Solved: Profitable Keywords in San Francisco (Data Inside)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Finding profitable keywords in a market as competitive as San Francisco is a proper challenge, I see this all the time. It's easy to burn through cash very quickly if you're not careful. I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance on how you might want to approach this. Honestly, the solution often isn't about finding some magic list of 'hidden' keywords, but about changing your entire approach to how you think about your customer and what they're actually searching for.

You're probably looking at keywords all wrong...

Right, let's be brutally honest. Most people approach Google Ads keyword research completely backwards. They open a keyword planner, type in a broad service term like "financial consulting San Francisco," sort by volume, and then bid on the top results. In a market like SF, this is a surefire way to donate money to Google. Your competitors, with bigger budgets and established brands, are already dominating those terms. You can't out-bid them, so you have to out-think them.

You need to stop thinking in terms of demographics ("Startups in SF with 10-50 employees") and start thinking in terms of nightmares. What is the specific, urgent, career-threatening problem that keeps your ideal customer awake at night? Your customer isn't a job title; they are a person in a state of pain. The most profitable keywords are the ones that describe this pain.

Let's imagine you're a fractional CFO service. Your ICP isn't "a startup founder." It's a founder who just looked at their bank balance, realised they have 3 months of runway left, and is starting to panic. It's a CEO who's terrified of their next board meeting because their financial reporting is a mess. It's a leader who fears losing their best talent because they can't get their compensation structure right.

Their nightmare isn't "I need a CFO." Their nightmare is "I'm about to run out of money" or "my investors are going to fire me."

So, instead of bidding on "fractional CFO services SF", which is what every one of your competitors is doing, you look for the language of their pain:

• -> "startup cash flow forecasting template"
• -> "how to calculate burn rate for investors"
• -> "emergency business loan san francisco"
• -> "what to do when my startup is running out of money"
• -> "series a due diligence checklist"

See the difference? These queries have much lower search volume, but the intent behind them is a million times stronger. Someone searching for these is in active pain and is looking for a solution, not just browsing for vendors. They are pre-qualified by their own problem. This is where you can win, even with a smaller budget. You're not just another vendor; you're the first glimpse of a solution to their immediate crisis.

We'll need to look at the numbers before you spend another quid...

The second massive mistake I see is an obsession with low Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Lead (CPL). The real question isn't "How cheap can I get a lead?" but "How much can I afford to spend to acquire a brilliant customer?". Without knowing this, you're flying blind. You might be turning off campaigns that are actually profitable in the long run because the initial CPL seems 'too high'.

This is where calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) becomes non-negotiable. It's the most important number in your business. Once you know what a customer is worth, you can make intelligent decisions about how much you're willing to pay to get one.

Here’s the simple maths. You need three bits of info:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average a client pays you per month?
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after accounting for costs of service?
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your clients do you lose each month?

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

Let's run an example for our fractional CFO service:

• -> ARPA = £4,000/month
• -> Gross Margin = 75% (Your profit is £3,000 per month)
• -> Monthly Churn = 5% (You lose 1 in 20 clients each month)

LTV = (£4,000 * 0.75) / 0.05 = £3,000 / 0.05 = £60,000

Suddenly, things look very different. Each customer is worth £60,000 in gross margin to you over their lifetime. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is typically 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £20,000 to acquire a single new customer and still have a very healthy business.

If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a customer, you can afford to pay up to £2,000 per lead. Now, that expensive-looking £150 click for "emergency startup financial advisor san francisco" doesn't seem so scary, does it? It looks like an absolute bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth.

Use the calculator below to figure out your own numbers. Play around with the sliders to see how small changes in churn or pricing can massively impact the value of a customer. This is the foundation of a profitable ad strategy.

I'd say you need to structure your campaigns by intent, not just keyword lists...

Once you know your numbers and the type of pain-based keywords you're looking for, the next step is to structure your account properly. Don't just dump all your keywords into one campaign and one ad group. That's a recipe for disaster. You need to seperate campaigns based on how close the searcher is to buying.

