Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out!
Happy to give you some of my initial thoughts on this. It's a common question, this whole "account structure" thing, especially for online businesses. People get really tangled up in it, thinking there's some secret blueprint that'll suddenly make everything work. Tbh, it's usually a distraction from the real issues that are burning through your cash.
Your question isn't really about account structure. It's about how to find customers who will actually pay you when you could be targeting anyone, anywhere in the world. That's the real challenge. So, before we even think about campaigns and ad groups, we need to sort out the foundations. Get this right, and the right structure becomes obvious. Get it wrong, and the most perfectly organised account in the world won't save you.
Your ICP is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic
First thing's first, let's completley forget about 'location' as a targeting metric for a minute. For an online business like yours, it's mostly irrelevant. The impulse is to target broad, wealthy countries like the US or UK, but that's just lazy thinking. It doesn't get you any closer to a sale.
You need to stop thinking about who your customers are and start thinking about what nightmare keeps them awake at night. The big, expensive, urgent problem that you, and only you, are uniquely positioned to solve. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a job title or an income bracket. Your ICP is a problem state.
Forget "males aged 35-55 in the UK". That's useless. Instead, think like this:
-> The Head of Sales at a 100-person tech company who is terrified because his team's lead quality has dropped 40% in two quarters and his job is on the line.
-> The founder of a direct-to-consumer brand who just realised her cost to acquire a customer has doubled, and she's now losing money on every sale, staring at a warehouse full of stock she can't shift.
-> The operations manager at a logistics firm who wastes 15 hours a week manually reconciling shipping manifests and knows there's a huge, costly error waiting to happen.
See the difference? We're not talking about demographics. We're talking about tangible, career-threatening pain. When you define your customer by their nightmare, your entire approach to advertising changes. You're no longer shouting into the void; you're whispering the solution to someone who is desperate to hear it. This is the first and most important step. Without this, you have no business spending a single pound on ads.
So, your first bit of homework is to write down, in excruciating detail, the specific nightmare your business solves. Who is having it? What does it feel like? What are the consequences if it's not fixed? This is the bedrock of your entire strategy.
Your Offer Needs to be Built to Solve That Nightmare
Once you've nailed the nightmare, the next piece of the puzzle is your offer. And here's where 99% of ad campaigns fail. The offer is either unclear, unappealing, or, worst of all, not directly tied to solving that specific nightmare.
A weak offer will kill a brilliant ad campaign every single time. It's the number one reason people struggle to get traction.
Let's look at a real-world example. Say you run a video production company. A bad offer is "High-quality corporate videos". It's generic, nobody's searching for it, and it doesn't solve a problem. It's a vitamin, not a painkiller.
A brilliant offer, aimed at a specific nightmare, is this:
-> The Nightmare: You're a ridiculously talented architectural firm, but you look small and amateurish online. You're losing bids to bigger, less-talented firms because their websites and presentations just look more expensive and trustworthy. You're frustrated and feel invisible.
-> The Solution (The Offer): "The One-Day Signature Project Film." We come to your best completed project for one day and create a stunning cinematic film that makes you look like the industry leader you are. We handle everything. You get a powerful asset that will win you bigger clients. It has a name, a clear deliverable, and a defined process. It solves the emotional problem of feeling undervalued and the business problem of losing bids.
This is what you need to do for your business. You must package your service or product as a clear, tangible solution to the nightmare you identified. It needs to be so obviously valuable that the price becomes a secondary concern. The more specific and urgent the problem, the more you can charge for the solution. Your online-only model is an advantage here – you can deliver this solution globally, without the overheads of a physical presence.
Delete the "Request a Demo" Button
Right, so we know the nightmare and we've built an offer to solve it. Now we hit the next common failure point: the call to action (CTA). For B2B or high-consideration services, the default is often "Request a Demo" or "Book a Consultation".
This is, frankly, one of the most arrogant CTAs in marketing. It assumes your prospect, who is likely a busy, important person, has nothing better to do than schedule time in their diary to be sold to. It's high friction and offers zero immediate value. It screams "I am a vendor, and I want your time". You instantly become a commodity.
Your offer's only job at this stage is to deliver an "aha!" moment. A moment of undeniable value that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing for a price.
Since you operate online, you have a massive advantage here. You can create and deliver value at scale, instantly. Here are some examples of high-value, low-friction offers that crush "Request a Demo":
Instead of this...
- "SEO Agency" -> "Request a free consultation"
- "Data Analytics SaaS" -> "Book a Demo"
- "Corporate Training" -> "Contact Us for a Quote"
- "B2B Ad Agency" -> "Let's Talk"
...Do this:
- "Get Your Free, Automated SEO Audit." -> Enter your URL, get a report showing your top 3 keyword opportunities and technical errors in 60 seconds. (Aha! moment: "Wow, I didn't know I was missing out on that much traffic.")
- "Start Your Free Trial." (No credit card). -> Let them use the actual software and see the results for themselves. Product Qualified Leads are infinitely better than Marketing Qualified Leads. (Aha! moment: "This platform just saved me 5 hours of work in 10 minutes.")
- "Take Our Free 15-Minute Interactive Manager Training Module." -> A self-contained video lesson on a common problem, like 'Handling Difficult Conversations'. (Aha! moment: "That one technique is going to change how I manage my team.")
- "Get a Free, No-Obligation Ad Account Audit." -> For us, this is our foot in the door. We spend 20 minutes reviewing a failing ad account and give them actionable advice. They see our expertise firsthand. (Aha! moment: "These guys found three major issues in 15 minutes that my last agency missed for 6 months.")
You need to bottle your expertise into a tool, an asset, or a free taste of your service that provides immediate value. This builds trust, demonstrates your capability, and makes the next step (paying you) a logical conclusion, not a hard sell.
The Simple Math That Sets You Free
"What should my cost-per-lead be?" is the wrong question. The real question is, "How much can I afford to spend to acquire a great customer?" The answer to that lies in a simple calculation that most businesses never do: calculating Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).
This single number will change how you view your ad spend forever. It's the key to scaling agressively and intelligently. For an online business, this is your north star. Let's break it down.
You need three numbers:
1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average amount a customer pays you per month? (Let's say it's £400).
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after deducting the direct costs of servicing that customer? (Let's say it's 75%).
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month? Be honest here. (Let's say it's 5%).
The calculation is simple:
LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
Let's plug in our numbers:
LTV = (£400 * 0.75) / 0.05
LTV = £300 / 0.05
LTV = £6,000
So, in this example, every new customer you acquire is worth £6,000 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. This is a transformative piece of information.
Now, a healthy business model aims for at least a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £2,000 to acquire a single £6,000 customer.
Let's take it a step further. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a paying customer (a 10% conversion rate), you can afford to pay up to £200 per qualified lead (£2,000 CAC / 10 leads).
Suddenly that £150 lead from Google Ads that you thought was "too expensive" looks like an absolute bargain. This is the math that frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to confidently invest in finding high-value customers, no matter where they are in the world.
| LTV & Allowable Cost Per Lead Calculation Example | |
|---|---|
| Metric | Example Value |
| Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) | £400 / month |
| Gross Margin % | 75% |
| Monthly Churn Rate | 5% |
| Lifetime Value (LTV) ((ARPA * GM) / Churn) | £6,000 |
| Target LTV:CAC Ratio | 3:1 |
| Max Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) (LTV / 3) | £2,000 |
| Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate | 10% (1 in 10) |
| Max Allowable Cost Per Lead (CPL) (CAC / 10) | £200 |
How to Pay Google to Find Customers, Not Window Shoppers
Okay, NOW we can finally talk about Google Ads. With all the strategic groundwork in place (Nightmare ICP, Painkiller Offer, LTV Math), targeting becomes much, much easier.
You're not targeting locations; you're targeting intent. And on Google, intent is expressed through keywords. Your job is to bid on the search terms that your ideal customer types into Google when their nightmare is at its most painful.
This is how you "pre-qualify" your audience. You let their search query do the hard work for you. Ditch broad, informational keywords. You want to focus on keywords that scream "I have a problem and I need a solution NOW".
Let's go back to the software agency example. Instead of bidding on a generic term like "software development" (which could be a student, a hobbyist, anyone), you bid on something that shows commercial intent and pain:
-> "hubspot to salesforce migration service"
-> "emergency database repair consultant"
-> "outsource react native development"
These are people with a specific, expensive problem. They aren't just browsing; they are actively looking for someone to hire. This is where you want your ad to show up. I remember one B2B SaaS client we worked with who was trying to sell accounting software. They were targeting broad terms and failing. We switched their focus to hyper-specific keywords around "quickbooks alternative for [specific industry]" and "accounting software with [specific integration]". Their lead quality shot up overnight, because we started targeting the pain, not the category.
Your keyword strategy should mirror the customer's journey from being aware of their problem to being ready to buy your solution.
Finally, Let's Build Your Account Structure
See how we got here? We did all the hard strategic work first. Now, structuring the account is just a case of organising our campaigns to test these ideas logically. The structure serves the strategy, not the other way around.
For an online business targeting based on intent, a simple, funnel-based structure is almost always the best place to start. It's clean, it's easy to manage, and it lets you control your budget and messaging at each stage of the customer journey.
Here’s a sensible starting structure:
| Campaign | Purpose & Targeting | Offer / Call-to-Action |
|---|---|---|
| 1. TOFU - Problem Aware | Targeting people searching for their problem, but not yet for a solution. (e.g., "why is my customer acquisition cost so high"). These are your "nightmare" keywords. | Drive them to a high-value blog post, guide, or video that explains their problem. No hard sell. Just build trust and cookie them for retargeting. |
| 2. MOFU - Solution Aware | Targeting people actively looking for the type of solution you provide. (e.g., "best fractional cfo services", "seo audit tool"). This is where you get specific. | This is where you deploy your irresistible low-friction offer: The free tool, the audit, the template, the free trial. You're capturing their details in exchange for instant value. |
| 3. BOFU - Brand & Competitors | Targeting your own brand name (to protect it) and the names of your direct competitors. These people are ready to buy. | Drive them to your main sales or service page. The messaging should be direct, highlighting your unique selling proposition vs. the competition. |
| 4. Retargeting | Targeting anyone who visited your site from any of the above campaigns but didn't convert. Use Google Display or YouTube Ads. | Show them case studies, testimonials, or remind them of your high-value offer. Nurture them until they are ready to take the next step. |
Each of these campaigns would have tightly themed ad groups. For example, in your "Solution Aware" campaign, you might have one ad group for "fractional cfo services" keywords and another for "financial modeling consultant" keywords. This allows you to write hyper-relevant ads for each specific search query.
This structure is logical, scalable, and directly addresses your problem. You're not targeting "locations"—you're organising your account by "intent", which is far more powerful and profitable.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
This might all seem like a lot, and it is. Getting this strategic foundation right is hard work, but it's the only path to building a profitable, scalable advertising engine for an online business. Doing this work upfront will save you tens of thousands of pounds in wasted ad spend down the line.
| Action Item | Why It Matters | Your First Step |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Define Your ICP by Their Nightmare | This is the foundation of all effective targeting. It moves you from generic demographics to specific, urgent pain, which is what drives people to buy. | Write a one-paragraph description of the person whose career/business is at risk if they don't solve the problem you fix. Be specific. |
| 2. Re-engineer Your Offer | You need a low-friction, high-value "foot in the door" offer that provides an 'aha!' moment and proves your expertise without a hard sell. | Brainstorm one thing you could give away for free (a tool, a template, an audit, a short course) that solves a small piece of your ICP's nightmare. |
| 3. Calculate Your LTV | This number dictates your entire ad budget. It tells you how much you can actually afford to pay for a lead, freeing you from chasing cheap, low-quality traffic. | Gather your ARPA, Gross Margin, and Churn Rate. Plug them into the formula: LTV = (ARPA * GM) / Churn. |
| 4. Build an Intent-Based Keyword List | Your targeting weapon is the search query. You must find the exact phrases people use when they are actively looking to buy a solution. | List 10 "solution aware" keywords that someone would type if they were looking for your re-engineered offer (e.g., "free seo audit tool"). |
| 5. Implement a Funnel-Based Structure | This organises your account by customer intent, not meaningless metrics, allowing you to control messaging and budget effectively. | Create one draft campaign in your Google Ads account named "[MOFU] - Solution Aware" and create one ad group for your top keyword theme. |
I know this is a fundamental shift from just asking "how should I structure my account?". But this is the work that actually creates results. I've seen countless businesses, from software startups to B2B service firms, transform their fortunes by going through this exact process. For example, we helped one medical recruitment SaaS reduce their cost per user from £100 down to just £7 by focusing on their ICP's specific pain points and re-structuring their campaigns around intent, not just job titles.
Getting an expert, outside perspective can often accelerate this process massively. It's tough to see the label from inside the bottle. If you'd like to walk through this for your specific business, we offer a completely free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session where we can dive into your offer and start to map out a real plan.
No hard sell, just actionable advice based on our experience running campaigns for businesses like yours.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
