TLDR;
- Stop searching for a 'local' consultant. For digital products, the best talent is rarely next door. Focus on proven expertise and case studies, not geography.
- Most ads fail because of a weak offer, not bad targeting. Before you spend a penny, make sure you're solving a real, urgent, and expensive problem for a specific audience.
- Don't fall for vanity metrics like 'reach' or 'clicks'. The only thing that matters is Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). You need to know your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) to understand what you can truly afford to pay for a new customer. Use our interactive LTV calculator in this guide to figure it out.
- Vetting an expert is about scrutinising their track record. Look for detailed case studies that show *how* they achieved results for businesses similar to yours. If they promise the world on an intro call, run a mile.
- The structure of your ad account matters. A clear funnel strategy, separating cold audiences from warm retargeting, is non-negotiable for scaling profitably.
I see this question a lot. You're based in the UK, you've got a digital product – maybe a course, a SaaS tool, or an exclusive community – and you're trying to find someone to run your Meta ads. The problem is, you're drowning in a sea of 'gurus' and agencies all promising the moon. They flash fancy dashboards and talk about 'brand awareness' but when you ask for hard numbers on ROI, things get a bit vague. It's a proper minefield.
Let's get one thing straight right away. Searching for "the best Meta ads consultant in the UK" is asking the wrong question. It's like asking "what's the best car?". Best for what? A family of five in the Scottish Highlands or a city trader in Canary Wharf? The word 'best' is useless without context. And the phrase 'in the UK' is even worse – it's a vanity constraint that's probably stopping you from finding the right person for the job.
The real question you should be asking is: "Who has a proven, repeatable process for profitably scaling digital products like mine using paid ads, and can they prove it with real-world case studies?" That's it. That's the whole game. This guide will walk you through how to find that person, and more importantly, how to spot the ones who are all talk.
So, how do I actually tell the experts from the cowboys?
This is where you need to put your business owner hat on and do some proper due diligence. Forget their slick website or their LinkedIn bio. You need to dig into the evidence. And if they don't have any, that's your answer right there.
Scrutinise Their Case Studies
This is number one, non-negotiable. And I don't mean a glossy PDF with a logo and a single impressive number. That's marketing fluff. I mean a detailed breakdown of the problem, the strategy they implemented, and the results. What was the starting point? What was the ROAS? What was the cost per acquisition (CPA)?
For instance, we've had clients come to us with what they thought was an unsolvable problem. I remember one medical job matching SaaS platform, they were paying a crippling £100 for every new user. After we restructured their campaigns on Meta and Google, we got that down to just £7. That's the kind of specific, tangible result you're looking for. Another time, we generated over $115,000 in revenue for a course creator in just six weeks. These aren't just numbers, they're stories of a clear strategy paying off.
Look for experience in your niche. If you're selling a B2B SaaS product, do they have case studies showing they can get leads for a sensible price on platforms like LinkedIn or Meta? We've managed campaigns that brought in B2B leads for decision-makers at $22 a pop. If they only show case studies for local plumbers or ecommerce fashion brands, they probably don't understand the long sales cycles and nuanced targeting your digital product needs.
The Initial Consultation Call
A good consultant will offer some kind of free initial chat or strategy review. This isn't just for them to sell to you; it's your chance to interview them. And you should treat it like an interview for a key role in your company, because that's what it is.
Here are some red flags to watch for:
-> Guarantees: Anyone who guarantees results in paid advertising is either lying or naive. There are too many variables. A real expert talks in terms of probabilities, benchmarks, and a clear testing methodology. They'll tell you what's *likely*, not what's *certain*.
-> Vague Strategy: If you ask "How would you approach my account?" and they say "Oh, we'll test some audiences and run some ads," that's a massive red flag. A pro will ask you about your offer, your customer lifetime value, your sales process, and then suggest a specific starting point. They might say, "Given you have a strong customer list, we'd start with lookalike audiences based on your highest value purchasers, while simultaneously running a retargeting campaign for cart abandoners." That's a real answer.
-> No Questions for You: If they spend the whole call talking about themselves and don't grill you on your business metrics, they're not a strategist. They're a salesperson. The best consultants are obsessed with understanding your business model before they even think about an ad campaign.
Tbh, if someone has seen our detailed case studies, had a free strategy call where we've picked apart their account and given them actionable advice, and *then* asks to speak to our current clients for a reference, it's a bit of a red flag for us. It signals a fundamental lack of trust that probably won't make for a good partnership. The proof should be in the work and the expertise they demonstrate from the get-go. If you've found a consultant who can back up their claims, you might be better served by one of the many resources on how to find an ad expert that drives ROI instead of looking for references.
Before you spend a pound: Is your business even ready for ads?
Here's a hard truth: most failed ad campaigns aren't the fault of the ads expert. They're the fault of a weak business foundation. Pouring ad spend into a business with a flawed offer or a misunderstanding of its customers is like trying to fill a leaky bucket. You can pour faster, but it's still going to be empty. Before you even think about hiring someone, you need to have these two things nailed down.
1. Your Customer's Nightmare, Not Their Demographic
Forget the rubbish you were taught about Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs). "UK-based female entrepreneurs aged 30-45" is utterly useless. It tells you nothing. It leads to generic, beige ads that get ignored.
You need to define your customer by their pain. Their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare. Your customer isn't a job title; they're in a problem state. For a SaaS tool that helps with accounting, the nightmare isn't 'needing to do bookkeeping'. It's the gut-wrenching fear of a looming VAT deadline with a shoebox full of crumpled receipts. For a course that teaches public speaking, the nightmare isn't 'wanting to be a better speaker'. It's being asked to present at the company all-hands meeting next month and breaking into a cold sweat at the very thought of it.
Once you understand that nightmare, you can find them. Where do they hang out online to solve that problem? What podcasts do they listen to? Which industry newsletters do they *actually* read? Are they in specific Facebook groups? This intelligence is the bedrock of any successful targeting strategy. Without it, you're just guessing.
2. Your Offer (Hint: "Request a Demo" isn't one)
This is the single biggest point of failure I see. Your offer is the reason your ads are failing. The "Request a Demo" button is possibly the most arrogant, high-friction Call to Action in marketing. It presumes your prospect, a busy decision-maker, has nothing better to do than schedule a meeting to be sold to. It's an instant turn-off.
Your offer's only job is to provide a moment of undeniable value. An "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell *themselves* on your solution. If you sell software, the gold standard is a free trial or a freemium plan. No credit card. Let them use the product and feel the transformation. The product becomes the salesperson. If you sell a course or a high-ticket service, you need to bottle your expertise into something valuable they can have for free. A free, automated website audit. A calculator that reveals a costly mistake they're making. A 15-minute video training that solves one small, specific problem for them. You have to give value to get value.
The goal is to solve a small part of their nightmare for free, to earn the right to solve the whole thing for them. If your ads just lead to a page that asks for a meeting, you can pretty much guarantee they are not converting for a reason.
What's the real price of a customer? And why you're probably thinking about it all wrong.
Founders often get obsessed with a low Cost Per Lead (CPL). They see a £5 lead and think it's a win. But what if that £5 lead never, ever converts? And a £150 lead turns into a £10,000 customer? The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a fantastic customer?"
The answer is in your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). This is the total profit you'll make from an average customer over the entire time they stay with you. Once you know this, everything else clicks into place. Here’s the simple maths:
- Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month?
- Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue?
- Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?
The formula is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
Let’s imagine you run a SaaS business charging £100/month. Your gross margin is 85%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month.
LTV = (£100 * 0.85) / 0.05
LTV = £85 / 0.05 = £1,700
Each customer is worth £1,700 in gross margin to your business. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £566 (£1,700 / 3) to acquire a single customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads, you can afford to pay up to £56.60 per lead. Suddenly, that £30 lead from Meta doesn't look so bad, does it?
This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. Use the calculator below to figure out your own numbers.
So, how should my ad campaigns actually be structured?
Once you've got your foundations sorted – a deep understanding of your customer's pain, a no-brainer offer, and your LTV numbers – you can start thinking about the ads themselves. And this is another area where amateurs get it wrong. They throw a bunch of random audiences into one campaign and hope for the best. A professional structures their account like a proper sales funnel.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about so-called 'awareness' campaigns. When you tell Meta your objective is "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you're giving it one command: "Find me the cheapest eyeballs possible." The algorithm does exactly that. It finds users who are least likely to click, engage, or buy, because their attention is cheap. You are literally paying to reach the worst possible audience. The best awareness is a customer who buys your product and loves it. That only comes from optimising for conversions – sales, leads, trials.
With that in mind, every ad account should have campaigns that target different stages of the customer journey. We usually call this ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu (Top, Middle, and Bottom of Funnel).
Here's how I would prioritise audiences to test within this structure. You start broad and get more specific as you gather data.
TOFU Audiences (Prospecting):
- Detailed Targeting: This is your starting point. Use the 'customer nightmare' work you did earlier to pick hyper-relevant interests, behaviours, and job titles. If you sell project management software for construction firms in the UK, target interests like 'Procore', 'Autodesk', and job titles like 'Project Manager', layered with an interest in 'Construction'. Don't just target 'Project Management'. It's too broad.
- Lookalike Audiences: Once you have enough data (at least 100-1000 conversions), this is where the magic happens. You can ask Meta to find people who 'look like' your best customers. The priority here is crucial:
- Lookalike of highest value previous customers
- Lookalike of all previous customers
- Lookalike of people who initiated checkout
- Lookalike of website visitors
MOFU/BOFU Audiences (Retargeting):
This is your lowest hanging fruit. These people already know who you are. Don't let them forget you. You need to combine these audiences if your budget is small, but ideally, you'd segment them.
- Hot (BOFU): People who added to cart, initiated checkout, or visited your pricing page in the last 7-14 days. These ads should be direct, maybe with an offer or reminder to complete their purchase.
- Warm (MOFU): People who visited your website, watched 50% of a video ad, or engaged with your social profiles in the last 30-90 days. These ads can be more about building trust, showing testimonials, or overcoming common objections.
A good ads expert will build this structure from day one. They'll allocate budget logically, starting with prospecting (ToFu) and retargeting (BoFu), and systematically test audiences to find winners. They wont just chuck everything at the wall to see what sticks.
So what kind of results can I actually expect in the UK?
This is the million-dollar question, or rather, the million-pound question. And the honest answer is: it depends. Anyone who gives you a definite number without knowing your business inside and out is guessing. However, based on the campaigns we've run for dozens of UK and international clients, we can talk about realistic benchmarks.
The cost per result is driven by your industry, your offer, your targeting, your creative, and the competitiveness of the market. For digital products in a developed market like the UK, here are some very rough ballpark figures you might expect.
| Objective | Metric | Realistic Low End | Realistic High End | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leads / Signups (e.g. for a webinar or free trial) | Cost Per Lead (CPL) | £1.50 | £15.00 | Highly dependant on the 'ask'. A simple email signup will be cheaper than a multi-field form for a B2B trial. |
| eCommerce / Course Sales (Lower Ticket <£100) | Cost Per Purchase (CPP) | £10.00 | £75.00 | Focus should be on ROAS, not CPP. A high CPP can be fine if the Average Order Value (AOV) is high. |
| eCommerce / Course Sales (Higher Ticket >£100) | Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) | 2x (200%) | 10x (1000%) | We've seen over 1000% ROAS for subscription products and 600-700% for apparel and other eCom. For digital products, a 3-4x ROAS is often a very healthy starting point. |
| B2B Software Leads (via landing page) | Cost Per Lead (CPL) | £40.00 | £250.00+ | The quality of the lead is everything here. A cheap lead that doesn't fit your ICP is worthless. This is where understanding your LTV is so important. |
These numbers can be scary, especially at the higher end. But remember your LTV calculation. If a B2B software lead costs you £200, but your LTV is £10,000 and you close 1 in 20 leads, your CAC is £4,000. That's a 2.5x return - not amazing, but potentially profitable. The goal of a good ads expert is to push those numbers in the right direction. A good consultant will help you to improve your Meta Ads ROAS over time through constant testing and optimisation.
The key is to start with a realistic test budget (£1k-£2k per month is a reasonable minimum for a digital product) and a clear success metric. Your goal in the first month isn't necessarily to be wildly profitable; it's to gather data, prove the concept, and find a winning combination of audience and creative that can be scaled.
Your Final Action Plan
Hiring a Meta ads consultant is a big step. Get it right, and it can transform your business. Get it wrong, and it can be a very expensive mistake. The difference lies in doing your homework and approaching it as a strategic business decision, not just outsourcing a task.
This is the main advice I have for you:
| Area of Focus | Your Action | Why It's Critical |
|---|---|---|
| Your Foundations | Define your customer's 'nightmare'. Nail your irresistible, low-friction offer. Calculate your LTV. | Without this, even the best ads expert in the world will fail. You're setting them up for success. |
| Vetting the Expert | Demand detailed case studies relevant to digital products. Grill them on strategy, not just tactics. Watch for red flags like guarantees. | You are hiring a strategic partner, not a button pusher. Their track record is the only predictor of future success. |
| Geography | Forget "near me" or "in London". Focus 100% on expertise and results, wherever they are based. | The best talent for your specific need is almost certainly not in your postcode. Limiting your search geographically is a huge mistake. Many businesses struggle with finding a Meta Ads expert when they limit their search locally. |
| The Strategy | Insist on a clear funnel-based campaign structure (ToFu/MoFu/BoFu). Prioritise conversion objectives over vanity metrics like 'reach'. | This ensures your budget is being spent intelligently to move customers towards a purchase, not just showing ads to people who will never buy. |
| Metrics & ROI | Agree on one Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that matters – usually ROAS or an acceptable CPA based on your LTV. | This aligns you and your consultant on the same goal. It moves the conversation from "how many clicks did we get?" to "how much profit did we make?". |
So, why bother with an expert at all?
After reading all this, you might be thinking you can just do it yourself. And maybe you can. But running paid ads effectively isn't just about knowing which buttons to click in Ads Manager. It's about understanding the deep interplay between market psychology, financial modelling, copywriting, data analysis, and creative strategy.
A true expert doesn't just manage your ads; they act as a growth partner. They'll challenge your assumptions about your offer, force you to get clear on your numbers, and bring a wealth of experience from seeing what's worked (and what hasn't) across dozens of other accounts. They save you from making the costly mistakes most businesses make when they start out, and they accelerate your path to profitability.
Finding the right person is tough, but it's one of the highest-leverage decisions you can make. If you're a UK founder with a digital product and you're serious about scaling, but feel like you're stuck, it might be time for a chat. We offer a free, no-obligation strategy session where we'll look at your business, your goals, and give you an honest assessment of what we think is possible with paid ads. No hard sell, just straightforward advice.
