Finding a decent advertising consultant in Brighton can feel like looking for a seagull that doesn't want your chips. You're surrounded by them, but finding one that's actually any good for your specific business is another matter entirely. The problem isn't a lack of agencies or freelancers, Brighton is swimming in them. The problem is that most are generalists, selling a bit of everything and mastering none of it. You don't need a 'growth hacker' who posts on Instagram and writes the odd blog; you need a paid advertising specialist who understands how to turn cold traffic into paying customers, profitably.
Most businesses in your position make the same mistake. They look for a local 'marketing agency' and end up with someone who builds them a prettier website or gets them a few more likes on Facebook. That's not growth, that's a hobby. Real growth comes from a system, a predictable way of acquiring customers that you can scale. And that almost always starts with paid ads, because it's the fastest way to get data and see what works.
This guide is going to walk you through how to find someone who can actually do that. Not someone who talks about 'brand awareness' and 'engagement', but someone who talks about Cost Per Acquisition, Lifetime Value, and Return On Ad Spend. It's about cutting through the noise in the North Laine and finding a partner who can genuinely move the needle for your business.
So, why is your search so frustrating?
Let's be brutally honest. The Brighton digital scene, for all its creativity and energy, is full of people who are good at making things look nice but not so good at making them sell. You've got a constant stream of fresh-faced marketing grads from the universities, setting up as freelancers. You've got countless 'full-service' agencies who claim they can do SEO, web design, PR, social media, and paid ads. It's impossible to be an expert in all those things. Impossible.
A jack-of-all-trades is a master of none, and in paid advertising, a lack of mastery costs you real money, every single day. You end up with campaigns that burn through your budget with nothing to show for it. You need a specialist. Someone who lives and breathes ad platforms like Google, Meta, or LinkedIn. Someone whose first question isn't "what's your brand colour?" but "what's your customer's most urgent pain point?".
The issue is that you're probably searching for a 'growth consultant'. That term is too vague. It attracts the generalists. What you should be looking for is a 'paid acquisition specialist', a 'PPC consultant', or a 'paid social expert'. The title matters because it filters out the people who can't do the one thing you need most: build a machine that brings in new customers.
Your business doesnt need more 'brand awareness'. Brand awareness is a byproduct of getting results for customers. The best kind of awareness is when a customer tells their friend how great you are. You can't get there if you cant acquire the customer in the first place.
What are you really buying when you hire an expert?
Here's a hard truth: anyone who promises you results is lying. In paid advertising, there are no guarantees. There are too many variables – your offer, your website, your pricing, the competition, the algorithm on any given day. If a consultant in Brighton or anywhere else tells you "I guarantee a 5x ROAS," you should walk away. It's a massive red flag that shows they either dont know what they're doing or they're just desperate for your business.
So what are you buying? You're not buying results. You're buying expertise. You're buying a proven process. You're buying speed. You're paying to avoid the thousands of pounds of costly mistakes you would definately make trying to figure it all out yourself. You're leveraging their experience from running hundreds of campaigns so you can get to profitability faster.
A good consultant's value is in their ability to diagnose your situation quickly and accurately. They've seen your problems before in other accounts. They know what levers to pull. They can look at your business and say, "Right, your offer is the problem," or "Your landing page isn't converting," or "Your targeting is all wrong for a B2B SaaS company."
This is why the initial conversations are so important. Don't just listen to their sales pitch. Ask them for advice. A genuine expert can't help but give it. We offer a free initial consultation where we'll literally open up a client's ad account and strategy and give them actionable advice on the spot. It's the best way to demonstrate expertise. If they're cagey, or just talk in vague marketing-speak, they probably don't have the depth of knowledge you need. You're looking for someone who challenges your assumptions, not just agrees with everything you say.
"Show me your work" - The power of relevant case studies
This is where the tyre meets the road. Forget the slick proposals and the nice offices. The single most important asset any consultant has is their portfolio of past results. But just having case studies isn't enough. They have to be relevant.
If you're a B2B software company in Brighton and a consultant shows you a case study about how they increased footfall for a local restaurant, it's completly useless to you. The skills, strategies, and platforms are totally different. You need to see evidence that they have solved a similar problem to yours, for a similar type of business.
Look for specificity. A good case study isn't just "we increased their revenue." It's "We took this medical job matching SaaS client's Cost Per User Acquisition from £100 down to £7 using a combination of Meta and Google Ads." Or "We generated 5,082 software trials at a $7 cost per trial for this B2B client on Meta Ads." These are real, tangible results from campaigns we've run. They show an understanding of the metrics that matter.
Here's what to look for:
-> Niche Alignment: Have they worked in your industry before? eCommerce, SaaS, B2C services, high-ticket courses? Each one is a different beast. We once generated $115k in revenue in just six weeks for a course creator, but the strategy we used there would be a disaster for a B2B industrial products company.
-> Metric Clarity: Do they talk about vanity metrics (likes, reach, impressions) or business metrics (Cost Per Lead, ROAS, Customer Lifetime Value)? We once got a luxury brand 10 million views, which was the goal for that launch campaign. But for most businesses, views don't pay the bills.
-> Real Numbers: Are there actual numbers in their case studies? Pounds, dollars, percentages? A case study without numbers is just a story. Look for pounds (£) if you're a UK business. It shows they understand the local market economics.
-> Platform Specificity: Do they say how they got the results? Which ad platforms? I remember one campaign where we got a $22 Cost Per Lead for B2B decision makers, which sounds great. But the key detail is that we did it on LinkedIn Ads, because that's where the target audience was. The platform choice is a strategic one.
If a consultant can't show you at least one or two case studies that feel closely related to your business, they are probably not the right fit. They'll be learning on your dime, and that's a very expensive way to learn.
