Conference-city Google Ads
A named ERP conference plus its host city in. A time-boxed, Presence-only Google Ads campaign out, aimed at the walking radius of the venue while the room is in session — not a national "ERP software" budget parked on Denver, and not the same $15–$80 category keywords with a city pin on them. The first campaign is Digital Stratosphere 2026 (Eric Kimberling / Third Stage Consulting), Le Méridien Denver Downtown, September 9–11, 2026. Total cap for that first run: $900. Success is a handful of honest conversations with people already comparing systems this week, plus a log we can reuse on the next city.
Finding those people before they land — LinkedIn posts, comments, saved-search alerts, coffee asks — is Conference prep. Run both. Ads without a human in the lobby, or LinkedIn without the hotel-radius campaign, each leave money and conversations on the table.
This is a paid intercept next to Expo signal research. That page harvests public exhibitor names from machine shows. This page buys search and nearby display in the conference city. It does not mint a signal, a problem, or a proof. Public copy still follows communication instructions: dinner test, no manufactured urgency, no trademark in the ad text, no claim we organized the event.
Stratosphere is an ERP selection room, not NPE. People in that hotel are already thinking about systems. The geo is how we stop paying for the rest of the internet.
Why city-narrow beats "also run ads in Denver"
A national ERP keyword (erp software, manufacturing erp, infor cloudsuite, epicor kinetic) in 2026 often costs $15–$80+ per
click. Non-branded B2B software CPCs are routinely quoted in the
$80–$110 band on the most fought terms. Putting a 1 km pin on those
terms does not make them cheap. Google still runs the national
auction. We pay SAP/Oracle/NetSuite prices for a Denver knowledge
worker who is not in Kimberling's ballroom.
Do not bid those terms. Not in Campaign A. Not in Campaign B. Not "just to get volume." They are the failure mode this page exists to avoid. If Keyword Planner or the auction estimate is in that band, the keyword is out — even if the query is "on theme."
What we buy instead is queries that only exist because this show, this hotel, this week exist. Event-name and venue searches are cheap because almost nobody else is bidding them. That is the working unit, not a discounted version of national demand-gen.
The growth hack is the intersection:
| Filter | What it does | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| Presence (not the default) | Phones/IPs Google believes are in or regularly in the target | People in Boston googling "Denver ERP conference" |
| 1 km radius around venue | Walking distance of the hotel, neighboring hotels, 16th Street Mall | City of Denver (~715k people) |
| Conference clock | Ads only on travel day + session hours | A month of Denver brand spend |
| Event / venue / organizer | Queries people type because they are going to this show | manufacturing erp, sponsor product names, "best ERP" |
| Dedicated page + on-site us | The click has a human in the same ZIP that afternoon | A homepage demo form nobody will fill in a ballroom |
Google's default location option is Presence or interest. Leave it on and a "Denver" campaign serves people who searched Denver, read Denver content, or used to be there. For a hotel-week intercept that default is the leak. Switch every on-site campaign to Presence. Google's own help says Presence is for when you only want people in the place, not people interested in it (advanced location options, location targeting). Radius targeting has a 1 km minimum for privacy. Smaller than that is not a setting we can use.
Location is Google's best effort (IP, GPS, Wi-Fi, account). Hotel Wi-Fi is usually in Denver. Some roaming phones still report a home city. That is why Campaign A (event keywords, national) exists as a thin safety net, not as the main spend.
