A guide to advertising for international events

HAQM Ads solutions have a global reach that you can leverage to advertise in a wealth of countries across the world. HAQM Ads solutions can help make more sales for your business, and there may be a chance you’re missing out on an opportunity to advertise in one of the countries where HAQM Ads solutions are newly available, such as Sweden or Singapore. An off-season in one country might be peak time for another.

For example, if you are a brand who sells decorations, based in the U.K., and are currently selling in the HAQM store and advertising only in the U.K., you could consider advertising to shoppers based in Poland as well.

We can achieve two to five times higher impressions and two to five times more orders during the peak shopping season. With increased traffic, the most important thing is to increase your sponsored ads campaign budget and ensure it doesn’t run out during the shopping event.

– Mr. Fang, Yiwu Xinrong Tech

Advertising during key shopping events in a different country can be a great way to reach a new audience.

Throughout the year there are multiple key shopping events happening globally, inside and outside your home country. These key events can sometimes lead to an increase in shoppers, which may lead to increased traffic in the HAQM store. These events can be an opportunity to go beyond the globally recognized events, like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Prime Day, and look at the opportunities around events that are beyond your home country. If you build advertising in multiple countries into your strategy, you can help increase your chance of engaging more shoppers who are ready to buy.

The Netherlands offers unique shopping events tied to local customs and seasons. In the Netherlands, Holiday Money marks the payment employees receive from their employers at the end of the fiscal year. It is sometimes called "the 13th wage" as it can be almost equivalent to an extra month's salary. The Netherlands also celebrates Sinterklaas, primarily a children's event, on December 5 where “Sinterklaas” brings gifts to children on “package night.” Celebrations include gift-giving and buying Sinterklaas-specific candy.

Poland, on the other hand, hosts Spring Deals in April and Summer Deals Festival in June, marking the start of a new season. These events help retailers sell the season's remaining stock while providing shoppers with great deals.

Sweden features two notable events: the September Sale, a key sales period during the month of September, and the Spring Sale in April, marking the start of the new season. Similarly, Turkey hosts its own Spring Deals event in April to mark the start of the new season.

Advertising with sponsored ads in multiple countries in Europe helped me reach and engage customers we could have not reached otherwise.

– Patrick Albus, CEO, Creative Pet Alliance

The UAE and Saudi Arabia observe several significant religious and shopping events throughout the year. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection and growth, to help those in need, and to spend time with loved ones. It's also a time when Muslims around the world fast during daylight hours for the whole month of Ramadan. Eid Al Fitr, a religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide, marks the end of the month-long dawn-to-sunset fasting of Ramadan. Celebrations include charitable giving, gift giving, gatherings with family and friends, and festive meals.

These countries also participate in popular shopping events. 11.11 (representing the event taking place on November 11), also known as “Singles Day,” is an unofficial holiday and shopping day that celebrates people who are not in relationships. White Friday is a shopping holiday in the Middle East that takes place in November, similar to Black Friday in the U.S. The four-day retail event is an ideal time to reach new customers.

Mexico hosts two major shopping events throughout the year. Hot Sale is the biggest online sales event in Mexico, during which retailers and businesses offer discounts, deals, and promotions. With no fixed dates, the event usually takes place on the last week of May and typically lasts five days. El Buen Fin is a nationwide shopping event in Mexico, where businesses offer discounts and promotions across all categories. It occurs the weekend before Mexican Revolution Day, which is observed on the third Monday of November. Unofficially, it is considered the Mexican version of Black Friday.

In Brazil, Consumer Week is a significant sales event that commemorates World Consumer Rights Day. Retailers offer sales and discounts during the second week of March.

Singapore observes several shopping events throughout the year. 11.11 (representing the event taking place on November 11), also known as “Singles Day,” is an unofficial holiday and shopping day that celebrates people who are not in relationships. In preparation for 11.11, 10.10, also known as “the Perfect 10 sale,” is a shopping event that takes place on October 10. Singapore also celebrates Lunar New Year, Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival, which marks the beginning of a new year on the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar.

In Australia, the end of the Australian financial year in June kicks off a significant shopping event known as the mid-year sale. During this time, stores offer discounts to shoppers, helping them get ready for the new season.

