Google Ads: Target Problems, Not Just Location

So you're launching a product without a physical location to pin on a map. Most people think this makes Google Ads impossible. They think you need to target 'London' or 'Manchester' to find customers. They're wrong. When you're selling a digital product, a course, or shipping eCommerce goods nationwide, targeting by location is often the laziest, most ineffective thing you can do. Your real target isn't a place; it's a problem.

Forget trying to find customers in a specific city. You need to find them at a specific moment: the exact second they realise they have a problem that you can solve. That's where Google Search shines, and that's what we're going to break down. We're going to build a strategy based on what people are desperately typing into a search box, not where their laptop happens to be plugged in.

Is my customer a person or a problem?

Before you even think about writing an ad or picking a keyword, you need to get this straight. Your Ideal Customer Profile, your ICP, is not "Sarah, 35, lives in Surrey, earns £60k". That's useless. It tells you nothing that helps you sell anything. It leads to generic ads that Sarah, and everyone else, will ignore.

Your ICP is a nightmare. It's a specific, urgent, and expensive pain point. Your customer isn't a demographic; they're in a 'problem state'. You need to become an expert in their professional or personal hell.

Let's say you sell a project management SaaS tool. Your customer isn't 'a project manager'. She's a leader who just had a major project go off the rails, missed a deadline, and now her boss is questioning her competence. She's up at 2 AM, staring at the ceiling, terrified of the next team meeting. That's your customer. The nightmare is 'my projects are chaos and it's hurting my career'.

Or maybe you sell high-end noise-cancelling headphones. Your customer isn't 'a remote worker'. He's a developer on a tight deadline, living in a small flat with two kids doing online school in the next room, and he's about to lose his mind because he can't get five minutes of uninterrupted focus. The nightmare is 'I can't concentrate and my performance is suffering'.

When you define your customer by their pain, everything else becomes easier. You know what they're searching for. You know what words will grab their attention. You know how to talk to them in a way that makes them feel understood. This is the foundation. Don't build your house on sand. Do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads.

So how do I find people having these nightmares?

You find them through their search queries. People confess their problems to Google. Your job is to listen. This means mastering keyword research, but not in the way most people think about it. It's not about finding high-volume, generic terms. It's about finding phrases that bleed intent.

Think of it in stages. Your potential customers are on a journey.

Problem-Aware Keywords: They know they have a problem, but they don't know solutions exist. They search for their symptoms.
-> "how to manage multiple client projects"
-> "why can't I focus when working from home"
-> "my team keeps missing deadlines"

Solution-Aware Keywords: They know there are types of solutions out there, and they're looking for the best category for them.
-> "best project management software for agencies"
-> "noise cancelling headphones vs white noise machine"
-> "team collaboration tools"

Product-Aware / Brand Keywords: They know about specific products (yours or your competitors') and are in the final stages of comparison and decision.
-> "Asana vs Trello"
-> "Bose QC45 price"
-> "[Your Brand Name] reviews"

Most beginners make the mistake of only targeting the broad, problem-aware keywords. The traffic is huge, but the intent to buy is low. The real money, especially when you're starting out, is in the solution-aware bucket. These people are actively looking to buy something. They've allready decided to spend money to fix their problem; you just need to convince them your solution is the one.

Here’s a practical look at how you'd target keywords for a B2B software, lets say a tool that helps with finding contact information for sales leads. I remember one campaign we ran for a similar B2B software on LinkedIn where we got leads for just $22, because the targeting was so specific to the problem.

Your other best friend is the negative keyword list. For every keyword you target, you should be thinking about what searches you *don't* want to show up for. Selling premium software? Add "free", "cheap", "torrent" to your negatives. Selling a product? Add "jobs", "careers", "salary" to avoid job seekers. This is just as important as picking the right keywords. It stops you from wasting money on clicks that will never, ever convert.

How do I write an ad that actually gets clicked?

Once you have your high-intent keywords, your ad has one job: to connect the searcher's problem to your solution. Your headline has to mirror their search query as closely as possible. If they searched "project management software for agencies," your headline should be something like "The PM Software for Agencies" or "Finally: Agency Project Management". It signals "you're in the right place."

Then, the description needs to hit them where it hurts. Don't list features. Talk about outcomes. Use one of these two proven formulas.

1. Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS)

You state the problem they know they have, you pour a little salt in the wound by describing how bad it feels, and then you present your product as the way out.

Example for a financial forecasting SaaS:
Headline: Stop Guessing Your Cash Flow
Description: Are your spreadsheets a mess? One bad month away from a payroll crisis? Get dashboards that turn financial uncertainty into predictable, confident growth.

2. Before-After-Bridge (BAB)

You paint a picture of their current world (the Before state), show them what the world could be like with your product (the After state), and position your product as the Bridge to get them there.

Example for a recruitment software:
Headline: Hire Better Engineers, Faster
Description: Before: Sifting through hundreds of irrelevant CVs. After: Interviewing 3 perfect, pre-vetted candidates. Our platform is the bridge. Find your next hire this week.

Notice how none of these ads mention features like "AI-powered algorithms" or "synergistic workflows". Nobody cares. They care about getting rid of their nightmare. I remember one campaign we worked on for a medical job matching SaaS where we took their Cost Per Acquisition from £100 down to just £7. A big part of that was rewriting all the ads to focus on the outcome for the doctor (less time searching, better-fit jobs) and the hospital (filling critical roles faster), not the features of the platform. The messaging was all wrong, it was a simple fix but it made a huge diference.