1. The room: Digital Stratosphere 2026 (first campaign)
Not Panorama. Eric Kimberling founded Panorama, then founded Third Stage Consulting Group (Englewood, CO). Stratosphere is Third Stage's annual independent / technology-agnostic digital transformation conference. Major Tom Productions is listed as event host on sponsor pages.
| Field | Value | Why it matters for ads |
|---|---|---|
| Event | Digital Stratosphere 2026 | Searchers type "stratosphere," "digital stratosphere," "kimberling denver" |
| When | Wed 9 – Fri 11 Sep 2026 | Clock the campaigns to these days plus Tue 8 travel |
| Hours | Registration Wed 3:00 p.m.; happy hour 5–7 p.m.; ends Fri 2:30 p.m. | Bid more Thu; kill Fri afternoon |
| Venue | Le Méridien Denver Downtown, 1475 California St, Denver, CO 80202 | Radius center. One block from Colorado Convention Center and 16th Street Mall |
| Room size | Grove Ballroom ~5,700 sq ft; ~400 banquet / ~598 theater | This is not IMTS. Budget as a few hundred people in one hotel, not a metro |
| Tickets (2026) | VIP $950 (limited); 3-day $600; virtual Thu–Fri $200 | Virtual attendees are not in Denver. City ads will not reach them |
| Who is in the room | Executives, IT/ERP, operations, consultants, engineers; manufacturing, professional services, software, energy (2025 mix, organizer post) | Mix of buyers, selection consultants, and vendors. Ads must not treat every click as a plant owner |
| On the floor | Infor diamond sponsor; Epicor + EstesGroup exhibitor sponsors; Priority; NetSuite / PCG also showing | People will google those names. We still do not bid the product terms — that is the $15 auction. Meet them in the hallway. |
| Organizer stance | Vendor-agnostic, anti-pitch | Our ads will lose if they sound like a booth. We are a vendor. Say so. |
Official page: thirdstage-consulting.com/stratosphere-2026. Third Stage has not published a 2025 or 2026 headcount. Treat ~200–400 in-person as a venue-constrained hypothesis, not a fact. VIP inventory is explicitly limited. Do not size spend as if this were a 10,000-badge expo.
Third Stage is an ERP selection firm. They are out of the consultant partnership program (bake-offs, not a referral motion). These ads are not a back door into Kimberling's shortlist. They are a way to be findable by a manufacturer who is already in that conversation and still has a phone.
Naologic is heading to this room as an ERP company. The ads only work if a named person is actually in Denver and can take a walk-up or a same-day coffee. A geo campaign with nobody on the ground is a form that will not get filled between sessions.
2. What a narrow campaign actually looks like (the build)
Two Search campaigns plus one optional Display. No Performance Max on the first run — PMax will leak geography and search partners to fill volume.
Campaign A — Event keywords (until they land)
- Where: United States (English). Presence or interest is acceptable here because the query is the filter.
- When: Now through Tue 8 Sep 22:00 MT. Pause when Campaign B is the live intercept.
- Daily cap: $20–$40. Event-name search is cheap. If a day costs more than that, we added the wrong keywords.
- Keywords (exact / phrase only):
digital stratosphere,digital stratosphere 2026,digital stratosphere denver,stratosphere conference denver,eric kimberling denver,le meridien denver conference,third stage stratosphere denver. - Do not buy:
stratospherebare (Las Vegas tower, casino, hotel observation deck).stratosphere tickets/register(they want Third Stage's page; stealing registration search is rude and converts badly). Any category ERP term (manufacturing erp,erp software,job shop erp, competitor product names). Those auctions are $15+ and are not this campaign. - Ad job: Not "we are Stratosphere." Job is: if you are going to Denver to compare ERP this week, we will be in the same city.
Campaign B — On-site Presence (the growth hack)
- Where: Radius 1 km (Google minimum) around
1475 California St, Denver, CO 80202. Add ZIP 80202 as a second target so the campaign still serves if the radius is too small for Google's privacy threshold. - Advanced location: Presence only. Confirm this in campaign settings; the UI default is the leak.
- Exclude: Do not exclude the rest of Colorado in a way that fights the radius. Do not add "Denver, Colorado" as a city target on v1 — that is how the budget becomes local SMBs.
