The Complete Guide to Building a Repeatable Ad Strategy

The feeling of pumping money into a marketing machine and getting nothing back is one of the worst for any business owner. You're told to be on social media, to run ads, to do SEO, but without a clear, repeatable strategy, it all just feels like throwing cash into a bonfire. You’re right to be frustrated. Most of the advice out there is rubbish. It focuses on tactics—the "what"—without ever addressing the strategy—the "why" and "who".

The problem isn't that you're using the wrong ad platform or that your ad copy needs another emoji. The problem is almost always deeper. It's a failure in one of three areas: you're talking to the wrong person, you're saying the wrong thing, or you're asking for the wrong thing. Fix these, and you stop wasting money. You build a machine that reliably brings in customers. Here's how you do it.

Why are my ads not working? You're targeting the wrong people.

Forget the bland, demographic-based profile your last marketing meeting came up with. "UK-based companies in the tech sector with 50-200 employees" tells you absolutely nothing of value. It's a lazy shortcut that leads to generic ads that speak to no one and are ignored by everyone. This is ground zero for wasted ad spend. To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their pain. Their nightmare, to be precise.

You need to become an obsessive expert in their specific, urgent, expensive problem. Your ideal customer isn't just a job title; she's a person staring at a problem that's costing her time, money, or sanity. She might be a Head of Sales terrified of missing quota for the second quarter in a row because her team's leads have dried up. For a legal tech SaaS, the nightmare isn't 'needing better document management'; it's 'a junior partner missing a critical filing deadline and exposing the firm to a malpractice suit.' Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a demographic; it's a problem state. Once you see the world this way, your entire approach changes.

So, how do you find this nightmare? You become a digital anthropologist. Find the niche podcasts they listen to on their commute, like 'The Diary of a CEO' or 'Acquired'. Find the industry newsletters they actually read, like 'Stratechery'. Figure out what software they already pay for, like HubSpot, Salesforce, or Xero. Are they members of the 'SaaS Growth Hacks' Facebook group? Do they follow people like Jason Lemkin or Sam Parr on Twitter? This intelligence isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your entire targeting and messaging strategy. Most businesses skip this work, which is why most businesses waste their ad spend. Do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads.

How do I create a message they can't ignore?

Once you know their specific nightmare, you can craft a message that feels like you're reading their mind. This isn’t about being clever; it’s about being clear. You stop selling your service and start selling a solution to their problem. Your ad needs to speak directly to the pain you've identified.

For a high-touch service business, you use the classic Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) framework. You don't sell "fractional CFO services"; you sell a good night's sleep. Your ad copy should sound something like this: "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark? Lying awake wondering if you can make payroll next month while your competitors are confidently raising their next round? Get an expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn financial uncertainty into predictable, calm growth."

For a B2B SaaS product, you use the Before-After-Bridge (BAB) framework. You don't sell a "FinOps platform"; you sell the feeling of total control and relief. Your ad could say: "Your AWS bill just landed. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out. Now, imagine opening your cloud bill and actually smiling. You see where every single pound is going, and waste is automatically flagged and eliminated. Our platform is the bridge that gets you from chaos to clarity. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today." We've seen this kind of direct messaging get B2B software companies thousands of trials, like one campaign that drove 4,622 registrations at just $2.38 each.

This even works for high-ticket physical products. Don't just list the feature; state its direct consequence for the buyer. "Our new mass spectrometer has a 0.001% margin of error. So what? So your lab can publish groundbreaking results with unshakeable confidence, securing more funding and attracting top talent that other labs can only dream of." You’re not selling a machine; you’re selling scientific prestige and career advancement.

Why is my offer killing my campaign?

Now we get to the most common point of failure in all of B2B advertising: the offer. The "Request a Demo" button is probably the most arrogant Call to Action in marketing. It presumes your prospect, a busy, stressed-out decision maker, has nothing better to do than book a 45-minute slot in their diary to be sold to. It's high-friction, it offers zero immediate value, and it instantly positions you as just another commodity vendor begging for their time. It’s a huge reason why so many B2B marketing strategies simply don't work.

Your offer has one job: to deliver a moment of undeniable value. An "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution before they ever speak to a salesperson. You must solve a small, real problem for them, for free, to earn the right to solve their bigger problems for money.

