Solved: Google Ads Strategy for Denver (Actionable Checklist)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on putting together a solid Google Ads strategy for Denver. It's a common question, and honestly, most people get it wrong by just sticking a pin in a map.

The real trick isn't just telling Google *where* to show your ads, but *who* to show them to within that area and *why* they should care. We'll get into how you can stop burning cash on targeting the whole city and instead focus on the people who are actually likely to buy from you.

We'll need to look at who you're actually selling to...

Right, first things first. Forget about Denver for a second. The biggest mistake I see people make is thinking that geography is the most important targeting layer. It isn't. You could have the most perfectly geotargeted campaign in the world, but if you're showing your ads to the wrong people *within* Denver, you're just throwing money away. You need to get ridiculously specific about who your ideal customer is, and I don't mean "males, 35-55, living in Denver." That's useless.

You need to define your customer by their pain. What is the specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare that keeps them up at night? What problem does your new product solve that makes them feel a sense of relief? That's your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). It's not a person; it's a problem state.

For instance, if you're selling a new kind of project management software, your ICP isn't "small business owners in Denver." It's "the founder of a 15-person agency in Denver who just lost a major client because a deadline was missed and is now terrified of it happening again." See the difference? One is a bland demographic; the other is a story packed with emotion and urgency. All your ads, keywords, and landing pages need to speak directly to that second person.

When you define your customer this way, it makes everything else so much easier. You're not just selling a product; you're selling a solution to a real, painful problem. It's the difference between shouting into a crowd and having a quiet, persuasive conversation with someone who is desperate to hear what you have to say. Most businesses never do this work, which is why their ads feel generic and get ignored. This is your first and most significant advantage.

To help you visualise this process, I've put together a little flowchart. The goal is to move from a vague idea of a customer to a laser-focused 'Nightmare Scenario' that you can build your entire campaign around.

I'd say you need to master keyword intent...

Once you know *who* you're talking to and what their specific pain is, the next step is to figure out what they type into Google when they're looking for a solution. This is where most people get tripped up. They bid on broad, expensive keywords and wonder why they get loads of clicks but no customers. It's because they're ignoring *intent*.

Every Google search has an intent behind it. Someone might be just looking for information, comparing their options, or ready to buy right now. Your job is to focus your budget on that last group. You want to capture people at the exact moment they've decided to solve their problem.

Let's break it down into three main types of intent:

1. Informational Intent: The user wants to learn something. Keywords often include "how to," "what is," "best ways to," etc. For example, "how to lower energy bills." This traffic is generally not ready to buy. They're in the research phase. Bidding here can be useful for content marketing, but it's usually a waste of money for direct response advertising.
2. Commercial Intent: The user is investigating products or services. They're comparing options. Keywords might include "reviews," "vs," "best," "top." For example, "best window replacement companies in denver reviews." This traffic is warmer. They're getting closer to a decision, and it can be worth targeting them, but they still might not be ready to pull the trigger immediately.
3. Transactional Intent (Your Goldmine): The user is ready to take action. They want to buy, hire, book, or sign up. These keywords are incredibly specific and often include terms like "buy," "for sale," "quote," "near me," "cost," or specific brand/product names. For example, "emergency window repair denver co" or "get a quote for triple-pane windows." This is where you should be spending the majority of your budget. These people have their credit cards out, metaphorically speaking.

The trick is to build your campaigns around these transactional keywords first. They'll have lower search volume, but the quality of the traffic will be infinitely higher. I've run campaigns for service businesses where we *only* target these high-intent phrases. We've seen cost per lead drop by over 80% just by making this one shift. For one client, an HVAC company in a competitive area, we focused their budget away from broad terms and onto high-intent phrases like "emergency ac repair [city]" and "new furnace installation cost." This helped them achieve a consistent cost per lead of around $60, and the quality of the leads shot through the roof.

Here's a table to give you a clearer idea of how this looks in practice. Let's pretend you're launching a high-end home cleaning service in Denver.

Your task is to brainstorm a list of these transactional keywords. Think about all the different ways your ideal customer might search when they've decided they need your product *right now*. This list will become the foundation of your entire Google Ads account.

You probably should structure your account for precision...

Now that you have your ICP and your high-intent keywords, you need to organise them properly inside your Google Ads account. A common and costly mistake is to dump all your keywords into a single campaign and ad group. This is like throwing all your ingredients into one pot and hoping for a gourmet meal. It doesn't work. It leads to low Quality Scores, irrelevant ads, and wasted spend.

You need to structure your account to mirror your customer's intent. This means creating tightly-themed campaigns and ad groups. The goal is to ensure that the keyword someone searches for is as closely related as possible to the ad they see and the landing page they arrive on. This relevance is what Google rewards with higher Quality Scores, which in turn leads to lower costs and better ad positions.

A good structure to start with is what's called a 'themed' approach. You'd create separate campaigns for each of your main product or service categories. Then, within each campaign, you'd create separate ad groups for each specific keyword theme.