- When (ad schedule, America/Denver):
- Tue 8 Sep: 12:00–22:00 (flights, hotel check-in)
- Wed 9 Sep: 14:00–21:00 (registration + happy hour)
- Thu 10 Sep: 07:00–21:00 (peak)
- Fri 11 Sep: 07:00–16:00 (ends 14:30; airport after)
- Daily cap: $20–$40 Search. Event queries in a hotel radius will not spend $100/day unless we cheated and added category keywords. If we do not spend it, that is healthy. Do not raise the cap to "use the budget."
- Bid strategy: Manual CPC. Start at $1. Hard max $3. If the auction wants more than $4, we do not buy that query — Presence does not discount a national ERP auction. No Maximize clicks with a $20 ceiling (that is how $15 terms get in). No Target CPA. Search Partners off. Display Network on this Search campaign off.
- Device: Mobile bid +20% during session hours. Laptops in the room and hotel still matter; do not exclude desktop.
- Networks / AI Max: Off for v1. We need query reports, not a black box. Broad match off. Phrase and exact only.
Launch gate: before any keyword is added, check the Google Ads estimate (Keyword Planner or the keyword's bid forecast). If estimated CPC is $8+, do not add it. If live CPC hits $5, pause that term the same day. Do not "keep it for learning."
Ad groups (Campaign B) — event, venue, organizer only:
| Ad group | Example queries (phrase / exact) | Match notes |
|---|---|---|
| Event | digital stratosphere, digital stratosphere 2026, digital stratosphere denver, stratosphere conference denver, stratosphere denver erp | The queries that exist because this show exists |
| Venue | le meridien denver conference, le meridien denver downtown conference, le meridien denver erp | People in the hotel googling where they are |
| Organizer | eric kimberling denver, kimberling stratosphere, third stage consulting denver, third stage stratosphere | Same week, same room — still not a partnership claim |
| Optional thin | vendors at stratosphere, who is at stratosphere denver | Add only after 24h if search terms stay on the event |
Do not create a Manufacturing ERP ad group, a sponsor-product ad group, or a selection-failure ad group on this campaign. Those lists are national demand-gen. Geo-fencing them is how a $3 event click becomes a $15 Infor/Epicor click.
Never add (put them on the negative list, do not bid them):
manufacturing erp, erp software, erp for manufacturers, job shop erp, injection molding erp, cloud erp, best erp, erp comparison, erp implementation, erp implementation failure,
replace erp, infor cloudsuite, infor manufacturing erp, epicor kinetic, epicor alternative, netsuite manufacturing, priority erp, sap s4hana, sap s/4hana.
Event-bound sponsor queries (infor stratosphere, epicor denver conference) are not the default. Add one only if Planner shows
under $3 and the query is obviously this show. Default is leave
them out. No brand in headlines either way.
Negatives (shared list conf-stratosphere-2026-neg):
The never-add list above, plus: jobs, salary, career, hiring,
casino, las vegas, tower, observation, concert, weather,
airport parking, municipal, nonprofit, workday, salesforce crm, ticketmaster, virtual pass (virtual is not in the radius
anyway; still block the query), what is erp (too cold even in-geo),
tickets, register, registration.
RSA angles (not claims of proof):
- Headline:
Manufacturing ERP, in Denver this week - Headline:
Change the system without a two-year SI - Headline:
Talk after the afternoon session - Description:
If you are comparing systems while you are here, we will show the work on a plant that looks like yours. No pitch deck in the hallway. - Description:
Naologic builds manufacturing operations software. If the fit is not ours, we will say so.
Sitelinks: naologic.com/denver. Callout: In Denver 9–11 Sep.
Call extension only if the on-site person's number actually rings.
Do not attach a fake Denver office location asset.
Google will not restrict bidding on trademarks as keywords. Google will restrict (on complaint) using those marks in ad text from a direct competitor (trademark policy). US courts have treated keyword bidding alone as not infringement; visible use in the ad is the risk. We still do not bid Infor / Epicor / NetSuite product names on this campaign — those are the $15 auctions. We do not write them in headlines. We do not impersonate Digital Stratosphere or Third Stage.
Campaign C — Display, same radius (optional, thin)
Only if we have a calm static or short video we would show at dinner.
$20–$40/day, same Presence radius, frequency cap 3/day. Do not
layer this as a way to buy manufacturing erp on Search. Display here
is CPM in a hotel radius, not a back door into category keywords.
Audience layer in-market: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Software is optional and thin — kill it if it inflates cost without
hotel-week queries behind it. Custom segments: people who browsed
thirdstage-consulting.com (event site), not infor.com /
epicor.com as a national retarget. This is awareness for phones that
are in the hotel and not searching. Kill it if CTR is bots or
placements are YouTube kids / news.
Landing page (required)
Not the homepage. One URL, UTM'd, indexable or noindex by choice —
noindex is fine for a 10-day page.
Must include, in this order:
- Reality: You are in Denver this week because you are looking at ERP, AI, and whether the last implementation was a lie.
- Who we are for: 50–500 manufacturing, process we actually sell. Not municipal finance, not a 5,000-person SAP program.
- Mechanism in buyer language: industry core, builder you can change, AI that does not take the wheel. Classify anything that is not native.
- Choice: "If you are here, say when today works" (Calendly with Denver hours) or "If you would rather wait until you are home, here is a 20-minute slot next week." No-oriented. Delete is valid.
- Honest absence: We did not organize Stratosphere. We are not Third Stage. We are a vendor in the same city.
UTM:
utm_source=google
utm_medium=cpc
utm_campaign=stratosphere-2026-denver
utm_content=onsite-search | event-search | onsite-display
Bind the same UTMs in Salesforce. A click is not a qualified lead.
Remarketing (the harvest)
Everyone who hits /denver (or the event URL) enters a 14-day
audience. After Friday, pause B and C. Keep a national remarketing
Search/Display cap of $20/day for two weeks. The on-site click is
the seed. Most of the real conversations happen once they are back at
the plant. This is where a $900 test can still pay for itself if the
seed was the right 30 people.
3. Budget, impact, efficiency (how we will actually adjust)
All numbers below are planning bands, not forecasts. Stratosphere does not publish attendance. Category ERP CPCs are cited only as terms we will not buy, not as a bid ladder.
Spend envelope (first campaign)
| Line | Cap | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign A (event keywords) | $250 remaining | Pause Tue night. Event queries only |
| Campaign B (on-site Search) | $400 | $20–$40/day × ~5 days. If spend approaches $100/day, we added the wrong keywords |
| Campaign C (Display) | $150 | Optional. Kill on junk placements |
| Post-event remarketing | $100 | 14 days, $20/day. Seeded only by people who hit /denver — not a new ERP keyword buy |
| Hard cap | $900 | Do not "optimize" by adding Denver citywide, PMax, or manufacturing erp to spend it |
A booth or diamond sponsorship at this conference is a different
decision (four figures to five, plus travel). This envelope is not
that. It is cheaper than one extra hotel night of the wrong team, and
far cheaper than a week of national erp software. Underspend is
success. Filling the cap with $15 keywords is the miss.
What "good" looks like
The reachable set is small on purpose.
| Stage | Planning band | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| In-person bodies in the hotel | ~200–400 (hypothesis) | Venue-capped. Many are vendors and consultants |
| Buyer-side humans | maybe 30–40% of the room | Do not treat sponsor staff clicks as pipeline |
| People who search ERP-ish | tens, not thousands | Between sessions, in the Uber, at 10 p.m. in the hotel |
| Clicks we might buy | 10–40 across A+B | If we get 400 clicks, geo or match type leaked. If CPC averages $15, we bought category ERP |
| Conversations (on-site + 14d) | 2–8 | A plant owner mid-selection is the unit, not an MQL |
| Cost / conversation | $50–$400 if the page and human exist | Paid with cheap event clicks, not $15 category clicks |
If we spend the cap and get zero conversations, the post-mortem is
still the point: too-tight radius, wrong queries, no one on the ground,
or the room was vendors. Write it down. Do not "fix" it by opening
Colorado or by adding manufacturing erp.
Live adjustment (check twice a day: 08:30 and 16:00 MT)
| Observation | Do this |
|---|---|
| Impressions on B stay under ~20/day by Wed night | Widen radius to 2 km, then keep ZIP 80202. Still Presence. Do not add category ERP keywords or the City of Denver |
Search terms are le meridien wifi, restaurants | Add negatives. We are not a concierge |
Queries are digital stratosphere register | Negate. Let Third Stage have their event |
| CPC on any term ≥ $5 | Pause that term. Do not keep manufacturing erp, sponsor product names, or "long-tail ERP" as a substitute |
Search terms include erp software, infor cloudsuite, etc. | Negate immediately. That leak is the $15 auction |
| Clicks from IPs that look like Infor/Epicor offices | Exclude if obvious; do not obsess. Sponsor staff will search their own names |
| One conversation booked | Do not raise budget. Raise availability of the human in Denver |
| Display placements are junk | Pause C. Do not "optimize creative" for a three-day flight |
| Friday 16:00 MT | Pause A/B/C. Leave remarketing |
Efficiency here is waste avoided, not CTR theater. The failure modes are buying Denver, and buying $15 category keywords. The success mode is buying the hotel on queries that only exist this week.
4. Naologic strategy in this room
We sell manufacturing ERP. This conference is full of people who have been told, for three days, that software is not the point and that vendor pitches fail. Agree with the part that is true. Do not pick a fight with Kimberling in an ad.
| Motion | Do | Do not |
|---|---|---|
| Who we want | 50–500 manufacturer or distributor already in a selection or a failed rollout | Municipal, hospital admin, "digital transformation" as a slogan, SI job seekers |
| Who we will meet anyway | Selection consultants, Infor/Epicor/NetSuite people | Pretend they are prospects. Be polite. Do not spray them a sequence |
| Positioning | Fit without rigidity. Adaptation without consultant dependency. AI without surrendering control | "Vendor-agnostic" (we are not). "Best ERP at Stratosphere." "As seen at Kimberling's show" |
| On the floor | Named person, calendar with Denver hours, one sentence we would say at dinner | A pop-up booth that contradicts the independent tone of the room |
| After a sponsor session | Hallway conversation. Landing page talks about their Friday, not the sponsor | Do not bid infor cloudsuite / epicor kinetic. Do not write "Alternative to Infor" as a headline |
| Proof | Only classified, transferable proof we already have | Invent ROI because an expo audience "expects numbers" |
| Partnership | None implied with Third Stage | Ads that look like we co-host. Referral deals we have not signed |
The ad is a corridor. The work is the conversation. If we cannot staff Denver, do not run Campaign B.
5. Repeatable show card (next city)
Copy this, change the venue, keep the caps until a post-mortem says otherwise.
{
"show": "Digital Stratosphere",
"year": 2026,
"organizer": "Third Stage Consulting Group",
"city": "Denver",
"venue": "Le Méridien Denver Downtown",
"address": "1475 California St, Denver, CO 80202",
"zip_targets": ["80202"],
"radius_km": 1,
"geo_type": "PRESENCE",
"start_local": "2026-09-09T15:00:00-06:00",
"end_local": "2026-09-11T14:30:00-06:00",
"travel_day_local": "2026-09-08",
"hard_cap_usd": 900,
"daily_search_cap_usd": 40,
"max_cpc_usd": 3,
"keyword_mode": "event_venue_organizer_only",
"landing_path": "/denver",
"onsite_owner": "",
"pmax": false,
"search_partners": false
}
Reuse on any ERP or manufacturing conference we actually attend:
- Venue address → 1 km Presence + host ZIP.