-> For SaaS founders, this is your unfair advantage. The gold standard is a free trial (with no card details needed) or a generous freemium plan. Let them use the actual product. Let them feel the transformation for themselves. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You aren't generating "Marketing Qualified Leads" (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you are creating "Product Qualified Leads" (PQLs) who are already convinced.

-> If you're a service business, you are not exempt. You must bottle your expertise into a tool, a piece of content, or an asset that provides instant value. For a marketing agency, this could be a free, automated SEO audit that shows them their top 3 keyword opportunities. For a data analytics consultancy, a free 'Data Health Check' that flags the biggest issues in their database. For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, it's a free 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns and give them a clear plan. This focus on a high-value offer is the single biggest lever you can pull.

How much can I actually afford to spend to get a lead?

This is where most businesses go wrong. They chase the lowest possible Cost Per Lead (CPL) without any context, and end up with rubbish leads that never convert. The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer lies in calculating your Lifetime Value (LTV).

It's simpler than it sounds. You just need three numbers:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month? Let's say it's £500.
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? Let's say it's 80%.
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month? Let's say it's 4% (meaning the average customer stays for 25 months).

Now, the calculation:

In this example, each new customer is worth £10,000 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. This number changes everything. A healthy business aims for at least a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single £10,000 customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a customer, you can afford to pay up to £333 per qualified lead.

Suddenly, that £250 lead from a CTO on LinkedIn doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the math that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth and is the foundation for getting a true return on your ad spend. It frees you from the tyranny of cheap, useless leads.

How should I structure my campaigns for repeatable results?

Now that you have the strategy—the right audience, the right message, the right offer, and the right budget—you can finally build your repeatable system. For most businesses, this means a combination of "intent-based" channels like Google Ads and "discovery-based" channels like Meta (Facebook/Instagram) or LinkedIn.

On Google Ads, you target keywords that signal commercial intent. You want people who are actively looking for a solution. For our fictional FinOps SaaS, you'd target terms like "aws cost optimisation tool" or "finops platform pricing", not "what is cloud computing". You are catching people at the exact moment of their need.

On Meta or LinkedIn, the game is different. You need to interrupt them. But because you've done the ICP work, you know *who* to interrupt and *what* to say. The biggest mistake people make here is using the wrong campaign objective. When you choose "Brand Awareness" or "Reach," you are literally paying the algorithm to find the people in your audience who are cheapest to show ads to—the ones least likely to ever click, engage, or buy. It's a complete waste of money for any business that needs to generate leads. You must always use a conversion objective, like Leads, Sales, or Appointments. You're telling the platform "go find me people who do this thing," and its powerful machine learning will do exactly that.

To make this repeatable, you need to structure your account properly. This is how I'd prioritise audiences on a platform like Meta for any business, from eCommerce to B2B SaaS. This is the core of building a repeatable customer acquisition funnel.

You start with a small budget focused on BoFu and MoFu. As you get conversions, you build up your data. Once you have at least 100 purchases or high-quality leads, you can create powerful Lookalike audiences and start scaling your spend at the Top of Funnel. For one SaaS client, focusing on the right part of the funnel was how we took their Cost Per Acquisition from a painful £100 down to just £7. It's a methodical process, not a lottery. It takes patience and a structured approach, but this is how you build a system that you can scale predictably. If you find your campaigns are still struggling, it's often because of a breakdown somewhere in this strategic process, which is something we cover in our guide to fixing failing ad campaigns.

So, what's my repeatable plan?

It's easy to get lost in the weeds of audience testing and ad copy. But a repeatable lead generation strategy comes down to getting the foundations right. It’s not about finding a magic "hack"; it's about building a logical, customer-centric system. We've seen this approach work for all sorts of businesses, from driving 1000% ROAS for a subscription box to generating B2B leads for high-ticket industrial products.

I've detailed the main recommendations for you below in a step-by-step plan. This is the exact process we use for our clients.

Building this kind of repeatable system isn't easy, and it takes time. It requires a strategic mindset, not just tactical execution. The reason many businesses hire an expert or an agency is not just to save time on setting up campaigns. It's to get access to the experience of having built and scaled these systems dozens of times before, to avoid the costly mistakes, and to get to a profitable result faster.

If you've read this far and feel like you've got a clearer picture but would value an expert eye on your specific situation, we offer a free, no-obligation strategy consultation to help businesses like yours build a predictable growth engine.