Solved: Finding Profitable Google Ads Keywords (The Pain Matrix)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some initial thoughts on this. It's a really common problem, especially for online businesses where you can't just slap a location on your campaigns and call it a day. The good news is, you don't need location targeting to be profitable. The bad news is, you've probably been thinking about keywords completely the wrong way. Most people do.

The solution isn't about finding some magic list of 'profitable keywords'. It's about getting inside your customer's head, understanding the specific, expensive problems they're trying to solve, and then using keywords as a tool to meet them at that exact moment of pain. Let's get into it.

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

Alright, let's be brutally honest. The whole concept of "finding profitable keywords" is a bit of a myth that sells a lot of expensive tools and courses. It leads people down a rabbit hole of staring at spreadsheets full of search volume and competition scores, looking for some undiscovered gem that'll unlock a flood of cheap customers. It almost never works.

Why? Because a keyword on its own is meaningless. It's just a string of text. Its value comes entirely from the intent of the person typing it. Someone searching for "paid ads consultant" has a completely different, and far more valuable, intent than a consultant searching for "paid ads help". One is looking to buy, the other is looking to learn. The keywords look similar, but they're worlds apart in terms of profitability.

Your problem isn't that you don't have location targeting. Your problem is that by focusing on the keywords themselves, you're missing the bigger picture: the human being on the other end of the search bar. You're treating Google Ads like a technical exercise in finding low-competition phrases, when you should be treating it as a psychological exercise in understanding and solving your customer's most pressing problems.

The goal isn't to find keywords your competitors aren't using. The goal is to understand your customer so deeply that you know exactly what they'll type into Google moments before they're ready to pay someone to make their pain go away. The fact your business is online is actually an advantage, it forces you to get this part right, instead of relying on the crutch of a geographical radius.

First, you need to understand who you're actually talking to...

Forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire made. "Online business targeting millennials" tells you nothing of value and leads to generic ads that speak to no one. To stop burning cash on Google, you must define your customer by their pain. Their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare.

Your Head of Marketing client isn't just a job title; she's a leader terrified of reporting another quarter of flat growth to the board. Your eCommerce founder isn't just a 'small business owner'; he's someone who just spent £5,000 on stock that's now sitting in his garage because his Facebook ads stopped working. Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state.

Let's map this out. Before you even open Google's Keyword Planner, you need to be able to answer these questions with absolute clarity:

• -> What is the single biggest 'nightmare scenario' your product or service prevents?
• -> What are the exact words they would use to describe this problem to a friend or colleague? (Hint: they won't use your industry jargon)
• -> What failed solutions have they already tried before they start searching for one like yours?
• -> What does the 'promised land' look like for them? What is the tangible, emotional outcome they're truly buying?

Once you've isolated that nightmare, you can start to think about the digital breadcrumbs they leave behind. What niche podcasts do they listen to? What industry newsletters do they actually open? What software tools do they already pay for? This intelligence isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your entire keyword strategy. Do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads.

Let's talk about search intent...

Once you've defined the problem, you can start mapping it to keywords. But here's another critical mistake people make: they lump all keywords together. A search for "what is content marketing" and "content marketing agency" are fundamentally different. You need to segment your keywords, and your campaigns, by the user's intent. I generally break them down into three tiers.

1. Informational Intent ("I have a problem, but I don't know what the solution is")
These are your "how to", "what is", "why does" type queries. The user is in research mode. They're problem-aware, but not solution-aware. For example, "how to get more software trials". These keywords have massive volume but very low commercial intent. People searching for this are looking for blog posts, not a sales page. Chasing these with direct response ads is a brilliant way to burn money. They have a place in a wider content marketing and SEO strategy, but for paid ads, you should generally avoid them or use them only for top-of-funnel retargeting audiences.

2. Commercial Investigation Intent ("I know solutions exist, which one is right for me?")
This is the middle of the funnel. These people know what kind of solution they need, and now they're comparing options. Keywords here look like "best software for course creators", "Mailchimp vs Convertkit", "apollo.io alternatives", "salesforce reviews". The user is actively evaluating a purchase. This traffic is much more valuable than informational traffic and should be a core part of your strategy. The competition is higher, but so is the quality of the lead. You are catching them in the decision-making process.

3. Transactional Intent ("I have decided, and I am ready to buy now")
This is the bottom of the funnel, the highest intent you can get. These searches include words like "buy", "pricing", "trial", "demo", "discount", or brand names. For example, "buy apollo.io subscription" or "clickfunnels pricing". This is the lowest-hanging fruit. The volume will be much lower, and the cost-per-click (CPC) will be much higher, but the conversion rate should be through the roof. You absolutely must be bidding on these keywords. If you're not capturing this traffic, your competitors are.

So, how do you find these keywords in practise?

This is where we move from theory to application. Instead of just making a long, messy list of keywords, I get clients to build what I call a 'Pain Matrix'. It’s a simple way to organise your keyword research around the customer's journey, not just random topics. It forces you to think systematically.

