Your route into the German-speaking market

You know your product. We know how Germany, Austria and Switzerland search, compare and decide.

Argo.berlin is an online marketing agency based in Berlin. For 15 years we have been running search and advertising campaigns in the DACH region — for tour operators, hotels, non-profits and mid-sized companies. Now we do it for companies that are not from here.

Most companies enter the German-speaking market by translating what already works at home. The website gets a German version, the ad copy goes through a translation tool, and the campaign structure stays exactly as it was. It rarely works, and the reason is not language quality.

German search behaviour is built differently. People search in long compound words that have no direct equivalent in English, and those compounds are the terms with real volume. They compare far more before they buy, which means the path from first click to enquiry is longer and needs more than one touchpoint. They expect to see who is behind a website a proper legal notice, named contacts, clear prices before they trust it. And they consent to tracking less often than users elsewhere, so campaign data that looks reliable in other markets can be badly incomplete here.
Get those four things wrong and the market looks like it does not want your product. Usually it just cannot find it.

And there is now a fifth. A growing share of German-speaking buyers ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity before they ask Google in German. Those systems answer from German-language sources they consider trustworthy. If your brand does not exist in German on the open web, it does not exist in those answers either, no matter how well your English site ranks at home. We treat that as part of search work, not as a separate trend.

We start with how your category is searched for in German — not with a translated keyword list. We build the campaigns and the landing pages around those real search terms, set up measurement that still works under German consent rates, and report back in language you can act on. If your German-language site needs to be written rather than translated, we do that too, with our network of German copywriters.
You keep talking to us in English. Everything facing your German, Austrian and Swiss customers is done by people who work in that market every day.

Your guests’ journey starts online, long before check-in — and in the German-speaking market it starts on German-language search results, German review sites and German-language booking platforms. We have worked with hotels, tour operators and destinations in this market since 2016, and we know where German-speaking travellers look for what you offer, and what makes them book instead of comparing one more time.

Germany has one of the largest private donation markets in Europe, and a set of rules and expectations that comes with it. We help international organisations become visible to German-speaking supporters — including through the Google Ad Grants programme, which we have been managing for non-profits for years.

Mid-sized companies rarely win the German market on budget. They win it on being findable for the specific thing they do well. We build that visibility with search terms your larger competitors overlook, and we do it without a media budget that only a corporate group could carry.

Every time. If a report needs a specialist to interpret it, the report is wrong.

Realistic budgets, methods chosen to fit the case, and an honest answer when a channel is not worth it for you.

A core team in Berlin, plus a network of more than 20 specialists — German copywriters, designers, developers — that we bring in per project. You get the right person for the job without paying for an agency floor.

1. Discovery — We learn your business, your customers and what success means for you in this market. Not a template: German-speaking customers may want something different from your product than your home market does, and that changes everything downstream.

2. Research — We look at how your category is actually searched for in German, who already ranks and advertises for it, and where the gaps are.

3. Strategy — Goals, audiences, messaging, channels and budget, written down so you can check it against your own plan before anything goes live.

4. Execution — Campaigns, landing pages and content go live. German-language material is written by German-language writers.

5. Optimisation — We watch performance and adjust. Most of the value in a search campaign comes from the months after launch, not from launch week.

6. Reporting — Regular reports in plain English, with a recommendation attached to every number.

Your partner for digital growth.
We develop data-driven strategies for measurable results.