Most advice about Google Ads location targeting is written for local businesses: draw a circle around your address, a few miles for a coffee shop, twenty-five for a plumber, and bid more on "near me" searches. That advice fits a business whose customers come to it or live down the road.
Most B2B companies don't work that way. A machine shop in Wisconsin quotes parts for a customer in Ohio. A conveyor maker ships to plants across North America and overseas. A distributor has a sales rep covering Illinois and another covering Indiana. For them, the right area to advertise in isn't a circle around the building. It's the sales territory: the states, regions or countries where the company actually sells, ships and services. This chapter covers how to find that territory, how to set it up in Google Ads, and how to tell which parts of it are paying off. It follows the video chapter, Chapter 11, and builds on the location setting from Chapter 9.
8 of the 12 B2B Companies We Checked Sell Nationally. Only 2 Say Their Market Is Southeast Wisconsin.
All twelve example companies in this guide are based in the Milwaukee area. We read each one's website for where it says it sells, and sorted them by the reach their own pages describe:
- National, some with exports (8): an online machine shop with sales engineers across the country, an injection molder that ships throughout the US, a conveyor maker with representatives in North America and abroad, a mixer maker with a sales and technical support contact south of the border, a storage rack maker whose testimonials come from customers in seven states, a fastener distributor that ships nationwide, a packaging distributor whose tool repair service takes work from anywhere in the country, and a logistics company that describes its reach across the US, with properties in 27 states.
- Three states (1): an electrical distributor serving customers in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.
- Southeast Wisconsin, or no wider market named (3): a managed IT firm and a staffing agency that describe a Southeast Wisconsin market, and a bus bar maker whose site names no market beyond Wisconsin.
Those are our readings of what each company says about itself, not audited sales maps. But the split is clear. Two-thirds of these twelve B2B advertisers sell well beyond their home city, and a radius drawn around the building would only cover a fraction of the market they serve.
"Near Me" Is 2% of Industrial Equipment Buyer Searches and 33% of Powder Coating Buyer Searches. The Business Type Decides.
The other half of the question is how buyers search. When we researched manufacturers for another guide, we split US Keyword Planner volumes for nine kinds of maker into buyer searches with "near me" and buyer searches without it. Here is how far apart the B2B business types landed. At the low end, the makers of things that ship by freight: industrial equipment and circuit board assembly at about 2% each, metal stamping and casting near 3%, and contract manufacturing near 5%. In the middle, injection molding at about 12% and machine shops at about 18%, though some of the machine shop searches come from people looking for auto engine work. At the top, the trades where a truck and a short drive matter: fabrication at about 29% and powder coating at about 33%.
The pattern follows what's being bought. A conveyor system or a circuit board run gets designed, quoted and shipped; the buyer doesn't care where the supplier is as long as it can deliver. Powder coating and simple fabrication involve trucks, pickups and quick turnarounds, so distance matters and buyers search locally.
Service businesses that send people to a client's office behave more like local businesses. In Chapter 6, "managed it services near me" outweighed "managed it service provider" nationally, 9,900 searches a month to 5,400. A managed IT firm, a staffing agency or a local repair service should treat "near me" as a core search and keep a tight local area. A manufacturer of equipment that ships by freight can mostly ignore it.
A B2B Sales Territory Is a List of States. Google Ads Can Target Exactly That List.
Google's own help page on location targeting makes the point plainly: target "the locations where you can find your customers, which isn't necessarily the same place that your business is located." It suggests targeting whole countries for businesses that serve a whole country, and, when you serve most of a country with a few gaps, targeting the country and excluding the parts you don't serve.
For a B2B account, that turns into a short decision list:
- Write down the territory the way your sales team uses it. Usually that's a list of states or provinces, sometimes a country or two. If the business ships anywhere in the US, the territory is the US.
- Exclude what you can't serve. States you can't ship to economically, regions another distributor covers under contract, countries your products aren't certified for.