Let's stick with the home cleaning service example. Your account structure might look something like this:

This structure gives you immense control. You can set different budgets for each campaign based on which service is most profitable. You can write hyper-specific ads for each ad group that mention the exact keywords the user searched for. And you can send traffic from each ad group to a dedicated landing page that talks *only* about that specific service. This level of granularity is what separates amateur advertisers from the pros. It takes more time to set up, there's no question about that, but the payoff in terms of performance is definately worth the effort.

You'll need to think beyond just the city...

Right, let's finally talk about Denver specifically. Just typing "Denver" into the location targeting field and calling it a day is the lazy approach. Google Ads gives you much more powerful tools to zero in on your target areas, and you absolutely should use them.

First, think about the physical reality of your business and your customers. Does it make sense to target the entire Denver metro area? If you're a local service business, probably not. Your travel time would be a nightmare. If you sell a digital product, maybe. You need to be strategic.

Here are some advanced location targeting methods you should be using:

• Radius Targeting: Instead of targeting the whole city, target a radius (e.g., 10 miles) around your business address. This is perfect for businesses that have a physical location or a defined service area. It ensures you're only showing ads to people you can realistically serve.
• ZIP Code / Postcode Targeting: This is incredibly powerful. Not all neighbourhoods are created equal. Some will contain a much higher concentration of your ideal customers than others. Research the demographics of Denver's ZIP codes. Are your customers more likely to be in affluent areas like Cherry Creek (80206) or in up-and-coming areas like RiNo (80216)? You can choose to target only these specific, high-value ZIP codes and ignore the rest. You can even set higher bids for your most valuable areas.
• Location Bid Adjustments: This lets you tell Google how much more (or less) a customer in a specific location is worth to you. For example, you might find that leads from Boulder convert at a much higher rate than leads from Aurora. You can set a +25% bid adjustment for Boulder, telling Google you're willing to pay more for a click from someone there. This lets you optimise your spend without completely excluding less valuable areas.
• Exclusions: Just as important as telling Google where to target is telling it where *not* to. Are there certain areas you know you don't want to serve? Add them as negative locations. This stops you from wasting money on clicks from people you can't help.

Combining these techniques allows you to carve up the Denver map with surgical precision, focusing your budget where you have the highest chance of finding a profitable customer. I've found that getting this right is often a key part of turning a breakeven campaign into a profitable one.

To help you plan your budget for a local campaign, I've built a small calculator. You can adjust the sliders to see how your target number of leads and your estimated cost per lead (CPL) will impact your recommended monthly ad spend. For local services, CPLs can range anywhere from $10 to $60+, so do some research on your specific industry to get a realistic starting point.

We'll need to look at your numbers properly...

This brings me to the final, and perhaps most overlooked, piece of the puzzle: the maths. Too many businesses get obsessed with metrics like Cost Per Click (CPC) or even Cost Per Lead (CPL). They try to get them as low as possible, thinking that's the goal. It's not. The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I *afford* to acquire a truly great customer?"

The answer to that question lies in understanding your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Your LTV is the total amount of profit you can expect to make from a single customer over the entire course of your relationship with them. Once you know this number, everything changes. It becomes your north star for how much you can profitably spend on advertising.

Let's run through a quick calculation. You'll need three numbers:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average amount a customer spends with you per month?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue?
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month?

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

Let's say you run a subscription service that costs $100/month, your gross margin is 70%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month. Your LTV would be ($100 * 0.70) / 0.05 = $1,400. This means that, on average, each new customer you acquire is worth $1,400 in profit to your business.

Now you have the truth. A healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means for your $1,400 LTV, you can afford to spend up to $1,400 / 3 = ~$466 to acquire a single new customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 5 qualified leads into a paying customer, you can afford to pay up to $466 / 5 = $93 per lead. Suddenly, that $45 CPL we used in the calculator earlier doesn't look so expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain.

This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. It frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to confidently invest in acquiring the best customers, even if they cost more upfront. Understanding your LTV is non-negotiable if you want to build a sustainable advertising strategy.

Here's another interactive calculator to help you figure out your own LTV. Play around with the numbers to see how small changes in churn or margin can dramatically impact the value of your customers.

This is the main advice I have for you:

Pulling it all together, launching a successful Google Ads campaign in Denver isn't about one magic bullet. It's about getting a series of fundemental things right. It's a process of deep customer understanding, precise technical setup, and sound financial analysis. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below in a table to give you a clear, actionable checklist to follow.

As you can probably tell, there's quite a bit that goes into doing this properly. It's not just about flipping a few switches in Google Ads. It's a strategic process that requires a deep understanding of marketing principles, technical platform knowledge, and a commercial mindset.

Getting it right from the start can save you thousands in wasted ad spend and months of frustration. This is often where working with an expert can make a huge difference. We've spent years honing these strategies across dozens of accounts, including for software companies, eCommerce brands, and local services. We know the pitfalls to avoid and the levers to pull to get results faster.

If you'd like to go through your specific product and plan in more detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy session. We can take a look at what you've got so far and give you some more tailored advice on the best way forward. It's a great way to get a second pair of expert eyes on your plan before you start spending money.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh