Can you geofence a trade show, conference, or event?
Yes, and event fences can keep retargeting attendees for weeks after they leave.
Yes, and event geofencing is one of the few applications where the tactic reliably earns its budget. A trade show puts a concentrated, self selected, high intent audience inside a building for three days. That is a much better audience than almost any interest segment you can buy.
Draw the fence around the hall, not the convention center
This is where most event campaigns go wrong. A large convention center contains multiple halls, hotels, restaurants, and a parking structure. Fence the specific hall your show occupies. If the show spans two halls, draw two polygons. Including the attached hotel means collecting every unrelated traveler in the building, and including the parking garage means collecting the entire downtown.
Timing matters more than creative
- Start collecting before day one. Exhibitor move in and early registration put your best prospects on site before the show opens. Have the fence live at least a day early.
- Give the platform lead time. Fences, creative approval, and trafficking take time. Building this the week of the show usually means launching on day two and losing a third of the audience.
- Run the follow up window long. Nobody signs a contract on the show floor. Thirty days of retargeting reaches people back at their desks, after the badge scans have been sorted, which is when decisions actually get made.
Make the follow up creative different from the booth
Attendees saw hundreds of booths. A banner repeating your tagline does nothing. What works after a show is specific and useful: the demo they did not have time for, the session recording, the comparison they were asking about on the floor. Send that to a landing page built for the event, not your homepage.
Event geofencing falls under LevelUp's $5,000 per month geofencing ad spend minimum. For a company whose pipeline runs through three or four shows a year, that is usually the easiest geofencing budget to justify.
Related: Can you geofence a competitor's location?, What is geofencing advertising?, Do you work with MSPs and technology companies?, MSP marketing.