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$25 google search ad budget for SaaS, what do I do?
Posted by on January 26, 2026 at 1:44 pmHey, Im a saas co founder and ppc noob, need some expert advice, we’re building a tool to tailor users resumes to match job descriptions. $2k MRR right now and we decided to burn some cash on ppc $1000 per month is max we can do as of today.
Current strategy:
Budget is very low so I figured best to go super aggresive bottom of funnel on search and create a „problem and solution aware” landing page. I set up search campain with keywords strictly about tools for resume tailoring. I saw that google didn’t care that they were exact match so every few hours I went in and added negative keywords to whatever BS google came up with.
Campain is set to us uk canada austaria
I messed around with headlines and put the price in them to deter not qualified clicks but that drove the ctr near zero so I left the headlines as just matter of fact „resume tailoring tool” etc. All AI google bullshit disabled
Current setup converts 50% of clicks to sign up, around 25% to generate their first tailored resume. Seem like decent numbers to me but the clicks are fairly expensive (around 2-3 usd each)
Current ROAS is only 0.5 ($70 LTV)
My questions:
what do you advice I do on such a low budget?
Does my strategy make sense?
Should I keep messing around with the campain or just accept the numbers as they are now on the ad side and focus on improving the product side while letting the campain run in the background?
Thanks for any recommendations
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1 Reply
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50% click to signup is solid. problem is $2-3 cpc with $70 ltv means u need 3% of clicks to become paying customers to break even. if ur signup to paid rate is under 6%, the math wont work regardless of ad tweaks.
at $25/day google cant optimize well anyway. id stop messing with the campaign daily and focus on signup to paid conversion, thats where the leverage is.
also consider if paid search is even the right channel at $1k/month for competitive saas keywords. might get more traction from content, reddit, or cold outreach.
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You’re on the right track. You really need Google to learn from the conversion data and slowly optimize based on where you’re getting the best performance. You’ll find that queries start to improve automatically and conversion rates climb.
For manual optimization, it’s likely that the US market will generate the best ROAS… but of course wait until you can see that trend clearly appear before making a change.
It’s a bit of a red flag to me that people aren’t clicking when you state the price. While those clicks would end up costing way more (because Google will penalize you for low CTR) they are more likely to convert. You might want to consider reviewing your demographics income level performance and possibly cutting the lower 50% to improve change for conversions… again let the data drive this, I’m just suggesting what you might see.
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On that budget I’d stop trying to “optimize” Google. You’ll never out-negative it. Either:
Run 1–2 ultra specific keywords only and let it trickle, or
Pause ads and use this as proof your landing page works, then push SEO, Reddit, cold outreach, or job-search communities where intent is free.
Google Search shines when you can spend enough to learn. At $25/day it just burns cash.
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I will start by saying that budget is REALLY low. Especially to target 3 entire countries. At $2 per click you’re looking at 12-13 clicks per day. At $3 you’re looking at about 8 clicks per day. That’s clicks, not conversions. At a 20% conversion rate you’d at most be looking at 1 to 2 conversions per day.
Google Ads doesn’t really get efficient until you are consistently hitting 50 conversions minimum a month. That can be hard to do in some types of accounts and yours falls into that category, especially with the very limited budget level.
I’d say this – you need to get clarity on what exactly it is that you want advertising on Google to do for you. If you find that putting the price in the ad leads to nearly zero clicks, then I would think on that. If the way you really sell the service is by talking to prospects, then you need semi decent prospects and sales person time. And that is what you want from Google Ads, people you can follow up with.
I would also not target 3 countries with that low of a budget. Honestly, if you keep going, I’d pick some areas in the US to pilot so you can get some bang for your small bucks. And I would be as specific as possible in your targeting – so go narrow (a few exact match terms) and watch the negatives.
Also make sure you don’t have any hidden settings that are wasting spend.
It is easy to get caught up on ROAS but you’re not there yet. Right now you need to focus your efforts on getting leads and conversions so that the system has something to work with and not worry about your ROAS just yet.
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Honestly you need a bigger budget. Probably is annoying to hear, but it’s the truth.
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with $25/day on search, you’re going to struggle with the high cpc keywords in that space
a few options:
1. go super long tail, “how to tailor resume for specific job” type queries instead of “resume builder”
2. consider shifting some budget to meta/tiktok where you can get cheaper reach. tools like videotok .app can help you create variations quickly
3. focus on retargeting only with google and use organic/social for top of funnel -
Before you do anything, live in GA4 and make sure you have everything set up correctly: primarily, your events and key events!
If you can make sure that everything in your site is properly tracked, then you’ll have an easier time running your ads!
Be happy to talk more about it
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I wouldn’t be bullish on ads as a channel for you.
1) You don’t have sufficient budget for algorithmic bidding
2) $70 LTV gives you very little wiggle room in terms of landing page -> sign conversion + signup -> paid conversion.
3) this sounds like a space that will be filled with users who will never pay, hard to make google ads work unless you get it to a point where it’s optimising for high-quality lower-funnel metrics like purchases/ SQLs / PQLs.
I would focus on what’s got you the MRR already and see if they can be scaled more. If not, look at organic channels. Will be slower but likely a better fit for your model.
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