Here's how it works. Let's imagine your online business is a SaaS product that helps course creators sell more courses. We'll use the "Problem-Agitate-Solve" copywriting framework as our columns.

See what's happening here? We're not just guessing. We're starting with a real customer frustration and mapping out how that frustration evolves into a search for a solution. The 'Problem' keywords are for your blog. The 'Agitation' and 'Solution' keywords are for your Google Ads campaigns. This simple table gives you more strategic clarity than any keyword tool ever could. You now have ad groups, campaigns, and even ad copy ideas structured around real human psychology.

What does 'profitable' even mean?...

Now we can finally talk about the word 'profitable'. Most advertisers think a profitable keyword is one with a low CPC. That's dangerously simplistic. The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead go?" but "How high a Cost Per Lead can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer lies in its counterpart: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Let's do the maths. You need to know three numbers:

• -> Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month/year?
• -> Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue?
• -> Monthly/Annual Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each period?

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

Let's say you run a SaaS business. Your average customer pays you £100/month (ARPA), your gross margin is 80%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month (churn).
LTV = (£100 * 0.80) / 0.05
LTV = £80 / 0.05 = £1,600

In this example, each customer is worth £1,600 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. A healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £533 (£1,600 / 3) to acquire a single new customer.

Suddenly, that £15 CPC for a high-intent, transactional keyword doesn't seem so expensive, does it? If it takes 20 clicks to get one customer (£15 * 20 = £300 CAC), you're still well within your profitable range. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth and frees you from the tyranny of cheap clicks and low-quality leads. You stop asking "is this keyword cheap?" and start asking "does this keyword attract customers who are worth £1,600?"

Even the best keyword won't fix a broken offer...

Now we arrive at the most common failure point in all of online advertising: the offer. You could have the most perfectly targeted, highest-intent keyword in the world, but if it leads to a landing page with a weak, high-friction offer, you will get zero conversions. Your ads will fail, and you'll blame the keywords, the CPCs, or Google. But the problem wasn't the traffic; it was what you asked the traffic to do.

The "Contact Us" or "Request a Quote" button is perhaps the most arrogant Call to Action ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, who is likely comparing multiple options, has nothing better to do than fill out a form and wait for a sales pitch. It is high-friction and low-value. It instantly positions you as a commoditised vendor, not a problem solver.

Your offer’s only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. It must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing.

• -> For a SaaS business: The gold standard is a free trial (no card details) or a freemium plan. Let them use the actual product. Let them feel the transformation. The product becomes the salesperson. Some of our SaaS clients see incredible results with this; I remember one Google Ads campaign for a software client that generated over 3,500 users at just £0.96 per user.
• -> For a service business: You must bottle your expertise into an asset. This could be a free, automated audit tool that shows a prospect their top 3 SEO opportunities. It could be a short, interactive video course on a niche topic. For us, it's a free 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns. We solve a small problem for free.
• -> For an eCommerce business: The offer could be a first-time purchase discount, a free gift with an order, or a quiz that helps them find the perfect product. Something that reduces the risk and increases the perceived value of the first purchase.

If you're getting clicks from high-intent keywords but no conversions, don't immediately blame the keywords. Audit your offer. Is it genuinely valuable? Is it low-friction? Does it solve a small problem instantly? If not, fix that before you spend another pound on ads.

How to structure your Google Ads account...

Finally, let's talk about structure. How you organise your campaigns is just as important as the keywords you choose. A messy account is an unprofitable account. The goal is to maintain a high Quality Score, which lowers your CPCs, and to have tight control over your budget and messaging.

The best practise is to structure your campaigns around the user intent we discussed earlier. This allows you to allocate budget intelligently and match your ad copy and landing pages perfectly to the user's mindset.

Here’s a simplified, but highly effective, structure I'd recommend starting with:

The most important part of this structure is the aggressive use of negative keywords. For your highest-intent transactional campaign, you must filter out anyone looking for free information, tutorials, or jobs. This single tactic can dramatically improve your conversion rate by ensuring your budget is only spent on people with commercial intent. Each ad group should have its own highly specific ad copy and send traffic to a tailored landing page. Don't send everyone to your homepage. Match the message from keyword to ad to landing page.

This is the main advice I have for you:

This is obviously a lot to take in, and it's a very different approach from just plugging topics into a keyword tool. But it's the approach that works. It's how you build a scalable, predictable customer acquisition machine on Google Ads, instead of just gambling on keywords. I've broken down the main recommendations into a step-by-step plan for you below.

Executing a strategy like this requires a very different skill set than basic campaign setup. It's a blend of psychology, direct response marketing, and financial modelling. It takes time and expertise to get right, but the payoff is a truly robust and scalable advertising system.

If you'd like to discuss how we could apply this framework specifically to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation strategy session where we can take a look at your current situation and provide some concrete recommendations. Feel free to book a time that works for you.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh