First Ad Campaign: The Entrepreneur's Framework

Alright, let's talk about your first ad campaign. Most entrepreneurs I see approach this the wrong way round. They've built something they think is brilliant, they're desperate for customers, so they chuck a few hundred quid at Facebook or Google, boost a post, and hope for the best. Tbh, that's not a strategy; it's a lottery ticket, and it almost never pays out. The reason most first ad campaigns fail miserably and burn through cash isn't because the ad platform is broken, it's because the thinking behind the campaign was flawed from the very beginning.

They focus on the wrong things: vanity metrics like 'reach' and 'impressions', or obsessing over the perfect ad image. None of that matters if the core strategy is a mess. So before you even think about opening an ads manager, we need to fix the foundations. This guide isn't about which buttons to click. It's the framework I use to stop founders from wasting their money and actually build a system that can bring in customers predictably.

So why are 'Awareness' campaigns such a waste of time?

Here’s a truth that most platforms won’t shout about. When you create a campaign and set the objective to "Brand Awareness" or "Reach," you're giving the algorithm a very clear, very simple instruction: "Find me the most eyeballs for the least amount of money."

And the algorithm is incredibly good at its job. It will go out and find the people inside your targeting parameters who are the absolute cheapest to show an ad to. Who are these people? They're the ones who scroll passively, who never click, never engage, and certainly never buy anything. Their attention is cheap because no other advertiser wants it. You are literally paying Facebook to find you the worst possible audience for your product. It's the digital equivalent of setting up a stall in a library and shouting about your new nightclub.

For a startup or an entrepreneur, true brand awareness is a byproduct of success, not a cause of it. Awareness is what happens when a customer has such a great experience with your product that they tell their friends. It's what happens when you solve a real problem so effectively that people start talking. You can't manufacture that with a cheap reach campaign. Instead, you need to focus every penny on actions that lead to a sale. That means optimising your campaigns for conversions—leads, trials, purchases—from day one. This forces the algorithm to find people who actually take action, the people who are more expensive to reach precisely because they are more valuable. If you want to build a business, you need to find buyers, not viewers. It's a fundamental shift in performance marketing strategy that separates the businesses that grow from those that stagnate.

Who are you actually talking to? Hint: it's not a demographic

Forget everything you've been told about Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs). "Companies in the finance sector in London with 50-200 employees" is a completely useless starting point. It tells you nothing about their problems, their motivations, or what keeps them up at night. It leads to generic, corporate-speak ads that get ignored because they speak to absolutely no one.

To stop wasting money, you have to define your customer by their nightmare. What is the specific, urgent, expensive, or career-threatening problem that your product or service solves? That's your real ICP.

Let's make this real. Imagine you sell a legal tech SaaS product for document management.

• The demographic approach: You target "Lawyers" or "Paralegals" at "Firms with 10-50 employees". Your ad says something bland like "Streamline Your Document Workflow." It's boring, and it sounds like every other tool out there.
• The nightmare approach: You dig deeper. You realise the real nightmare isn't a messy workflow; it's the paralegal, Alex, waking up in a cold sweat because he's terrified a partner might miss a critical filing deadline buried in a mountain of paperwork, exposing the firm to a multi-million-pound malpractice suit. The nightmare is professional ruin.

Now your ad sounds completely different. It speaks directly to Alex's fear: "Worried a missed deadline is lurking in your document chaos? Stop losing sleep over version control. Our platform flags critical dates automatically, so you can be a hero, not a liability." See the difference? One is a feature description; the other is a painkiller.

Your job isn't to be a marketer; it's to become an expert in your customer's specific nightmare. Once you know it, everything else becomes easier. You'll know what to say in your ads, on your landing page, and in your sales calls. Before you spend a penny, do this work. It’s the difference between shouting into the void and having a quiet, compelling conversation with someone who is desperate for your help.

How much can you actually afford to spend?

