I spent €100 on Google Ads for my design SaaS. Here is the report that explained the 0 signups ☹️
I run Folioverse, a case study mentor for UX designers. For the last 5 years I've been on the hiring side reviewing portfolios, and I mentored designers for years before that. The product asks designers the questions a hiring manager would ask, before they write the final case study.
In May I ran a small Google Ads test. 6 days, capped at about €6/day, 17 keywords like "ux portfolio" and "design portfolio examples". I designed it as a disconfirmation experiment: small budget, short window, kill criteria written down in advance.
The surface metrics looked healthy. CTR was 5.58%, above the industry benchmark. CPC was €0.81, under my forecast. 91 clicks across two campaigns.
Signups: zero. Total spend: €100.
Two reports explained what the dashboard was hiding.
First, GA4 cross-channel engagement. Paid visitors spent an average of 10 seconds on the landing page. Organic search visitors spent 2 minutes 32 seconds on the same page. Same product, same copy. The only variable was who was arriving.
Second, and this was the real lesson: the Auction Insights report. My auction competitors were Squarespace with 24% impression share, then Wix, Framer and Adobe. Google had clustered my keywords into the website builder auction. Someone searching "design portfolio examples" wants to browse other people's portfolios or build a site quickly. There is no auction for what I actually sell, because nobody types "case study mentor" into Google yet.
That reframed the whole channel question for me. Search captures demand that already exists. If your category doesn't exist in people's heads, there is nothing to capture, and every click is expensive curiosity.
So I paused paid permanently and wrote down 5 preconditions before I ever restart it. The budget and the hours moved to organic distribution instead. My blog-to-product bridge already converts visitors who stay 15x longer than paid ever did, so I'm feeding that, plus communities like this one.
Question for anyone who built in a category people don't search for yet: what actually created demand for you? Content, community, outreach, something else? I'd rather learn from your spend than repeat mine.
Ömer
Product Design Lead, building Folioverse
This is a strong read of the problem.
I’d just be careful with one thing: moving from paid search to organic does not automatically solve the demand issue if the content is still built around the wrong moment.
The real question may not be “which channel creates demand?”
It may be: what situation makes a designer suddenly care about improving the case study before a hiring manager sees it?
That is a very different entry point from “UX portfolio examples.”
Happy to put the tighter demand-creation angle in writing if useful. I think Folioverse probably needs a sharper trigger moment, not just a better channel.
That's the sharpest cut on it I've heard. You're right that it's a trigger problem more than a channel problem. I'd genuinely like to read the tighter angle, going to sit with the demand-trigger framing this weekend and would rather reply properly than off the cuff. Thanks for this.
Appreciate that.
Yes, I’d treat this as a trigger problem first. The useful question is not “where do designers search?” but “what moment makes them feel their current case study may cost them an interview?”
Send me your email and I’ll write the tighter demand-trigger angle properly instead of crowding the thread.
Appreciate it, that reframe already sharpens it for me. The "what moment makes them feel their case study could cost them an interview" cut is the part I want to sit with. [email protected] reaches me. No rush, whenever it's useful to you.
Sent you a note by email. Main thing is turning the demand-trigger framing into a usable test instead of solving it loosely in the thread.
For context, the product behind this test: https://folioverse.app
I kept links out of the main post. Happy to share the full post-mortem doc (hypotheses, kill criteria, keyword-level spend) if anyone wants the detail.