- Clock to registration, peak day, teardown.
- Three ad groups: event name, venue, organizer. Never micro-vertical ERP terms, never sponsor product names, never selection-failure language. Those are the $15 auctions.
- Shared negatives: tourist collisions (here: Las Vegas Stratosphere) plus the never-add ERP list.
- Hard CPC $3. Hard cap. Remarketing after. Post-mortem in this page's change log.
Machine shows (NPE, IMTS, FABTECH) still use Expo signal research for names. Use this page only when we are in the city and the room is already about systems, not presses. A 40,000-badge machine show in Chicago is a different radius and budget; do not copy $900 blindly onto IMTS.
6. Agent / operator runbook (Stratosphere 2026)
- Confirm a named Naologic person is in Denver 8–11 Sep. If not, HALT Campaign B.
- Ship
/denverwith the five landing-page beats above. UTM. Salesforce. Run the LinkedIn hour in Conference prep the same day. - In Google Ads, create shared negative list including the never-add ERP terms. Create A, then B. Presence on B. 1 km + 80202. Ad schedule Mountain Time. Manual CPC, $3 max. Phrase/exact only. Planner check: drop any keyword estimated $8+.
- Conversion = booked conversation or qualified "I'm here" form — not newsletter. Import offline conversions if the meeting is set by hand.
- Launch B Tue 8 Sep noon MT (or immediately if already in range). Keep A small until then.
- Midday and end-of-day search-term review. Adjust per the table in section 3.
- Fri 16:00 MT: pause A/B/C. Remarketing on.
- Within a week: spend, top queries, clicks, meetings, waste. Append the change log. Decide the next city's cap.
What this is not
- A national ERP demand-gen program with a Denver checkbox.
- Category keywords at $15+ CPC (
manufacturing erp,erp software, Infor/Epicor/NetSuite product names) with a hotel pin. - Permission to put Digital Stratosphere, Third Stage, Kimberling, or sponsor brands in ad headlines.
- A substitute for exhibiting, sponsoring, or buying the organizer's attendee file.
- Proof that a click was a 50–500 plant. Hypothesis only until a person talks.
- Consultant partnerships with a selection firm.
- License to harvest badges or scrape the event app.
Evidence and sources
- Event, venue, hours, 2026 ticket bands: Stratosphere 2026.
- Venue capacity: Le Méridien Denver Downtown events.
- 2025 attendee mix (qualitative): Third Stage post on 2025 demographics.
- 2026 sponsors: Infor diamond; Epicor and EstesGroup exhibitor sponsors; Priority and NetSuite/PCG also public as participants.
- Google location targeting and 1 km radius minimum: Target ads to geographic locations, Advanced location options.
- Trademarks in ads vs keywords: Google Ads trademark policy.
- CPC bands: 2026 B2B/SaaS Google Ads benches ($15–$80+ on fought ERP/SaaS terms). Cited here as terms we refuse, not as bids we plan to pay. Not Naologic account data.
Related knowledge
- Expo signal research — exhibitor directories and lists; different artifact
- Micro vertical — landing-page who-we-are-for, not the keyword list
- Consultant partnerships — selection firms are out
- Project bidding — bake-offs and named stacks
- GEO — unpaid answer-engine presence; do not merge budgets
- Communication instructions
- CEO scene videos — if we already know a name in the room
- Conference prep — LinkedIn and meetings before the ads run
Change log
- 2026-09-05 — Strip category ERP and sponsor-product keywords. Campaign A/B buy event, venue, and organizer queries only. Hard max CPC $3. Negate the $15 auctions. Cap $900.
- 2026-09-05 — Point to conference prep (LinkedIn pre-wire) beside the Presence ads.
- 2026-09-05 — Conference-city Presence campaigns; Digital Stratosphere 2026 Denver as the first build, budget cap, and adjustment rules.