The next question I always get is "What's a good Cost Per Lead?" And my answer is always the same: it's the wrong question. The real question you should be asking is, "How much can I afford to pay for a customer and still be very profitable?" The answer to that changes everything. It's the difference between timidly trying to get the cheapest clicks possible and confidently investing to acquire high-value customers. The key to this is understanding your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

LTV tells you the total profit you can expect to make from an average customer over the entire time they do business with you. Once you know this number, you can work backwards to figure out how much you can spend to acquire them. This isn't just an interesting metric; it's the mathematical foundation for a scalable advertising strategy. Many founders skip this step because it feels like too much effort, but it's probably the most important calculation you can do before launching any ads.

Here are the three simple inputs you need:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): How much money, on average, does a customer pay you each month?
• Gross Margin %: What percentage of that revenue is actual profit after you've paid the costs to service that customer (e.g., server costs, support staff time)? Don't include sales and marketing costs here.
• Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of your customers, on average, cancel their subscription each month?

The formula is straightforward: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's play with some numbers. Use the calculator below to see how these levers affect your LTV.

Now you have a number. In the default example, each customer is worth £10,000 in profit. A healthy business model aims for an LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio of at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to get a single new customer.

This single number frees you from the tyranny of cheap leads. If your sales team converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a paying customer, you can now afford to pay up to £333 for a single lead. Suddenly that £100 lead from LinkedIn that looked "expensive" now looks like an absolute bargain. This is the maths that allows you to scale aggressively and intelligently. Without it, you're just guessing. Knowing your numbers is fundamental to any paid ad budgeting and financial modeling.

What do I actually say in my ads?

Once you know who you’re talking to (their nightmare) and how much they’re worth (your LTV), you can craft a message they can’t ignore. Good ad copy isn't about being clever or witty; it's about being clear and empathetic. It shows the customer you understand their world and have a direct solution to their problem. Here are three simple, powerful frameworks that work for almost any business.

The single biggest mistake: Your offer

You can have the perfect audience targeting and the most compelling ad copy in the world, but if your offer sucks, your campaign will fail. And the most common, most arrogant, and least effective offer in B2B advertising is the "Request a Demo" button. Think about it from the customer's perspective. You're asking a busy, important person to give up 30 minutes of their time to sit through a sales pitch for a product they know nothing about. It's a high-friction, low-value proposition. It immediately frames you as just another vendor trying to sell them something.

Your offer's only job is to provide a moment of undeniable value. It needs to give the prospect a quick win, an "aha!" moment that makes them sell themselves on your solution. You must solve a small piece of their problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing. The specific offer will depend on your business, but the principle is the same: give value before you ask for a sale. If your offer isn't strong enough, it's one of the main reasons why paid ads fail.

Here’s what a great offer looks like:

• For SaaS Founders: This is your superpower. The gold standard is a free trial (with no credit card required) or a freemium plan. Let them use the actual product. Let them experience the transformation first-hand. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a simple upgrade. You generate Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) who are already convinced, not Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) your sales team has to chase.
• For Agencies/Consultants: You need to bottle your expertise. Don't offer a "free consultation." Offer a free, automated SEO audit that finds their top 3 keyword opportunities. Offer a free 'Ad Account Health Check' that flags the biggest areas of wasted spend. For us, it’s a free 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns. It's specific, tangible, and delivers immediate value.
• For Course Creators/Info Products: Give away your best stuff. Offer a free chapter from your book, a free 20-minute video module from your course, or a powerful template or checklist they can use immediately. This demonstrates your expertise and builds trust, making them far more likely to buy the full product.

Delete the "Request a Demo" button from your vocabulary. Replace it with an offer so valuable that your ideal customer would feel silly not to take it. This single change can completely transform your campaign performance. In fact, a powerful offer is the cornerstone of any effective go-to-market framework for a product launch.