How to identify real expertise (and avoid the fakes)
Okay, so you've found a consultant with some promising case studies. The next step is to get them on a call and see if they really know their stuff. This is your chance to interview them, and you need to ask the right questions. Forget "how much do you charge?" for a moment. First, establish if they're even worth paying.
A true expert will have strong, sometimes contrarian, opinions based on experience. A charlatan will give you generic, textbook answers. Here's how to tell the difference. Ask them these questions:
1. "How would you define my ideal customer?"
If they start talking about age, gender, and location, it's a bad sign. That's amateur hour. A real pro will ask about pain points. They'll talk about the 'nightmare scenario' your customer is trying to avoid. As I always say, your ICP isn't a demographic; it's a problem state. For a SaaS business, the nightmare isn't 'needing software', it's 'my best engineer is about to quit because our workflow is a mess'. An expert gets this. They'll want to understand the psychographics, the urgent problems, the expensive frustrations. This understanding is the foundation of all good advertising.
2. "What's your opinion on running 'brand awareness' campaigns for a business my size?"
This is a great trap question. The textbook answer is that awareness is important. The expert answer is that for most small to medium businesses, direct 'awareness' or 'reach' campaigns on platforms like Meta are a catastrophic waste of money. You are literally paying the algorithm to find the people least likely to ever buy from you, because their attention is cheap. An expert knows that the best awareness comes from conversion. They will tell you to focus every penny on campaigns optimised for leads, trials, or sales.
3. "What kind of offer should we lead with on our ads?"
Another test. If they say "a link to your homepage" or "your contact us form", they lack imagination. The expert knows that the offer is everything. They will talk about de-risking the first step for the customer. They might suggest a free trial, a freemium plan, a free automated audit, a valuable downloadable guide, or a short, high-value strategy call. They'll tell you to delete the "Request a Demo" button, because it's arrogant and high-friction. The offer's only job is to provide an 'aha!' moment of value for free, to earn the right to ask for the sale.
4. "How do you think about calculating what we can afford to spend to acquire a customer?"
If they can't answer this, run. This is fundamental. A pro will immediately start talking about Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). They should be able to walk you through a basic calculation right there on the call.
Example LTV Calculation:
They should ask you for three numbers:
-> Average Revenue Per Customer (per month): Let's say £300
-> Your Gross Margin %: Let's say 70%
-> Your Monthly Churn Rate (% of customers who leave): Let's say 5%
The math is: (ARPA * Gross Margin) / Churn Rate
LTV = (£300 * 0.70) / 0.05 = £210 / 0.05 = £4,200
An expert would then explain that with a £4,200 LTV, you could afford to spend up to £1,400 to acquire a customer and still maintain a healthy 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio. This calculation changes everything. It moves the conversation from "how cheap can we get leads?" to "how much can we profitably invest to acquire a high-value customer?". This is how you scale.
Someone who can have these kinds of conversations with you is an actual strategist, not just a button-pusher. This is the kind of person you want managing your ad spend in Brighton, or anywhere else for that matter.
The Final Check: A Summary of What to Do
Navigating the Brighton agency scene to find a genuine paid ads specialist is tough, but it's not impossible if you follow a clear process. It's about ignoring the noise and focusing on the signals that actually predict success. Stop looking for a generalist who promises the world and start hunting for a specialist who can show you the reciepts.
Tbh, this whole process is a filter. It's designed to weed out the pretenders and elevate the true experts. The best consultants will welcome this level of scrutiny because it allows them to properly demonstrate their value against the competition. After all, if they really are an expert, they'll have the case studies and the answers to back it up.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below as a final checklist. Follow this, and you'll be in a much stronger position to make the right hire.
| Step | What To Do | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Define Your Need | Stop searching for a "growth consultant." Search for a "paid acquisition specialist," "PPC expert," or "Meta Ads consultant." Be specific about the skillset you need. | This immediately filters out the generalist agencies and freelancers who can't deliver the specialist knowledge required to run profitable ad campaigns. |
| 2. Hunt for Evidence | Dig into their case studies relentlessly. Look for results from businesses similar to yours (niche, size, model). The numbers must be specific (ROAS, CPA, CPL) and ideally in pounds (£). | This is the only way to verify they have a track record of solving your specific problem. Past performance is the best predictor of future success. |
| 3. The Vetting Call | Get them on a call and ask them tough, strategic questions (about your ICP, LTV, their opinion on awareness campaigns, their suggested offer). Listen for expert, contrarian opinions, not textbook answers. | This seperates the button-pushers from the true strategists. You're hiring a brain, not just a pair of hands. Their answers reveal their depth of experience. |
| 4. The "Free Advice" Test | See how much value they give away for free in the initial meeting. A confident expert isn't afraid to give you actionable advice because they know implementation is the hard part. | This is their chance to demonstrate their expertise, not just talk about it. It gives you a taste of what it would be like to work with them and builds trust. |
| 5. Check the Red Flags | Be wary of anyone guaranteeing results, focusing on vanity metrics, or being vague about their process. Distrust the "we do everything" model. | Red flags indicate a lack of experience, a flawed business model, or desperation. Acknowledging them will save you a lot of money and headaches. |
This is a lot to take in, and doing it all right is more than a full-time job. It’s why businesses that are truly serious about growing their customer acquisition dont do this themselves. They bring in an expert who has done it hundreds of times before.
If you've read this far and it resonates with you, it's probably because your current approach isn't working. We offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy session where we can look at your specific business, your ads, and your goals. We'll give you some honest, actionable advice you can take away and use, whether you decide to work with us or not. There's no hard sell, just a taste of the expertise you should be demanding from any consultant you consider hiring.
