The last time I blogged, I pondered the effects of dialects on Spanish PPC. This time, I want to go a little deeper into setting up the campaigns for targeting the Spanish-speaking populous in the United States through Google AdWords.

Step Zero is figuring out what you want people to do once they reach your Web site. If you can’t answer that question, don’t go any further. Bookmark this page and come back to it later; you have bigger issues.

Any good campaign is based upon good phrase research. For the Spanish language, this is a bit tough. There are few tools out there that do a good job with Spanish phrase research, let alone those that understand dialect. This makes things complicated right out of the gate. Sure, a tool like Trellian’s Keyword Discovery is a great resource, but you need to dig deeper. Try reading through articles related to your service or product in Spanish and see what type of terms the authors used. Stalk your competitors who are targeting Spanish-speaking audiences and see if they have anything on their sites that you can “borrow.” And if you can, ask a native speaker for help on this; their help is invaluable. No matter what avenues you try, take your time; this is one process you don’t want to rush.

I guess now is as good of a time as any to talk about accent marks and special characters. Some people search with the proper accents and special characters, some people don’t. In order to resolve this issue, you should have multiple versions of terms in your research. One version that is grammatically correct and another version stripped of accents and special characters. That way you’re covered. A warning: when you strip accents, you can end up with new words entirely. Papá and papa only differ in the accent over the second a, but one means dad and one means potato.

Now you can relax for a step. You have your phrase list, now you can divide that list into logical groups like you would for any other campaign. Breaking this list up into logical groups and keeping those organized in Excel or a text document will save you lots of time when you actually have to set up the campaigns.

If you are up for some placement targeting, I would recommend heading over to Google AdPlanner. This tool will let you set your demographics and will then spit out a list of sites whose visitors are most likely to match your criteria. There is even a pre-defined Spanish language audience that you can tweak to find the right sites for you. This will give you a decent starting list until you can get some data from your placement reports.

At this point you should have lists that will make up your campaigns and ad groups. Now you need ads. Once more I will pull out my soap box. Please do not use an online English-to-Spanish translator! Those will only give you a very rough idea of a possible translation. These rarely understand context and can give you some horrible results. If you are confident in your Spanish skills, take a stab at writing ads, but please talk to a native speaker. Even if it is just to review your ads, your money will be well spent.

Now you have your terms, you have your structure and you have your ads. Now you can set up your campaign. As you set up each campaign, be sure to select the proper regions you want to target. Also, be sure to select Spanish as the language you want to target; you wouldn’t want to have done all that work for nothing now would you? Everything else should be simple cutting and pasting.

Whew! That was a workout, wasn’t it? Well, it was good for you. It’s good to work those SEM muscles every now and then. What doesn’t kill us makes us better marketers.

Photo Courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/kodamakitty/2281708340/

On a recent trip to Puerto Rico, I saw a billboard for Doritos bearing the slogan, “¿Dónde es el party?” This blew my colloquial-Spanish-thinking mind out of the water; it should have read “¿Dónde está la fiesta?”.

I asked the friend I was staying with why the difference exists and if the Doritos ad was right, or just a really poor translation. She explained to me that, “¿Dónde es el party?” is just as correct as “¿Dónde está la fiesta?”

Thus, I was introduced to dialects of the Spanish-speaking world.

Thanks to the mighty Wikipedia, there are resources available to marketers that let us know what the dominant dialect is for an area. Cuban-Spanish, for instance, is all the rage in Florida and New Jersey; Isleño is the dialect to speak in Louisiana; and Puerto Rican-Spanish is the way to speak Spanish in New York and the Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago metro areas.

This leads me to one of my favorite features of paid search marketing: geotargeting. This feature enables you to craft campaigns that focus on a particular region of the US, and additionally craft ads unique to the dialect of that area.

Things can get tricky, though. According to a recent survey, many Spanish-speaking Americans search in English but read news and articles in Spanish. Translation: Content Networks.

Yes, these networks are a fantastic way to reach the Spanish-speaking audience. Between standard contextual and placement targeting, you may carve out a unique space in this market.

Now here is the part where I plead to you. Please do not go to an English-to-Spanish online translator and think that you’ve done a great job with your ad. If you are not a native speaker, don’t try and fake it. Hunt someone out who can help you say what you want to say in the right way. This will help you to establish trust, build market share, and cultivate more meaningful profits.

Don’t be the guy who made the sign for Taco Bell you see above, take the time and do it right.

Photo Courtesy of EngrishFunny