Which platform should I use? A ridiculously simple guide

Entrepreneurs often get paralysed by choice when it comes to ad platforms. Should I be on TikTok? What about LinkedIn? Is Google better than Facebook? The reality is much simpler. For your first campaign, the choice comes down to one question: Is your ideal customer actively searching for a solution like yours right now?

The answer dictates your entire channel strategy.

1. YES, they are actively searching.
If you sell a service or product that people search for when they have an urgent need (e.g., "emergency plumber near me", "best accounting software for startups", "data recovery service"), then your choice is simple: Google Ads (Search). You're not trying to create demand; you're capturing existing demand. The goal is to appear at the very top of the results when someone raises their hand and says "I have this problem and I need it fixed now." Your ads should be direct, your keywords should be specific to buying intent (e.g., target "apollo.io alternative" not "what is sales outreach"), and your landing page should make it incredibly easy for them to get in touch or make a purchase.

2. NO, they are not actively searching.
If you sell something innovative, a new category of product, or something people don't know they need yet, then you have to create demand. You can't wait for them to search for you. This is where social and display platforms come in. Your job is to interrupt their day with a compelling message that speaks to their hidden nightmare.
-> For B2B: Your best bet is almost always LinkedIn Ads. The targeting is unmatched. You can get your ad in front of 'Chief Technology Officers' at 'SaaS companies with 50-200 employees' in the 'UK'. It's expensive, but the quality of the audience is superb. For one B2B software client, we achieved a $22 CPL on LinkedIn Ads, which, if your LTV is high enough, is incredibly profitable.
-> For B2C (and some SMB B2B): Meta (Facebook & Instagram) is the king. Its algorithm is terrifyingly good at finding people who are likely to convert based on their interests, behaviours, and online activity. It's much cheaper than LinkedIn and can work wonders for everything from eCommerce products to software trials. For example, we ran one campaign for a B2B SaaS client on Meta that brought in 4,622 registrations at just $2.38 each.

Don't overcomplicate it. Pick one of these based on that simple question. You can always expand later, but trying to be everywhere at once is a classic mistake. Master one channel first. If you're still unsure, check out this guide on how to choose the right channel and stop wasting money.

What should my first campaign actually look like?

Okay, you've done the hard work. You know your customer's nightmare, your LTV, your killer offer, and your chosen platform. Now it's time to put it all together into your first campaign. The goal here isn't to hit a home run on day one. Your first campaign has one primary purpose: to buy data and learn.

You're testing your core assumptions. Does this message actually resonate? Does this audience respond? Does this offer convert? Don't go in with a massive budget. Start small, maybe £50-£100 a day, and be prepared to analyse the results. What you learn in the first few weeks is more valuable than any initial sales. Setting the right expectations for your first campaign is vital to avoid getting discouraged.

Here is the main advice I have for you, broken down into a simple, actionable plan.

This all seems like a lot of work...

It is. And that's the point. Successful paid advertising isn't a quick hack; it's a discipline. It requires strategic thinking, a bit of maths, and a deep empathy for your customer. The simple truth is that most entrepreneurs are too busy building their product and running their business to also become expert performance marketers. That's not a failure; it's just a reality of having only 24 hours in a day.

Following this framework will put you ahead of 90% of your competitors who are still just boosting posts. But optimising campaigns, scaling budgets effectively, and navigating the constant changes of ad platforms is a full-time job. We've seen it all, from helping a medical SaaS reduce their cost per user from £100 down to just £7, to generating 5,082 software trials for another software client. That experience allows us to move faster, avoid common pitfalls, and ultimately get a better return on your investment.

If you've read this far and feel a bit overwhelmed, or if you'd just rather have an expert partner to get it right from the start, that's what we're here for. We offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy session where we can look at your business, your goals, and build a custom plan for how paid advertising can help you grow. There's no hard sell, just straightforward, honest advice based on years of experience. Feel free to book a call if you'd like to chat.