As an advertiser, you have a unique opportunity to engage international customers looking for deals and offers before, during, and after key shopping events to help achieve your global business goals.

You can explore international shopping events in more detail in the global events calendar to help you incorporate these events into your advertising plan for the year.

It’s important to learn a few important advertising basics before you get started:

• Products: When promoting products, choose products that are the featured offer and have high-quality product detail pages, with images.
• Keyword Targeting: Generic keywords help match your products with shoppers who are looking for similar items. You can get started with automatic keywords to learn how customers are finding and interacting with your new product.
• Bidding: Your bid is the amount you’re willing to pay when your ad is clicked. We provide suggested bids and bid ranges on the campaign creation page to help you get started. Set the maximum bid you’re willing to pay—ideally at the top of the suggested bid range to remain competitive.
• Maximum daily budget: Set a daily budget that’s high enough to keep your ads showing throughout the day. Once a campaign is out of budget for the day, your ads won’t be eligible to run until midnight when the daily budget resets.
• Campaign name: Include information on your new product and targeting strategy in the campaign name to organize and measure your campaigns after launch.
• Campaign duration: Choose “no end date” to keep your campaign running continuously and to help customers discover your products any time they browse the HAQM store.

If you are already advertising in multiple countries, then you may be familiar with the campaign setup process. When you are planning your event campaign, make sure you are clear on where you want to run which ads, and how they will support your business goals.

If you are new to advertising outside your home country, shopping events across the world can be a perfect time to set up your first international campaign and start building your global business, with the potential for a significant increase in customers browsing and shopping the HAQM store.

A good starting point is to focus on the products that are the featured offer and that you are planning to promote during deal events. Advertising can give these products an extra boost and help drive incremental sales. Also, go back to the local demand you researched for defining the countries to advertise in: which products could be popular there? Check that you have sufficient inventory of the products you want to promote so that you don’t run out during the event.

This depends on your business goals. Do you want to drive sales, or brand awareness, or both? Your strategy might vary from country to country, and in your key location, you might want to use a combination of ad products.

Now it’s time to start building an ad campaign for a specific event in a country new to you. Setting up a campaign in a new country is easier than it sounds. HAQM Ads offers tools to help, as well as advertising console features to make advertising in new countries simple.

The language switcher functionality lets you view the advertising console in your preferred language. You can find this under the profile icon on the top right of your page, within the ad console.

See translations for suggested keywords in your language of preference with Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns during campaign setup, and to help you create global keyword targeting campaigns in minutes.

The translations under suggested keywords are an incredible addition. It seems like a small thing but it saves me a ton of time each time I manage campaigns.

– Ronnie Gesser, EZ SOX

Automatic targeting for Sponsored Products is a targeting option that lets HAQM Ads automatically match your ads to keywords and products, and is an easy way to create campaigns.

For Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display, you have the option to target specific products or categories that align with your brand offering and sales goals. You can select the products and categories you want to target without having to worry about the local language.

You can start with a small daily budget to discover the best budget to hit your business goals, and to start gathering insights into which products, generic keywords, and bidding strategies resonate best with shoppers. As you get closer to a key shopping event and fine-tune your campaigns, it can be helpful to increase your maximum daily budget, to help reach more shoppers.

The budget rules feature can help you optimize your performance when your campaigns hit a certain benchmark. For example, if your campaign is performing well, you can set a budget rule to increase your budget, to help you continue to perform well. You can also set any budget changes in advance for a specific time range, or event. This feature can also help you reduce manual effort spent on adjusting campaign budgets.

After creating a campaign, you can apply budget rules by clicking the relevant campaign in campaign manager and then selecting “Budget rules” from the sidebar.

Remember, traffic in the HAQM store will most likely spike during the key shopping event, and higher traffic can result in more clicks for your ads, which might use up your budget faster than normal. Ensure you increase your daily budget before the event, so that you don't run out during the event and miss potential sales. Also, we recommend you adjust your bids to be more competitive during the event period.

During the event, it’s important to check on your campaigns regularly. Most importantly, ensure your budget doesn’t run out, and that your bids are competitive. Review the following considerations and optimize your campaign as needed.

Are your customers discovering your new product and engaging with your ads?

If creating product awareness and engagement was your priority, review impressions, or the number of times your ad was shown, as well as clicks and click-through rate.

• If your campaign has few impressions but a high click-through rate, try increasing your bids and budgets for the opportunity to win more impressions.
• If you're seeing high impressions but a low click-through rate, take another look at your main product image, title, and price.

Are customers discovering and engaging with your brand?

To learn how your Sponsored Brands ads are connecting customers new to your brand, review the suite of new-to-brand metrics to measure orders and sales from first-time customers of your brand in the HAQM store. Use these metrics to learn how many new customers you’ve reached, estimate the cost of acquisition, and develop the right strategies for growing your customer base.

Try reviewing the new-to-brand keyword metrics to identify keywords with the highest percentage of new-to-brand orders and sales. Consider investing more in these keywords by increasing your bids to help generate even more new-to-brand orders.

Are customers purchasing your products and how did sponsored ads help complete these sales?

If your key goal was to drive sales, measure how many clicks converted into orders, as well as your return on ad spend (ROAS). For a new product with limited awareness, it may take additional budget to drive sales, resulting in a lower ROAS.

• If your campaign has high volumes of clicks but low conversions, review your product detail page again using our recommendations in the Get your products ready for advertising section.
• If your ACOS is at an unsustainable level for keyword targeting campaigns, continue investing in keywords that are driving clicks and sales, while pausing low-performing keywords.

Are customers engaging with your new product in the context of your overall brand story?

To learn if your Brand Store is resonating with customers and supporting your goals, you can access a range of metrics in your Brand Stores insights dashboard. Select a date range to see the number of visitors and views. Sales, units sold, and orders are the estimated totals from Brand Store visitors within 14 days of their last visit. Your insights dashboard also provides a breakdown of metrics by traffic source. You can view traffic generated from your Sponsored Brands ads, traffic originating from your byline on product detail pages, traffic coming from your Brand Store’s source tags, and traffic from ‘other sources’ (not categorized). Here are some ways to apply that insight:

• Shoppers: A shopper can visit from more than one traffic source and visit more than one page. You can use this insight to understand which traffic sources shoppers use to arrive at your Brand Store, and which pages they visit. That can help you determine if, for example, traffic increase from a paid source correlates with a traffic increase from HAQM non-paid sources, so you can note if there’s a halo effect.
• Page view/visitors: This insight can help you identify, on average, how many pages Brand Store visitors view per day. A high number of visits to a single page in one day, followed by low page views per visit, could indicate that a lot of the traffic arriving to the first page doesn’t continue to explore your Brand Store. You might want to consider refining your traffic sources (for example, linking a Sponsored Brands ad to your Store) to drive more relevant traffic, or optimizing the landing page you’re driving traffic to.
• Sales, units, and orders: With these, you can calculate sales per visitor, sales per order, or units per order. Use the insights to identify pages and traffic sources that yield both the best and worst sales performance. If the sources or pages are performing well for you, consider comping these strategies with your low-performing sources and pages—or removing them if they’re not producing results in line with your goals.

After the key shopping event

After the event, you can reduce your budgets and bids again, as traffic is likely to slow down. After your campaigns have been running for at least two weeks, review your advertising reports to understand your performance, keeping in mind the goals you set earlier.

Use the key shopping event momentum as a basis to create always-on international campaigns to leverage global sales opportunities continuously, not just around key sales days.

• Once you sign up for advertising in the country you sell in, use this step-by-step plan to guide you for the first 30 days.
• Tailoring your marketing plans to the local habits and key events can help you maximize your reach. This calendar will help you incorporate these events into your advertising plan for the year.

I want to start advertising in more countries

• You can sign up to advertise in a country you currently sell in here.
• Tailoring your marketing plans to the cultural nuances and key events can help you maximize your reach. This calendar will help you incorporate these events into your advertising plan for the year.

I currently advertise in all the countries I sell in

• Great news. Make sure you are checking in on the performance of your ad campaigns, and look for opportunities to optimize them. Check our event calendar to see if you can incorporate cultural specifics to help better engage your primary audience.
• Here’s a guide to grow your brand using HAQM Ads.