Why are people clicking but not buying?

This is probably the most common question I get. You've nailed the keywords, your ads have a great Click-Through Rate, but your bank account is empty. The problem is almost certainly your offer and your landing page. You've brought a thirsty horse to water, but you're asking it to solve a Rubik's cube before it can drink.

I'm talking about the "Request a Demo" button. This is the most arrogant, high-friction, low-value Call to Action in the history of marketing. It presumes your prospect, who is busy and sceptical, wants to schedule a meeting to be pitched at by a salesperson. It's an instant turn-off.

Your offer’s only job is to provide a moment of undeniable value. An "aha!" moment. It must solve a small, real problem for free to earn you the right to ask for their money to solve the whole thing.

If you're a SaaS company, this is non-negotiable. The gold standard is a free trial or a freemium plan. No credit card required. Let them use the actual product. Let them experience the "After" state you promised in your ad. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You're not generating Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you are creating Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) who are allready half-sold. We've seen this work time and time again. I remember one client who got over 5,000 software trials at just $7 a pop using this exact strategy. Another client got 1,535 trials for their B2B SaaS. It works because it removes all the risk for the user.

If you're not a SaaS company, you're not off the hook. You need to bottle your expertise into an asset that delivers instant value.
-> eCommerce store selling skincare? Offer a free 'Skin Type Quiz' that recommends a specific product bundle.
-> Selling online courses? Offer the first module completely free.
-> A consultant? Offer a free, automated audit tool that diagnoses a key problem. A 15-minute video training. A detailed checklist.

You must give value before you ask for it. Ditch the demo request. Build an offer that makes them think, "Wow, if the free stuff is this good, the paid stuff must be incredible."

How much can I afford to pay for a customer, really?

This is the question that separates the amateurs from the pros. Amateurs ask "How low can I get my cost per click?". Pros ask "How high a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) can I afford to acquire a great customer?". The answer is found by calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Without this number, you're flying blind. You're making decisions based on fear, trying to get the cheapest leads possible, which are often the worst quality. Knowing your LTV gives you the confidence to spend what's necessary to acquire customers who will actually make you profitable.

Here's the simple maths. You need three numbers:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average amount a customer pays you each month?
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? (Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold) / Revenue.
3. Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

The calculation is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's run a quick example for a hypothetical subscription box business. I remember a subscription box client of ours that got a 1000% Return On Ad Spend because they understood their numbers so well.

In this example, each customer you acquire is worth £240 in gross profit to your business over their lifetime. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £80 (£240 / 3) to acquire a single new customer and still run a very healthy business.

Suddenly, a £40 CPA doesn't look expensive. It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks scale. When you know you can profitably spend £80 to get a customer, you can be much more aggressive with your bidding and you can out-spend competitors who are still scared of a £15 CPA. You need to beleive in your numbers.

Okay, I'm ready. How should I structure my campaigns?

Keep it simple. Complexity is the enemy of progress. You don't need dozens of campaigns and ad groups when you're starting out. I'd suggest a structure based on the keyword intent we discussed earlier.

Campaign 1: Solution-Aware (Your Core Campaign)
-> Ad Groups: Create a seperate ad group for each tight theme of keywords. E.g., Ad Group 1 for "project management software" keywords, Ad Group 2 for "task management tool" keywords, Ad Group 3 for "agency workflow platform" keywords.
-> Bidding: Start with Maximise Clicks or Manual CPC to get data, then switch to Maximise Conversions or Target CPA once you have a steady stream of conversions (at least 15-20 per month).
-> Goal: This is your workhorse campaign, designed to capture people actively shopping for a solution.

Campaign 2: Branded Search
-> Ad Groups: One ad group for your brand name and any common misspellings or variations.
-> Bidding: Target Impression Share (aim for 95%+ at the absolute top of the page).
-> Goal: To protect your brand name from competitors and control the message when people search for you directly. This should be very cheap and have a very high conversion rate.

Campaign 3: Competitor Targeting (Optional, more advanced)
-> Ad Groups: One ad group per major competitor. Target keywords like "[Competitor] alternative", "[Competitor] vs [Your Brand]", "reviews of [Competitor]".
-> Bidding: Be prepared to pay a higher CPC here as your Quality Score will be lower. Focus on CPA.
-> Goal: To steal customers who are unhappy with their current provider. It's an aggressive but often very effective tactic.

What about Performance Max? Google will push you towards it. It can work, but it's a black box. You give it your assets and your goals, and it does the rest. I would not start with PMax. I'd start with the Search campaign structure above to first test and prove your messaging, your offer, and your keywords. Once you know what works, you can feed those winning assets into a PMax campaign to scale. Starting with PMax is like trying to run before you can walk. Master the fundamentals first.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

This all might seem like a lot of work, and it is. Getting Google Ads right for a product without geographic boundaries isn't about finding a magic button. It's a methodical process of understanding your customer's psychology, testing relentlessly, and making decisions based on data, not hope. The results, however, can be transformative. We've seen it with clients over and over again—from generating 3,543 users at under £1 each for a software product to driving over 45,000 signups for an app.

It requires a deep understanding of strategy, constant monitoring, and the experience to know which levers to pull and when. If you're launching a new product, your time is probably best spent on the product itself, not on becoming a full-time advertising expert. If you'd like an experienced pair of eyes on your plan, we offer a free, no-obligation strategy session where we can review your product, your goals, and help you build a launch plan that's set up for success from day one.