Broad Audience Ads: Stop Wasting Money (Real Guide)

The question "what's the cost of paid advertising for a broad audience?" is a bit like asking "how long is a piece of string?". Tbh, it's the wrong question to be asking. It suggests you're looking for the cheapest option, a silver bullet to get your brand out there. That thinking is a trap, and it's probably the fastest way to burn through your budget with absolutely nothing to show for it.

The real question you should be asking is, "How much can I profitably afford to spend to acquire a customer who will actually pay me?". The answer to that is a lot more complex, but it's the only one that matters. It forces you to think about value, not just cost. Forget finding the "most cost-effective platform" for a moment. Let's talk about what actually drives results and what you should realisticaly expect to pay for them. The price you pay is a direct result of your campaign objective, the countries you're targeting, the quality of your ads, and how good your offer is. Get any of those wrong, and your costs will skyrocket, no matter how 'broad' you go.

So, What's the Real Price of a Click or a Conversion?

Alright, let's get into the numbers. These are ballpark figures from my experience running hundreds of campaigns, but they should give you a realistic starting point. Everything hinges on your goal and where in the world you're targeting.

First, you have to understand that not all countries are equal in the eyes of ad platforms. We can generally split them into two buckets: developed countries (UK, US, Australia, Western Europe, etc.) where people have more disposable income but competition is fierce, and developing countries, where clicks are much cheaper but the audience might have less purchasing power and you'll encounter more low-quality traffic.

In developed countries, a single click (CPC) will often set you back somewhere between £0.50 and £1.50. In developing countries, that might drop to £0.10 - £0.50. That sounds great, right? Cheaper clicks! But a click isn't a customer. What matters is the conversion rate (the percentage of people who take the action you want after clicking).

Let's look at two common objectives:

1. Simple Signups (e.g., newsletter, free account, waitlist): For a decent landing page, you might see a conversion rate of 10-30%. Let's do the maths.
-> In a developed country, your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) could be anywhere from £1.60 (£0.50 CPC / 30% CR) to a painful £15.00 (£1.50 CPC / 10% CR).
-> In a developing country, this could be as low as £0.33 (£0.10 CPC / 30% CR) up to £5.00 (£0.50 CPC / 10% CR).

2. Sales or High-Commitment Leads (e.g., eCommerce purchase, booking a demo): This is a much bigger ask. A typical eCommerce conversion rate is around 2-5%. The numbers change dramaticaly.
-> In a developed country, your CPA for a sale could range from £10.00 (£0.50 CPC / 5% CR) to a staggering £75.00 (£1.50 CPC / 2% CR).
-> In a developing country, it might be between £2.00 (£0.10 CPC / 5% CR) and £25.00 (£0.50 CPC / 2% CR).

As you can see, the objective is everything. Chasing cheap signups in developing nations is easy. Getting profitable sales in competitive, developed markets is an entirely different beast.

Why is 'Brand Awareness' a Trap for Most Businesses?

Now, I need to address the single biggest mistake I see people make when they try to advertise to a 'broad audience'. They choose "Reach" or "Brand Awareness" as their campaign objective on platforms like Meta. It makes sense on the surface - you want to reach as many people as possible, right? Wrong. This is financial suicide.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: when you tell an algorithm to get you the most reach for the lowest price, you are giving it a very clear instruction: "Find me the absolute worst people in my audience." The algorithm does its job perfectly. It seeks out the users who are constantly online but never click, never engage, and definitly never buy anything. Why? Because their attention is worthless. No other advertiser wants them, so they are incredibly cheap to show ads to.

You are actively paying the most sophisticated advertising machine in human history to find you non-customers. You'll get a lovely report showing you reached a million people for £500, feel great about it, and have precisely zero new leads or sales. It's a vanity metric that will bankrupt you.

The best brand awareness is a customer telling their friend how your product solved their problem. That only happens from a conversion. Real awareness is a *byproduct* of effective advertising, not the goal of it. Always, always, always optimise your campaigns for a tangible business outcome – a lead, a signup, a sale, an appointment. It will be more expensive per person reached, but you'll be reaching the *right* people.

How Do I Actually Calculate What I Can Afford to Pay?

This is where we shift from thinking like a hobbyist to thinking like a professional. The question isn't "what's the cheapest lead I can get?". The real question is "what is the absolute most I can afford to spend to acquire a great customer?". The answer is found in a metric called Lifetime Value (LTV).

LTV tells you the total profit you can expect to make from a single customer over the entire course of your relationship. Once you know this, you can work backwards to figure out a Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) that keeps you profitable. It's the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent scaling.

The basic formula is pretty simple:

LTV = (Average Revenue Per Customer Per Month * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate %

Let's break that down:
-> Average Revenue Per Customer (ARPA): Simple enough, what's your average monthly income from one customer?
-> Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after the cost of goods sold? If you sell software, this might be 90%. If you sell physical products, it might be 40%.
-> Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month?

Once you have your LTV, a healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to CAC ratio. This means for every £3 a customer is worth to you, you can spend £1 acquiring them. Suddenly that £50 lead from Google Ads doesn't seem so expensive if you know the resulting customer is worth £5,000 to you.