- Split the territory into separate campaigns when the economics differ. If you have a rep in Illinois and none in Texas, or if freight to the West Coast eats the margin, give those areas their own campaigns and budgets so one doesn't quietly drain the other.
- Use "Presence" in the location options, as set in Chapter 9, so people who merely show interest in your territory from somewhere else don't count.
- Check the time zones. A national account scheduled to Central business hours goes dark early for California buyers. Chapter 9 covers widening the schedule.
Some B2B companies have two territories
A few companies in our set sell two ways at once. The fastener distributor ships nationwide, and it also runs its own delivery trucks around Southeast Wisconsin. The electrical distributor serves three states from about 17 stocking locations, each offering local support near its own customers.
That's two territories with two kinds of buyer, and they deserve two campaigns:
- A local campaign for the delivery area or the areas around each location: a tighter location setting, "near me" and city searches included, and ads that mention local delivery or nearby stock.
- A territory campaign for everywhere else the company ships: the state list, no "near me," and ads that talk about shipping speed, freight terms and stock levels.
Run them as one campaign and the local buyer and the distant buyer compete for one budget and see the same ad. Split them and each one gets the promise that's true for them, and the location report shows clearly which is earning its keep.
Local Services Ads Have No B2B Category, and a Business Profile Needs Customers Who Walk In.
Two Google products built for local businesses often come up in B2B conversations, and both fit poorly.
Local Services Ads, the pay-per-lead ads with the "Google Verified" badge, cover categories like HVAC, electricians, business lawyers and tax services. They're framed as consumer or general services, and there's no category for a manufacturer, a distributor or a logistics firm. A few B2B-adjacent services can qualify, but for most of the companies in this guide, the product isn't an option.
Google Business Profile is the listing that appears in Maps and local results. Google's rules say a business qualifies only if it makes in-person contact with customers during its stated hours. A distributor with a will-call counter, a staffing agency that interviews walk-ins, or a job shop where customers pick up parts can qualify and should keep the profile accurate; Chapter 9's hours finding shows why that matters. A manufacturer that ships everything by freight and never meets a customer in person may not qualify at all, and shouldn't build its plan around Maps.
A related question is whether to put city or state names in keywords. For a local B2B service, like a managed IT firm or a staffing agency, buyers often type the city: the managed IT firm in our set runs ads that name Milwaukee and Southeast Wisconsin in the headline. Those searches belong in the local campaign. For a company that ships nationally, adding fifty state names to every keyword mostly multiplies the keyword list without adding buyers; the location setting already limits who sees the ad. In our experience, it's worth adding a place name only where your sales team hears it in real inquiries, such as a manufacturer known for serving one industrial region.
Google's Location Report Shows Which States Send Qualified B2B Leads and Which Only Send Clicks.
Once the territory is running, Google's matched locations report shows performance by the location that matched each ad, which can be where the person was or a place they showed interest in. Break it down by state, then compare it with the qualified leads from Chapter 1, not just clicks or form fills.
Patterns to look for, in our experience:
- A state with steady clicks and no qualified leads for several months. Check whether your sales team actually wins work there before cutting it; sometimes the leads come but the freight cost loses the deal.
- A state that produces qualified leads cheaply. On hand-set bids, raise the bid for that location, or give it its own campaign and budget.
- Leads from outside the territory. If they keep appearing, the location option may still be set to include interest, or a competitor's territory overlaps yours.
B2B volumes are small, so read this report over months, not weeks, and in states or regions, not cities. One lead from Ohio is a lead, not a market. Review it a few times a year, and ask the sales team which states they won work in before changing anything.
Next: AI Max for Search Matches B2B Ads to Searches You Never Chose
Chapter 13 covers AI Max, the Search campaign setting that matches ads to searches beyond your keywords, and why it needs qualified-lead data before it can tell B2B buyers apart. Every chapter is listed on the Google Ads for B2B guide home. If you want help setting up a multi-state territory, see our Google Ads management.