This is a simplified version of how I'd structure an account, moving from the hottest leads to the coldest prospects:

1. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - "I want to hire someone now": This is your top priority. These people are actively looking for your exact solution. Their search queries include terms like "hire," "services," "agency," "consultant," "pricing," "near me." For our CFO example, this is "fractional cfo san francisco," "outsource cfo services ca," "startup cfo consultant bay area." These keywords will be the most expensive, but thanks to your LTV calculation, you know you can afford them. Your ad copy and landing page here need to be razor-sharp and lead directly to a conversation.
2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - "I have a problem, how do I solve it?": This is where your 'nightmare' keywords live. These people are problem-aware but not yet solution-aware. They are searching for answers, templates, guides, and 'how-to' information. Keywords like "improve saas profit margin," "cash flow forecasting for startups," "investor reporting best practices." You DON'T try to sell them your service directly. Instead, you offer them a piece of high-value content or a tool for free in exchange for their email. A 'Free Cash Flow Projection Template' or a '5-Point Checklist for Investor Readiness.' This builds trust and captures a lead you can nurture. A smart structure is incredibly powerful; I remember one campaign for a medical job matching platform where a strategic overhaul of their campaigns, including on Google Ads, brought their cost per user down from a staggering £100 to just £7.
3. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - "I'm interested in a topic": To be honest, with a limited budget in a competitive market, I'd probably ignore this for now. These are very broad, informational searches. For our example, things like "venture capital trends" or "startup funding news." It's incredibly difficult to turn this traffic into revenue. Focus your money where the intent is strongest: BoFu and MoFu.

By splitting your campaigns this way, you can allocate your budget intelligently. You put the most money into BoFu, a good chunk into MoFu to build your pipeline, and nothing into ToFu until you've scaled significantly. This structure also lets you tailor your ad copy and landing pages perfectly to the searcher's mindset at each stage.

You probably should fix your offer before you worry about keywords...

This might be the most important point of all. You can have the best keyword strategy in the world, but if it points to a landing page with a weak or high-friction offer, you will fail. You will burn money. The keyword just gets them in the door; the offer is what makes them stay.

Please, for the love of god, delete the "Request a Demo" or "Contact Us for a Quote" button as your main call-to-action. This is the most arrogant CTA in marketing. It screams, "I expect you, a busy and important person, to book time in your diary to be sold to by me." It's high-friction and offers zero immediate value.

Your offer's only job is to provide an "aha!" moment. It needs to solve a small part of their problem for free, instantly, to earn you the right to solve the whole thing for money later.

Instead of "Request a Demo", your offer should be something like:

• -> For BoFu Traffic: "Get a Free, 15-Min Financial Health Check for Your Startup"
• -> For MoFu Traffic: "Download Your Free Cash Flow Forecasting Template Now"

These are tangible, valuable, and low-risk. They give the prospect immediate value and begin a relationship based on expertise, not on a sales pitch. We've seen this time and time again. If you recall the medical job matching platform I mentioned earlier, a huge part of their success in dropping the cost per user from £100 to £7 was moving away from a high-friction 'Book a Demo' offer to something that provided more immediate value.

You'll need a clear plan to implement

This is a lot to take in, I know. It's a fundamental shift from just 'buying keywords' to building a proper customer acquisition system. The good news is that very few of your competitors in San Francisco are this strategic. They're too busy throwing money at broad terms. By being smarter, you can get much better results even with a smaller budget.

Here’s the main advice I have for you, summarised in a plan of action:

Executing this strategy takes discipline and a willingness to ignore vanity metrics like click volume. But this is how you build a predictable, scalable, and—most importantly—profitable advertising engine.

This is obviously a very different way of thinking and it can feel like a lot to implement correctly. It's not just about flipping a few switches in Google Ads; it's about building a coherent strategy from the ground up. This is usually where having an expert partner can make a huge difference, not just in getting it set up right, but in continuously testing and optimising to drive down costs and increase revenue over time.

If you'd like to chat through your specific situation in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can look at your account together and map out a more concrete plan.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh