Are Your Google Ads Reaching the Right People?

Getting clicks from Google Ads is arguably easy. Getting the right clicks is where most coworking operators fall short when taking a DIY approach.

If your campaigns are running, but tours aren’t booking, and vacancies aren’t filling, there’s no shortage of potential culprits. 

And, in some cases, it could be that your targeting is off: you’re paying to reach people who were never going to become members in the first place.

Getting targeting right won’t solve every performance problem, but getting it wrong guarantees you’ll have one. 

So, here’s what dialed-in audience targeting actually looks like, and what happens when it isn’t.

The Foundation: Define Your Ideal Member Before You Do Anything Else

Before you touch a single campaign setting, you need a clear picture of who you’re actually trying to reach.

Most operators skip this step because they want to capture every possible lead type. That instinct makes sense on the surface, but without a clear target, your campaigns end up being a guess, and incorrect guesses cost you wasted ad spend.

Your ideal member will look completely different depending on several factors, including:

• What services you offer: A private office operator has a different buyer than a workspace built around hot desks and drop-in coworking.
• The fit and finish of your space: A premium boutique location draws a different member than an accessible, no-frills workspace.
• Your physical location: A downtown core operator competes for a different searcher than a suburban space serving remote workers who left the city.
• What you actually have available right now: If your one-person offices are full and you need to fill team suites, your ideal member just changed.

Defining your ideal member isn’t just a strategic exercise. It’s the filter that makes every downstream targeting decision cleaner and more effective. When you’re clear on who you want to attract, you stop spending on who you don’t.

3 Layers of Targeting That All Have to Work Together

Audience targeting in Google Ads operates across 3 distinct dimensions. Get one wrong, and the other two can’t save you.

1. Keywords and Search Terms: What You Target vs. What Triggers

Keywords are the terms you actively bid on. They’re your instructions to Google about which searches should trigger your ads.

But here’s what most operators don’t realize: 

Keywords are what you set, but search terms are what people are searching for that actually trigger your ads. 

They’re not always the same thing, and the gap between them is where a lot of budget quietly disappears.

Take “coworking space” as a keyword. It seems like an obvious choice. 

But in practice, it can trigger ads for “garage space for rent,” “live-work condo listings,” or “Regus franchise opportunities.” Those searchers have nothing to do with your space, but Google charges you for every click anyway.

It gets more nuanced from there. 

Even within relevant searches, small differences in phrasing carry different intent. 

“Office space for rent” and “office space for lease” look nearly identical, but one tends to attract people seeking flexible, short-term arrangements, while the other often signals someone evaluating a longer-term commercial commitment. 

Same territory, different buyer.

This is why negative keywords matter as much as the keywords you target. 

Negative keywords tell Google which searches should never trigger your ads. 

Reviewing your search terms report regularly and adding irrelevant terms to your negative keyword list is one of the most valuable habits you can build.

If you’re not doing it, you’re not protecting your budget. You’re just spending it.

Want to see exactly how badly the wrong keywords can derail a campaign? Check out: Coworking Space Keywords That Create Chaos

2. Geography: More Than Just a Radius

Most operators draw a radius around their location and move on, but that’s a starting point, not a strategy.

A smarter approach factors in traffic flow and population density to understand where your potential members are actually coming from. 

One of the most practical things you can do is pull the billing addresses of your current members and plot them on a map. The data will often reveal patterns a generic radius would miss entirely.

Google also gives you meaningful control over how your geographic targeting behaves. You can restrict ads strictly to people physically within your target area, or you can expand to include people who show interest in your area, even if they’re located outside of it. 

For most coworking services, the tighter setting makes sense. For larger team suites, the decision-maker searching for space may not be the person who will actually occupy it, which means broadening your reach can capture leads a strict radius would filter out.

The right geographic strategy depends on what you’re selling and who’s making the buying decision. There’s no default setting that works for every space or every service.

3. Ad Messaging: Match the Ad to the Person

Even with tight keywords and the right geographic settings, misaligned messaging will cost you.

Someone searching for a one-person private office and someone searching for a 20-person team suite have different needs, timelines, and questions they need answered before they’ll act. 

If your ad doesn’t speak directly to what that specific searcher is looking for, you’ll lose them before they ever click.

One principle worth keeping in mind: 

Google Ads copy is technical writing, not creative writing. 

State what you offer. Be direct. People searching for office space are solving a problem, and they have limited patience for anything vague. 

The ad that wins is the one that immediately communicates you have exactly what they need.

Your Campaign Has Two Sides and Both Have to Work

Every Google Ads campaign operates on two levels: what you configure on the back end, and what your searcher actually experiences on the front end. 

Getting one right without the other is a half-measure.

The Back End: Your Campaign Configuration

The back end is everything you control before your ads ever show up in front of anyone:

• Your keywords
• Your negative keyword lists
• Your geographic targeting settings
• Your campaign structure
• How Google’s algorithm is being trained through your conversion data

This is where the most expensive mistakes get made quietly, with no immediate signal that anything is wrong.

The Front End: What Your Searcher Actually Sees

The front end is the experience your potential member has once your ad triggers. That means the ad headline, any images you’re running, and where you send people after they click.

There’s one challenge worth understanding: 

The gap between how searchers describe what they need and how operators describe what they offer. 

Someone who has never heard the word “coworking” might search for “places to work near me” or “shared workspace” instead. 

Google’s broad match can bridge some of that gap, but it requires active management, or it will also connect your ads to searches that have nothing to do with you.

Where you send people after the click matters more than most operators expect. 

Driving paid traffic to your homepage forces a visitor to navigate through every service to find what they came for. 

That friction kills conversions.

A custom landing page built specifically for the service you’re advertising gives the searcher exactly what they were looking for and dramatically increases the odds they take action.

We’ve written an entire guide on how to build landing pages that actually convert. Read it here.

The One Google Ads Targeting Mistake That Burns Budget Fastest

When we take over a client’s account, one issue shows up more than any other: 

Every service is crammed into a single campaign.

An operator might have private offices, dedicated desks, meeting rooms, virtual office services, and event space. 

Rather than building separate campaigns for each, they load everything into one campaign, pile in a broad keyword list, and wonder why nothing converts.

Here’s what happens when you do that: 

Google’s algorithm receives competing signals about what it’s supposed to do. It doesn’t know which product to prioritize, which audience to pursue, or which conversion to optimize toward. 

The result is predictable:

• The budget spreads thin across too many targets
• The campaign can’t compete effectively on any single service
• Google starts suggesting you increase your budget because nothing is performing
• Clicks happen, but conversions don’t (you can learn more about Google Ads conversions here)

The fix is straightforward: separate campaigns for separate services, each with keywords, messaging, and conversion goals specific to that offering. 

It takes more setup upfront, but it’s the only structure that gives Google clear enough signals to actually perform.

One more thing worth flagging: 

Some operators spend real money bidding on their own brand name, targeting searches like their space’s name combined with “coworking” or “private office.” 

People who search your name already know you exist. They would find you organically. 

So, paying for those clicks is not targeting. It’s paying for something you were already going to get for free.

4 Signs Your Targeting Has Gone Wrong

If your campaigns are underperforming, the following warning signs can tell you whether your targeting is the culprit. Each one points to a specific problem with a specific fix.

1. You’re Showing Up for the Wrong Searches

Pull your search terms report and look at what queries are actually triggering your ads. If you’re seeing results like these, your keyword strategy needs immediate attention:

• “Warehouse for rent” or “building for lease”
• Searches for job listings or employment opportunities
• Competitor brand names you never intended to target
• Geographic locations you don’t serve

Any irrelevant search term you find goes straight onto your negative keyword list. This is an ongoing process, not a one-time fix.

2. Your Lead Volume Looks Healthy, But Nothing Is Converting

High form submission numbers with low tour conversion is a targeting problem, not a sales problem.

One pattern that comes up more than you’d expect is when inquiries come from people looking for jobs rather than office space. Coworking is adjacent enough to the concept of working that Google occasionally connects job-seeker searches to your ads.

If half your submissions are from people asking about employment, your targeting is pulling in the wrong audience.

Review lead quality, not just lead volume. The number that matters is how many of those submissions are from people who actually want to rent a desk or an office.

3. You’re Getting Clicks from Places You Don’t Serve

If you haven’t explicitly excluded irrelevant countries and regions from your geographic settings, Google may serve your ads well outside your intended area. 

Getting clicks from overseas on a campaign designed to reach local professionals isn’t just useless. It’s budget that could have gone toward someone who might actually walk through your door.

Location exclusions aren’t optional. They’re a basic safeguard that’s easy to overlook and expensive to ignore.

4. Google Keeps Telling You to Raise Your Budget

When Google’s algorithm can’t figure out who to target because your campaign structure is too broad, it compensates by asking for more money. 

If you’re consistently seeing budget recommendations without a corresponding improvement in conversions, that’s a signal to look at your campaign structure, keywords, and targeting settings before you spend another dollar.

Unsure how to set your Google Ads budget? Read this.

Evaluating Campaign Success: You Can’t Fix What You’re Not Measuring

Here’s the truth: none of the above optimizations matter if your conversion tracking isn’t set up correctly.

Conversion tracking is what tells you which ads produced which results. It tells Google which actions to optimize for, essentially training the algorithm to find more people who behave like your best leads.

Without it, Google has no feedback loop. It’s placing your ads without any signal about whether they’re working.

The tracking problems we see most often include:

• Counting a website visit as a conversion, which makes lead volume look far higher than it actually is.
• No conversion tracking at all, leaving campaigns running entirely on intuition.
• Tracking that was configured once and never revisited, producing data that looks clean but isn’t.
• Google Analytics and Google Ads not connected, so audience signals from analytics never inform campaign optimization.

Before you adjust your keywords, rebuild your campaign structure, or increase your budget, confirm that your tracking is solid. Without accurate data, you’re not optimizing anything. You’re just spending with more confidence than the situation deserves.

So, what should you take away from this article? Here’s a quick recap of the most important takeaways:

• Define your ideal member before you configure anything: Your services, space, location, and current availability all shape who you should be targeting.
• Keywords are what you bid on: Search terms are what actually trigger your ads. Review your search terms report regularly and use negative keywords to eliminate what doesn’t belong.
• Geographic targeting is more than a radius: Use member billing address data, traffic patterns, and Google’s location settings to reach the right people in the right places.
• Avoid service bundling in Google Ads: Bundling every service into one campaign gives Google conflicting signals and burns budget without results. Separate campaigns for separate services.
• Watch for the signs: High lead volume with low conversion is a targeting problem, not a sales problem. Check lead quality, not just lead count.
• Location exclusions are not optional: Explicitly exclude irrelevant regions or you’ll pay for clicks from people who can’t become members.
• Conversion tracking is the foundation: You cannot make good targeting decisions without accurate data to work from.

Ready to fill your coworking space, generate more revenue, and create a waiting list so you’re never scrambling to fill vacancies? Spacefully can help. Book a free introductory call to learn how Google Ads can bring new members into your space starting today.