saas-google-ads

Google Ads for Software Products

Audience: developers and technical founders. Explain things in engineering terms. Before advising, read /mnt/skills/user/saas-marketing-background/references/background.md and gather missing background.

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Google Ads — Additional Intake Questions

After gathering shared background, also ask these channel-specific questions:

Keywords

• High-intent terms they're confident about?
• Competitors users might also be evaluating?
• Terms that look relevant but attract the wrong audience?
• What would they search for? (symptoms, tools they use today, category terms)

Google Ads current state

• Ran Google Search Ads before? What worked/didn't?
• Conversion tracking set up and verified?

Google Ads safe defaults (don't ask, just apply):

Parameter	Default
Device	All; -20–30% mobile for B2B
Ad schedule	All hours; business hours only for sales-led
Budget sizing	Target CPA × 3 minimum daily per campaign
Target CPA	Unknown — run Maximize Conversions until baseline established
Match types	Phrase + Exact to start; no Broad until 30+ conv/month

Channel-specific routing:

Situation	Where to go
No tracking set up	Set up tracking in guide.md → Conversion Tracking before anything else
Tracking set up, no campaigns	Account setup below → keywords/ads/bidding in guide.md
Campaigns running, underperforming	Verify tracking first (guide.md → Tracking) then Optimization section
Campaigns profitable, want to scale	guide.md → Scaling

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How Google Search Ads Work

A keyword is not just a search term — it's a signal of buyer intent. The same concept ("api monitoring") searched different ways signals different stages of the buying journey. Your job is to match your spend to the highest-intent signals first.

The auction pipeline:

User query → Auction → Ad Rank → Click → Landing page → Conversion
     ↑                                                        |
     └──────────── Feedback loop (conversion signal) ─────────┘

Ad Rank = bid × Quality Score × expected impact of assets. You don't win by bidding highest — you win by having the highest Ad Rank, which means Quality Score is a cost multiplier. Improving QS lowers CPC without touching your bid.

What Google doesn't tell you: Google's revenue comes partly from inefficiency. Their automated suggestions (broad match expansion, Performance Max, auto-applied recommendations) often increase spend before they improve results. Treat account suggestions as hypotheses to test, not instructions to follow. The default campaign settings are not optimized for your goals — they're optimized for Google's revenue.

Why search works for software: Search captures demand that already exists. A user searching "rest api rate limiting library" has identified their problem and is actively looking for a solution. That query may have 200 searches/month globally, but the buyer intent is extremely high. This is fundamentally different from social ads, which interrupt people who weren't looking.

When search doesn't work: If your product category doesn't exist yet (common in AI), there may be no search volume for what you sell. In that case, you're educating the market — which search ads do poorly. Problem-aware keywords ("how to reduce api latency") can work, but expect lower conversion rates and higher CPAs.

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Is It Worth the Budget? Minimum Testing Formula

Before starting, determine if you have enough budget to get meaningful data:

Minimum monthly test budget = Target CPA × 50
 
Why 50: Smart bidding needs ~30 conversions/month to stabilize.
50 gives you headroom for learning period waste.
 
If you don't know your Target CPA yet:
  Estimate = LTV × acceptable CAC/LTV ratio
  Example: LTV $1,200, willing to spend 20% → Target CPA = $240
  Minimum budget = $240 × 50 = $12,000/month
 
Minimum daily budget per campaign = Target CPA × 3
Below this, smart bidding has too little signal per day to work.

If your budget is below this threshold, use Manual CPC and accept slower optimization — don't use smart bidding without the data to support it.

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Account Structure

Account
└── Campaign  (budget, network, bidding strategy, goal)
    └── Ad Group  (keyword theme + bid modifier)
        ├── Keywords
        └── Ads

Campaign types for software (in order of when to add them):

Type	When to use
Search	Always — start here exclusively
Display	Retargeting only, once you have converters to exclude/target
Demand Gen	Top-of-funnel awareness once Search is profitable
Performance Max	Only after 50+ conversions/month and solid tracking

Campaign structure by intent — not by internal org or budget cycle:

Brand           → your product name + brand + pricing
Competitor      → named competitors users are evaluating
Category        → solution-aware ("api monitoring tool")
Problem-aware   → symptom-aware ("api keeps going down")
Feature-specific → exact feature searches ("webhook retry logic")

Keep Brand separate always — brand terms have low CPA and will consume budget from non-brand if mixed.

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Goals and Conversion Hierarchy

Set one primary conversion per campaign. Multiple primary conversions give the bidding algorithm conflicting signals.

Primary (bid on — pick ONE):
  PLG/SaaS:       free trial signup OR account creation
  Sales-led:      demo request OR contact sales form
  Dev tools:      API key created OR SDK first call
  Enterprise:     qualified demo booked OR MQL form
 
Secondary (track, don't bid on):
  - Demo video played
  - Pricing page visit > 30s
  - Docs page visit
  - Chatbot started
 
Micro (track for funnel visibility):
  - Blog post read > 60s
  - Newsletter signup
  - Any page view

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Campaign Settings — What to Change from Defaults

Networks: Uncheck Search Partners and Display Network. These are separate products bundled into Search by default. They dilute data and are harder to audit.

Location: Set explicitly. Default is "Presence or interest" — change to "Presence" only, or you'll show ads to people researching your target location from elsewhere.

Ad rotation: Set to "Do not optimize" while testing copy. Switch to "Optimize" once you have a winning variant.

Ad schedule: For B2B/enterprise, restrict to business hours. For PLG/dev tools with global self-serve buyers, leave all hours.

Device bid adjustments: For enterprise B2B, apply -20–30% on mobile — mobile rarely converts for high-consideration software purchases.

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Naming Conventions

Consistent naming makes filtering, reporting, and auditing faster at scale.

Campaigns:  [Type]_[Intent/Audience]_[Offer]_[YYYY-MM]
            Search_Competitor_FreeTrial_2024-03
            Search_Brand_Demo_2024-03
 
Ad Groups:  [Theme]_[MatchType]
            APIMonitoring_Exact
            ChurnReduction_Phrase
 
Ads:        [Angle]_[CTA]_v[N]
            ProblemHook_StartTrial_v1
            SocialProof_BookDemo_v2

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Pre-Launch Checklist

Tracking (do not skip)

• Conversion tracking configured and verified with a real test event
• Auto-tagging enabled
• GA4 linked; audiences available in Google Ads
• Cross-domain tracking set up if funnel spans subdomains
• UTM tracking template set at account level

Audiences

• Remarketing audiences created: all visitors (180d), pricing/demo page visitors, converters
• Converters excluded from prospecting campaigns
• Customer Match list uploaded if available

Campaigns

• Negative keyword list created and applied
• Location targeting explicitly set
• Language matches landing page language
• Brand campaign live (even low-budget — protects brand terms)
• Brand terms in negatives on all non-brand campaigns
• Ad schedule configured for audience type
• Daily budget = Target CPA × 3 minimum

Creative

• Landing pages < 3s load (check PageSpeed Insights)
• Landing pages mobile-responsive
• Single CTA above the fold matching the ad's promise
• All asset types added (sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets)

Team

• Reporting view configured
• Relevant team notified (paid traffic spikes inbound volume)

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Key Metrics Reference

Metric	Formula	Alert threshold
CTR	clicks / impressions	< 2% brand, < 1% non-brand
CPC	spend / clicks	Rising without CVR improvement
CVR	conversions / clicks	Drop > 20% week-over-week
CPA	spend / conversions	Exceeds target × 1.5 for 2+ weeks
ROAS	revenue / spend	Below target for 2+ weeks
Quality Score	Google's 1–10 rating	Any keyword < 6 needs investigation
Impression Share	your impressions / available impressions	< 50% on core terms with budget headroom

SaaS-specific KPIs:

Product type	Primary KPI	Typical range
PLG / SaaS trial	Cost per trial	$50–$300
Sales-led / demo	Cost per demo	$200–$2,000
Dev tools / API	Cost per signup	$30–$150
Enterprise	Cost per MQL	$300–$3,000

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Reference Files

• /mnt/skills/user/saas-marketing-background/references/background.md — shared intake questions; read before advising
• references/guide.md — complete reference: keywords, ads, tracking, bidding, audiences, optimization, scaling