Google Ads: The exact account structure we use for B2B SaaS

The B2B SaaS Advertising Challenge: Intent Mismatch

Running Google Ads for B2B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) requires an entirely different playbook than managing campaigns for eCommerce or local service businesses. When you are selling a £50,000/year enterprise platform, the sales cycle is long, involving multiple stakeholders, technical reviews, and procurement departments. You aren't hunting for an impulse buy; you are hunting for highly specific commercial intent.

The most common reason B2B SaaS companies burn through their Google Ads budget with zero pipeline to show for it is poor account structure. If your structure is loose, Google's algorithms will inevitably spend your enterprise targeting budget on students researching academic papers, small businesses looking for free tools, or entry-level employees seeking definitions.

To capture lucrative enterprise pipeline, you need a hyper-segmented structure that ruthlessly isolates high-intent prospects and actively repels unqualified clicks. Here is the exact blueprint we deploy.

The Alpha/Beta Campaign Architecture

We rely heavily on a variation of the Alpha/Beta (or Single Keyword Ad Group - SKAG) methodology, adapted for the era of Smart Bidding. This architecture separates your proven winners from your experimental targeting.

The Alpha Campaigns: Your Profit Centers (Exact Match)

Alpha campaigns house your absolute best, highest-converting, bottom-of-funnel keywords. These are queries where the user intends to purchase software right now (e.g., [enterprise contract lifecycle management software]).

• Match Type: Exact Match ONLY.
• Budget: These campaigns receive the lion's share of your budget. They should never be constrained by budget limits.
• Bidding: Target CPA or Target ROAS (if tracking offline pipeline revenue).
• Ad Copy: Highly specific, speaking directly to enterprise pain points (security, compliance, integrations, SLA uptime).

The Beta Campaigns: The Discovery Engine (Broad/Phrase Match)

Beta campaigns are your research division. Because humans search in unpredictable ways, you can't rely solely on exact match. You need a mechanism to discover new long-tail commercial queries.

• Match Type: Phrase Match and carefully constrained Broad Match.
• Budget: Strictly capped (e.g., 20% of total budget).
• Bidding: Maximize Conversions (with a safety-net Target CPA).
• The Crucial Mechanism: Every time a Beta campaign uncovers a highly profitable search term, you manually "promote" it. You add it as an Exact Match keyword to your Alpha campaign, and simultaneously add it as a Negative Keyword to your Beta campaign. This funnels all future volume for that term into your highly-controlled Alpha environment.

Structuring by the Buyer's Journey, Not Just Features

A fatal mistake is structuring campaigns solely around your product features. Instead, you must structure your campaigns based on where the user is in their buying journey. The intent changes dramatically at each stage, and so must your offer.

1. Bottom of Funnel (BOFU): The "Ready to Buy" Stage

These users know they need software and are evaluating vendors. This is where your Alpha campaigns live.

• Keywords: Competitor alternatives ("Salesforce alternatives"), category software ("best ERP software for manufacturing"), pricing queries ("HubSpot pricing").
• The Offer: "Book a Demo," "Start a Free Trial," "Calculate ROI."
• Landing Page: Hard-hitting feature comparisons, pricing tables, and glowing enterprise testimonials.

2. Middle of Funnel (MOFU): The "Solution Seeking" Stage

These users have identified their problem and are exploring methodologies, but aren't actively shopping for a specific platform yet.

• Keywords: "How to automate employee onboarding," "best practices for inventory management."
• The Offer: Do NOT ask for a demo here. The intent is too low. Offer high-value gated content: "The 2026 Guide to Inventory Automation," or "Employee Onboarding Checklist."
• Goal: Capture the email address. Nurture them via HubSpot or Marketo until they reach BOFU intent.

The Shield: Bulletproof Negative Keyword Lists

In B2B SaaS, identifying who you DO NOT want to pay for is more important than identifying who you do. Before launching, your negative keyword lists must be exhaustive.

If you don't aggressively exclude keywords like "free," "open source," "login," "student," "jobs," and "definition," Google's broad match parameters will gladly drain your entire daily budget by 10 AM.

Maintain global negative lists applied across the entire account for absolute disqualifiers (e.g., "cheap," "b2c," "university"). Additionally, use cross-campaign negative keywords to prevent your overlapping campaigns from bidding against each other (brand vs. non-brand cannibalization).

Tracking Offline Conversions (The True North)

Finally, your structure is useless if the algorithms are optimizing for the wrong goal. If you only track "Form Submit" as a conversion, Google will find you the people most likely to fill out forms—often the lowest quality leads.

You must implement Offline Conversion Tracking (OCT). By connecting Salesforce or HubSpot to Google Ads, you feed backend pipeline data (MQL, SQL, Closed/Won Revenue) back into the ad platform. This shifts Google's machine learning away from optimizing for cheap clicks, forcing it to optimize for actual enterprise revenue.