to get started.