Use the calculator below to get a feel for your own numbers. This simple exercise can completely change your perspective on ad spend.

Which Ad Platform Should I Use for a 'Broad' Audience?

Once you know what you can afford to spend, the next question is where to spend it. People ask me for the "most cost-effective platform," but again, it's not about the platform itself. It’s about the mindset of the user on that platform and how that matches your product.

Google Ads is for capturing intent. This is for people who are actively searching for a solution to a problem they already know they have. They are typing things like "accountant for small business" or "best project management software". These leads are often higher quality because they are pre-qualified by their own search query, but they can be expensive because your competitors are bidding on the same terms. For a broad audience, this means thinking about the full range of problems you solve and building campaigns around those search terms. Your goal here isn't to target a location, but to target the problem itself, no matter where the searcher is.

Meta (Facebook/Instagram) Ads is for creating demand. This is for people who are not actively looking for your solution, but who fit the profile of someone who needs it. You're interrupting their scrolling with a message that hopefully resonates with a pain point they have. For example, you wouldn't search for a new type of subscription box, but an ad for one might catch your eye. This is where most "broad" targeting happens, but it only works if your ad creative and offer are incredibly compelling. You have to stop them in their tracks and make them realise they have a problem you can solve.

LinkedIn Ads is for hyper-specific B2B targeting. It's the most expensive of the lot on a per-click basis, but its power is in its data. You can target people by job title, company size, industry, and seniority. If you sell a high-ticket B2B service or software and you know you need to reach the Head of Marketing at FTSE 250 companies, LinkedIn is where you go. Trying to reach this same audience on Meta would be almost impossible. It's not a platform for 'broad' consumer advertising, but for 'broad' B2B campaigns, it's invaluable, though you have to be careful to avoid generating loads of bad leads.

There is no single "best" platform. A good strategy often uses a mix. You might use Meta to introduce a problem to a broad audience and then use Google Search ads to capture them when they later go looking for a solution.

Okay, I'm Targeting Broadly. How Do I Avoid Wasting Money?

Running broad campaigns is like sailing in open water – it's powerful, but you can easily get lost if you don't have a compass. Here are some non-negotiable rules to follow.

1. Prioritise Country Tiers. Don't just click "Worldwide" and hope for the best. You'll get a flood of cheap clicks from countries with high bot traffic and low purchasing power. Start your campaigns by targeting a group of "Developed Countries" (e.g., UK, US, Canada, Australia, Germany, France). The clicks will be more expensive, but the quality of the lead or customer will be exponentially higher. We often exclude the 30-50 lowest-income countries by default just to filter out the noise. You can always create a seperate, low-budget campaign to test other regions later, but don't mix them.

2. Your Offer is Your Targeting. This is the most important concept. When you go broad, your ad creative and your offer have to do the heavy lifting of filtering people. A generic ad for "business consulting" will fail. A specific ad that says, "For SaaS founders struggling to get past £1M ARR: Here's our 3-step framework to double your MRR" will succeed. It calls out the exact person it's for and the specific problem it solves. The wrong people will just scroll past. The right people will feel like you're reading their minds. Your offer must be built to solve a specific audience's pain.

3. Use a Funnel Structure, Even When Broad. Don't just have one campaign targeting everyone. Structure your account logically. On Meta, for example, you should still prioritise your warmest audiences first. Create campaigns for retargeting website visitors (BoFu - Bottom of Funnel) and people who have engaged with your page (MoFu - Middle of Funnel). Then, have your broad "prospecting" campaign (ToFu - Top of Funnel). Even within ToFu, start with lookalike audiences of your best customers before you go completely broad with no targeting at all. This lets the algorithm learn from your best data sources first. As you grow, you will eventually face the challenge of scaling this ad spend without destroying your returns, which requires careful management.

What Does a Practical Strategy Look Like?

Let's tie this all together into an actionable plan. If you were to start a broad campaign tomorrow, this is the process I would recommend. It’s designed to minimise risk and focus your budget on what actually works, which is ultimately how you fix your paid ads ROI for good.

So, is it Worth It?

Targeting a broad audience can be incredibly powerful, but it’s not a shortcut. It's an advanced strategy that requires a solid foundation: you need to know your numbers, have an irresistible offer, and understand the fundamental differences between ad platforms.

Getting it right can unlock massive scale. I've seen clients go from a few leads a day to hundreds once we cracked their broad targeting strategy. One software client, for example, managed to get over 45,000 signups at under £2 each by rolling out a tested offer to broader audiences on Meta and Google. But getting it wrong means you're just throwing money into a black hole.

This is where expert help can make all the difference. An experienced agency or consultant isn't just "running ads." They're building the strategic framework, doing the maths on your LTV, helping you refine your offer, and navigating the complexities of the ad algorithms for you. It's about turning a potential cost into a predictable and profitable engine for growth.

If you've read this far and feel a bit overwhelmed, that's normal. There's a lot to it. If you'd like an expert pair of eyes on your business to see what a profitable broad advertising strategy could look like for you, consider scheduling a free, no-obligation consultation. We can walk through your numbers and goals and give you a clear, honest assessment of your opportunities.