Google Ads for SaaS: matching keywords to funnel stages

The Google Ads accounts we inherit from SaaS firms almost always have the same problem. Every keyword, regardless of intent, is sitting in a single campaign with the same bid strategy and the same landing page. The “demo” terms compete with the “what is” terms, the brand traffic subsidises the broad-match wastage and reporting tells you nothing about what the channel is actually doing.

The fix is structural, not creative. SaaS keywords behave very differently depending on where the buyer is in the funnel, and they need different campaigns, different match types, different bidding and different landing pages. Below is the structure we usually rebuild accounts to, and what each layer is meant to do.

The four keyword tiers we plan around

We split SaaS keyword universes into four tiers. The labels matter less than the discipline of separating them.

1. Brand. Your company name, your product names, common misspellings.
2. Bottom of funnel. “[product] pricing”, “[competitor] alternative”, “best [category] software for [segment]”.
3. Middle of funnel. “[category] for [use case]”, “how to [job-to-be-done]”, comparison and review terms.
4. Top of funnel. Problem-aware queries, broader category education, “what is [category]”.

Each tier needs its own campaign, its own bid strategy and, ideally, its own landing experience. The mistake is treating them as a single audience with a single conversion goal.

Brand: cheap, defensive, non-negotiable

Brand campaigns exist to defend the SERP. Even if your organic ranking is strong, competitors will bid on your name, and a £40 brand campaign that protects a £40,000 deal is the easiest budget decision in the account. We’ve made the wider case in running branded paid when SEO already ranks. We run brand on exact and phrase match, with tight ad copy that mirrors the homepage messaging and a manual or target-impression-share bid strategy.

The mistake here is letting Performance Max swallow brand traffic, which inflates ROAS reporting and hides whether non-brand spend is actually working. We script brand exclusions into PMax and keep brand in its own search campaign. We also run brand in Microsoft Ads where the audience justifies it, because the CPCs are usually a fraction of Google.

Bottom of funnel: where most of the conversion budget lives

This is the tier most SaaS accounts over-rely on without realising it. “Pricing”, “competitor alternative” and “best [category] for [segment]” terms are high intent but low volume, and competition is fierce. Click costs in mature categories can easily run £30 to £80.

We structure BoFu campaigns with exact-match keywords, conversion-action-based bidding (target CPA or maximise conversions with a CPA cap) and a landing experience that matches the query. A buyer searching “[your product] pricing” should land on your pricing page, not your homepage. A buyer searching “[competitor] alternative” should land on a comparison page, not a demo form. The landing-page work is non-trivial, and we cover the patterns in landing page CRO for paid traffic in B2B tech.

Negative keyword discipline is critical here. “Free”, “tutorial”, “training” and similar modifiers will burn the budget if you let them. Our negative keyword strategy for B2B tech advertisers goes through the lists we build by default.

Middle of funnel: where the patient money goes

Middle-of-funnel queries are where most SaaS firms either underspend or overspend, depending on temperament. “How to [job-to-be-done]”, “[category] vs [category]” and review-style queries do not convert quickly, but they capture buyers earlier in the cycle and do real work feeding remarketing pools.

We typically run MoFu in its own campaign with phrase match and broad match (with smart bidding and a strict target CPA), tied to content offers rather than demo requests. A buyer searching “ITSM vs service desk” is not ready to book a call. They are ready to read a comparison or download a buyer’s guide. The conversion goal we set in Google Ads is the content download, with a secondary “engaged session” signal feeding the algorithm.

Bid strategy matters here. Target CPA assumes Google has enough conversion data to optimise against. If your account does fewer than 30 to 50 conversions per month per campaign, smart bidding starves and you should run manual or maximise-clicks until volume catches up.

Top of funnel: handle with care

Top-of-funnel search is the riskiest spend in any SaaS Google Ads account. Broad-match queries like “what is [category]” or “[problem] software” have huge volume and low conversion intent, and Google’s broad match has historically been generous in interpreting them. Without tight controls, ToFu spend evaporates into irrelevant clicks.

When we run ToFu search, it is usually with three guardrails: broad match restricted to a small audience signal layer (in-market segments, customer match lists), maximised-conversion-value bidding tied to a content goal, and a hard daily cap. We also pair search with YouTube and Demand Gen campaigns at this stage rather than relying on text alone. The point is to fill the awareness pool that later-stage campaigns harvest.

If your account does not yet have a working remarketing audience, ToFu spend on Google is mostly waste. Build the audience first, then turn the tap on.

Match types and the broad-match question

Google has been pushing broad match hard since 2022, and in some accounts it works. In SaaS, our experience is more cautious. Broad match in a category with ambiguous language (“ERP”, “CRM”, “platform”, “automation”) will pull queries you do not want.

Our default rule of thumb:

• Brand: exact and phrase
• BoFu: exact, with phrase as a controlled expansion layer
• MoFu: phrase, broad with smart bidding and audience signals
• ToFu: broad, only when audience signals and conversion data are mature

The search terms report should be reviewed weekly during the first three months of a rebuild. Broad match without that discipline is how budgets disappear.

Conversion tracking that reflects sales reality

Google’s bid strategies are only as good as the conversion data feeding them. SaaS accounts often optimise against form fills, but a form fill is a long way from revenue. The accounts that perform feed back further-down-funnel signals: SQLs, opportunities, even closed-won, via offline conversion imports from HubSpot or Salesforce.

We usually configure value-based bidding once the integration is in place, weighting an SQL at five times a raw lead and a closed-won at fifty. The algorithm then optimises towards revenue rather than form fills. The tracking work is detailed in our conversion tracking guide and the broader attribution question in attribution models for tech companies.

What this looks like in practice

A reasonable starting structure for a £20,000 monthly SaaS Google Ads programme:

These are starting points, not rules. The split changes once you have data, particularly when offline conversions start showing which keyword tier is actually producing revenue rather than which one is producing the cheapest form fills. For service businesses, the geo and locality dimension changes the maths, which we cover in Google Ads for MSPs and geo targeting.

If you’re rebuilding a paid programme that’s drifted off-strategy, we’re happy to take a look. You can also read more about how we run search programmes on our paid media service page.