AdWords B2B Special: How to Reach the Right People

The diverse targeting options of Google AdWords allow for highly precise audience targeting. Not only in the Display Network can highly specific user groups be targeted through combinations of different targeting types. With a fresh approach, internetwarriors are tapping new potentials from AdWords campaigns for B2B clients through geographic targeting.

Improved Targeting through Radius Targeting

In the B2B sector, it is often difficult to reach the target audience without significant waste coverage. With AdWords' local targeting options, campaigns can be tailored to specific events. This is interesting because trade fairs bring together the decision-makers of an entire industry.

Such targeting is possible through “radius targeting.” This allows precise geographic targeting on locations and postal addresses within a radius of up to 1km. Together with a time limit on the campaign, it enables efficient ad targeting to trade fair visitors. We will show you how to prepare a campaign targeted at a trade fair:

How to Set Up a Geo-Campaign in AdWords

After researching the details of the trade fair (address and start and end date), you can begin with the campaign setup. We recommend both a classic Search Campaign with broadly matching keywords and a Display Campaign with keyword targeting. The broad match type ensures you capture all relevant search queries. Due to the temporal and geographic targeting, the share of low relevance search queries is already very low.

For example, at internetwarriors, we attempted to target our ads toward the audience of an online marketing event in Munich. For this purpose, both a Display and a Search Campaign were created with keywords like “online marketing,” “adwords” etc. With the match type, we ensured that all relevant search queries were covered. Even in the Display Network, these keywords or contextual targeting provided a certain thematic relevance.

To target the campaigns toward the trade fair, we proceeded as follows: Under “radius targeting,” which can be found in the campaign settings under “Location” and “Advanced search,” we entered the address of the event.

Fig. 1: Enter a location for your campaigns

Fig. 2: The broadcast radius of our campaign

A map displays the targeting radius. Although there are small overlaps at a 1km radius, these are relatively insignificant based on our experience. Moreover, trade fair visitors are active outside the premises. The start and end dates of the trade fair are also the campaign duration.

Results of Our Trade Fair Test

If you expect large traffic flows and a direct increase in transactions or leads, you might be disappointed. The reach of the two campaigns is truly very limited, making immediate generation of measurable leads unlikely. In B2B, decision-making timelines are generally much longer than in impulse-driven eCommerce. Lead generation here requires more touchpoints until success. A trade fair campaign can be an important start.

We can tell that the campaign reached the right audience by the list of placements served. In addition to industry-known sites like t3n.de and handelsblatt.com and sueddeutsche.de, phone book sites, where unknown numbers can be identified, appeared relatively often. This is surely an important source of information for many trade fair visitors when dealing with missed calls.

How you can target your campaigns towards business flight passengers using the same principle will be discussed in the next part of our AdWords B2B special.

What We Can Do For You

Are you interested in geo-specific campaigns but unsure how to proceed? If you have questions, we are happy to help. Contact us and get a personalized offer.