NEC show weeks: Google Ads for Solihull and airport businesses

The NEC sits beside Birmingham Airport and Birmingham International station, and for the days of a big show, Crufts in March, the Spring Fair in February, Motorcycle Live in November, among dozens more, its visitors search for the same things from the same square mile: hotel near the NEC, taxi from Birmingham Airport, NEC parking, restaurants near the NEC, breakfast Solihull. A business within a short drive of the halls runs a calendar-shaped campaign: one ad group per show, dated to its days, a radius around the halls and the airport, and ads that name the show. The everyday campaign carries on underneath, and the show campaigns are read one at a time against the calendar the NEC publishes each year.

The searches, by who is typing them

The exhibitor row is the one most local businesses never bid on, and it is the most valuable: a stand builder, a printer or a caterer that names the NEC on its page and in its ads is found by companies arriving from across the country who have no local knowledge and a deadline.

Build it as a calendar

1. Take the NEC's published calendar for the year and mark the shows that bring the right visitor: consumer shows for hotels, taxis and restaurants; trade shows for caterers, printers, staffing and stand builders.
2. One ad group per show, named for the show and the year, with keywords that pair the show's name and the NEC with the service: hotel Crufts, taxi NEC Motorcycle Live. Shows have their own names in the searches, and the names change little year to year.
3. A start and end date on each ad group's schedule, from a fortnight before the show to its last day for the planners, and the show days alone for the on-the-day searches.
4. A radius around the halls and the airport for the on-the-day searches, with the presence setting; the whole country for the exhibitor and planner searches, because those are typed from home.
5. Ads that say the show, the distance and the thing: four minutes from the NEC, airport taxi, fixed fare. Location insertion can say Solihull; it cannot say the show, so that line is written.
6. A budget per show, set from the show's length and last year's read, rather than one budget that the biggest show empties in its first two days.

The airport is a second calendar

Birmingham Airport runs on its own seasons, the school holidays and the summer, and a business that serves both the NEC and the airport runs two calendars in one account: the show ad groups dated to the shows, and the airport ad groups dated to the holiday weeks, with the everyday campaign underneath both. Airport parking, airport taxi and airport hotel searches rise in the fortnight before a school holiday and on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend, and they are typed from home, from across the Midlands, which means the targeting for them is a wider radius than the on-the-day NEC searches and the ad says the terminal and the fixed price rather than the walking time.

What last year's account tells you

Before the calendar is built, the last twelve months of search terms are read against the NEC's calendar for the same year. Each show gets a line: the searches that named it, the spend they took, the bookings or calls they produced. Most accounts find three or four shows that paid and a longer tail that only brought clicks, because visitors to a motorcycle show ride and visitors to a caravan show drive. The shows that paid get an ad group and a budget; the tail gets nothing, and the everyday campaign stops paying for its clicks. That one read, done once, is usually the biggest saving in a venue-adjacent account, and it needs no new money to make.

The negatives for the venue

• The show's name with tickets, times, dates, floor plan, exhibitor list, which the organiser answers and which never convert for a hotel or a taxi firm.
• Jobs, vacancies, steward, volunteer, with the staffing agencies by name, unless the business is a staffing agency.
• NEC with Las Vegas, Nagoya and the electronics company, because the three letters belong to other things too.
• Airport searches with flights, departures, arrivals, lounge, which are about the airport rather than anything near it.

The report for a show campaign is one line per show: spend, bookings or calls, cost per booking, and the share of searches that named the show. A show whose line is worse than the everyday campaign's for two years running comes off the calendar.

What the everyday campaign keeps

The searches with no show in them, hotel Solihull, airport parking, taxi Birmingham Airport, stay in the everyday campaign all year, where they are judged against a stable month. The show campaigns exist so that the spikes do not sit in that campaign's history and so that each show can be judged as the event it is. The targeting guide beside this one explains the radius and presence settings in detail, and the management page says what the monthly report carries for an account built this way.