Can I Target People With A Particular Occupation in My Immediate Area?

[Planet13]

Is adwords a viable way to target to people who have a particular occupation in my immediate area? By immediate area, I mean within about 20 miles in any direction of myself (in other words, within our particular county)?

If I can't target a specific occupation, then what would be the best way to target people with an interest in a particular subject?

I can think of a few phrases that the target demographic might use, like "How to get more blue widgets."

Thanks in advance for letting me know what my options are, and whether other advertising platforms might be better. i really want to avoid as many irrelevant clicks as possible.

[DenRein]

If target occupation is self-employed, consider postcards or direct mail. You can get reliable contact lists for companies. You might be able to get lists of positions within companies but the quality bar is pretty low.

First, it matters if the occupation is self-employed. For example, for bakers, you can search for business listings of bakeries. But for receptionists, you search for .... ?

For electronic media, I think LinkedIn is the closest to having occupational affiliations. However, if you really are restricted to 20 mile radius, I don't know what they have to offer. Also, my impression is their demographic is skewed towards job-changers.

I have tried contacting lawyers; they are among my best customers. I have played with Adwords content network on law-focused sites. Terrible. First, many of the sites have visitors who are mostly attorney clients, not attorneys. It is tough to separate out who the audience is. I remember one page that dealt with hiring expert witnesses. OK, that seems like attorneys would care and clients less so. Second, IIRC, I could not advertise on the specific page. I had to take the entire site.

I would recommend Bing over Google for setting up an initial campaign. Bing will give you the search term which you can correlate with *specific* subsequent activity.

[Planet13]

@ DenRein

Thanks so much for your input. I really appreciate it.
The occupation is real estate agents. So they are all listed on a company's website, but surprisingly, they are pretty inept at promoting themselves (and they NEED to promote themselves because they all work on commission).

It's funny / sad to see how many of these agents have non-working email addresses and phone numbers on the company sites - and even on their OWN websites and facebook pages - even though they are STILL in business.

I got the impression that linked is is skewered toward job seekers, too. Might be worth checking out.

Thanks for the tip about using the content network. I understand that you can NOT target specific pages, but can you target visitors from specific areas (for example, can I target visitors from only my county?)

Maybe content network would be best if only used with remarketing for previous visitors to my web site?

Oh, and thanks for the suggestion about bing. I will check them out as well. (Although I think I rank #1 in organic on bing for my area.)

Thanks again.

[DenRein]

You can easily get listings of phone numbers for individual real estate pros at www.zillow.com. If I had a business targeting local real estate agents, I would not waste my money on google or bing. Sorry. It is just too untargeted.

Have you seen [realtornews.wordpress.com...] I did a Bing search for "advertise realtors" and this popped up. There may be other ideas suggested by that search. Direct mail is something I would consider seriously.

[edited by: Ocean10000 at 7:17 pm (utc) on Jun 10, 2015]
[edit reason] delinked [/edit]

[toidi]

Most agents belong to the mls which is usually run by the local association of realtors. This organization usually has a website with an agent directory.

if you try adwords, as soon as you use the phrase rea! es!a!e, the ads go crazy, so monitor it closely.

[Planet13]

@ DenRein

thank you for the info and for your opinion.

@ todi: Thanks for your advice.

I have Just started a campaign that is very targeted. it is on the search (and search partners) network, but NOT the content network.

the format for the targeted keywords is:

+town_name +service_name

Also, I have picked the county I am in as the area to show ads, as well as the immediate neighboring counties.

google said that my ads won't show because of too few searchers for those terms, and they might be right. I am sure they will be low volume search terms.

I will have to direct marketing as well, and I am sure that cold calls will produce the most leads, which is unfortunate since cold calling takes up so much time.

I do get some organic traffic conversions, so this will be a way to hopefully supplement the organic traffic conversions.

[DenRein]

I am a low volume advertiser so I could be wrong. My impression is that google makes the "low volume" determination once. Indeed, try a search in a another browser from public wi-fi using a phase that definitely triggers your ad. Does it show?

At that, exactly who is *searching* for "service_name"? My odds-on guess is the potential customers of "service_name" are the ones doing the searching, not the providers. Some providers will also search (e.g. to survey the competition) but not many. You are going to be paying for a lot of unqualified traffic.

[Planet13]

@ DenRein:

I will try what you suggest.

Also, did you really mean this:

"You are going to be paying for a lot of unqualified traffic."

Or did you mean NOT paying for a lot of unqualified traffic?

The only people who would search for it are RE agents looking to hire someone for the service, or a few possible competitors.

Thanks in advance.

[DenRein]

Now that you raise the question, I wonder myself. If the only ones searching are mostly RE agents, great. However, I would keep a close eye on searcher keywords to figure out if you are reaching your audience.

For example, suppose you have a rental service which stages houses. Use the word "rental" and you will be overwhelmed with apartment rental queries. The word "stage" would be a more technical term in the RE biz if you could filter out extraneous meanings.

I have personally had to abandon advertising a great keyword phrase because it also happens to be the name of a TV series. It was futile trying to reach my real audience through all the noise of those searching for the TV show.

[tangor]

Local adverts do best with old-school print/radio/tv. Google is not that granular. There are some things the great black box just can't do.

[Planet13]

"I have personally had to abandon advertising a great keyword phrase because it also happens to be the name of a TV series."

Yes, I know what you mean. I used to sell a home decor product on one of my sites that turns out to have the same name as a comic book super hero.

[Planet13]

@ tangor

"Local adverts do best with old-school print/radio/tv."

Yes, I will be doing that as well, and I imagine that will be the lion's share of my expenses and generate the most clients.

But I don't want to pass up any opportunities if they are there.

[Shepherd]

Planet13, I've found lately that Twitter ads are pretty good for targeting real estate agents. The new ads can be geo targeted (down to the city in some cases) and then by interest (real estate). Reminds me of the early days in adwords when you could get a lot of bang for your buck.

[Planet13]

thank you, Shepherd.

any thoughts on using Facebook ads to target real estate agents?

I do see that a lot of the ones I want to reach are using Facebook for their personal accounts.

[Shepherd]

Planet13, YMMV but between FB and Twitter we've had much more success with Twitter. Tried FB, was never able to get much interaction from agents. Seems that most of the top tier agents "have" FB but really are not very active on it and if they are it's usually managed by someone else. Twitter seems to have been adopted by the majority of everyday agents, probably because it is easy.

Personal accounts may be different, don't know.

[Planet13]

Thanks so much. I have to admit that I am probably more ignorant of Twitter than pretty much Any kind of social media platform.