AdWords B2B Special: How to Reach the Right People

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

Better targeting through radius-based targeting

In the B2B sector, it is often challenging to reach the target audience without significant scatter losses. With AdWords' local targeting options, campaigns can be directed towards specific events. This is interesting because decision-makers from an entire industry gather at trade fairs.

Such targeting is possible with "radius-based targeting." This allows precise geographical targeting of locations and postal addresses within a radius of up to 1 km. Combined with the campaign's time limit, this results in efficient ad placement for trade show visitors. We will show you how to prepare a campaign targeting a trade fair below:

How to set up a geo-campaign in AdWords

After you research the trade fair's key data (address and start and end dates), you can begin the campaign setup. We recommend both a classic Search campaign with broadly matched keywords and a Display campaign with keyword targeting. The broad match type ensures that you capture all relevant search queries. Due to the temporal and geographic targeting, the proportion of search queries with poor relevance is already very low.

As an example, at internetwarriors, we tried to target our advertisements at the audience of an online marketing event in Munich. For this purpose, both a Display and a Search campaign with keywords like "online marketing," "adwords," etc., were created. With the match type, we ensured that all relevant search queries were covered. In the Display Network, these keywords or the contextual targeting also ensured a certain thematic connection.

To target the campaigns to the trade fair, we proceeded as follows: Under "radius-based targeting," which can be found in the campaign settings under "Location" and "Advanced Search," we entered the event's address.

Fig. 1: Enter a location for your campaigns

Fig. 2: The broadcast radius of our campaign

The displayed map now shows the targeting radius. Although there are small overlaps with a radius of 1 km, these are usually not significant in our experience. Additionally, trade show visitors are moving outside the grounds. The start and end dates of the trade fair also serve as the campaign duration.

Results of our trade show 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 indeed very limited, which immediately reduces the chance of generating immediately measurable leads. Anyway, decision-making periods in B2B are often much longer than in impulse-driven eCommerce. Lead generation here requires more touchpoints until completion. A trade show campaign can be an important start here.

We can tell that the campaign reached the right target group by the list of served placements. Besides industry-known sites, like t3n.de, handelsblatt.com, and sueddeutsche.de, phone book sites, where the addresses of unknown numbers can be determined, appeared relatively often. Certainly, an important source of information for many trade fair visitors when calls are missed.

Read in the next part of our AdWords B2B special on how you can target your campaigns to passengers of business flights following the same principle.

What we can do for you

Are you interested in geo-specific campaigns but don't know exactly how to proceed? We are happy to help with any questions you may have. Contact us and get an individual offer.