Instagram Ads Agency: Why Local Isn't Always Better

So, you're looking for an Instagram Ads agency in Portsmouth. It's a logical first step. You want someone local, someone you can maybe meet for a coffee, someone who understands the area. But I'm going to be brutally honest with you: it's probably the wrong way to think about it, and it could cost you a fortune in wasted ad spend and missed opportunities.

The assumption that 'local' equals 'better' is one of the biggest myths in digital marketing. Your customers are online, your ads are online, and the expertise you need to beat your competition is almost certainly not confined to the PO postcode. Over the years, I've seen countless businesses in cities like Portsmouth, Southampton, and Brighton limit their growth by insisting on a local partner, only to end up with a generalist agency that doesn't have the specialist experience to deliver real results.

In this guide, I'm going to explain why focusing on niche expertise instead of geography will give you a massive advantage. We'll cover how to properly vet an agency (wherever they are), what a realistic budget looks like for a Portsmouth business, and what a professional campaign strategy actually involves. Let's get into it.

Why is the 'agency near me' search a trap?

Think about it logically. Portsmouth has a vibrant business scene, from the retail at Gunwharf Quays to the marine tech sector and the constant buzz around the university. But how many of those businesses are world-class, specialist Instagram advertising agencies with a deep, proven track record in, say, B2B SaaS or high-growth eCommerce? Probably not many. Maybe none.

When you search locally, you're fishing in a very small pond. You might find a perfectly decent 'digital marketing agency' that does a bit of everything: SEO, websites, email, and yes, some social media ads. But they won't be specialists. They won't have spent years and millions of pounds figuring out the exact nuances of scaling an apparel brand on Meta, or generating leads for a high-ticket service. They'll run generic campaigns because that's all they know. We had one client, a medical job matching platform, come to us with a £100 Cost Per User Acquisition. We got it down to £7 by applying specialist strategies. That's the differance we're talking about.

The truth is, in 2024, geography is irrelevant for this kind of work. The best paid ads experts can work from anywhere. What matters is their experience. Do they live and breathe the ad platform? Do they understand your customer's psychology? Have they solved the exact problems you're facing for a dozen other businesses just like yours? That's what you should be paying for. It's a much smarter approach than just picking someone because their office is in Portsea. The search for a true expert often needs to go beyond your local city limits.

What are you really paying for? (Hint: It's not their rent in Southsea)

When you hire a proper paid ads agency, you're not just buying clicks or impressions. You're buying a strategic brain. You're investing in a team whose sole focus is turning your ad spend into profitable revenue. This involves several distinct skills that a local generalist is unlikely to possess at an expert level.

First, there's Strategy. This is about understanding your entire sales process. Who is your ideal customer? What is their biggest pain point? What message will make them stop scrolling and pay attention? A specialist agency will help you define this and build a full-funnel strategy, not just a single ad. They’ll plan how to take a complete stranger from vaguely aware of your brand to a loyal customer, using different ads and messages at each stage (we'll look at this later).

Second, is Niche Experience. This is the big one. If you sell cleaning products, you want an agency that knows the exact interests to target, the kind of ad creative that works, and the average conversion rates for that industry. We've worked on a campaign like that and generated a 633% return. That knowledge comes from running dozens of similar campaigns. A local agency in Portsmouth might be working with a solicitor one day and a takeaway the next. They don't have that deep, specific knowledge.

Third, there's Creative & Testing. Effective Instagram advertising isn't about creating one "perfect" ad. It's about relentlessly testing dozens of variations of images, videos, headlines, and copy to find winning combinations. A specialist agency has a robust process for this. They'll test different angles, like Problem-Agitate-Solve vs Before-After-Bridge, and use data, not guesswork, to decide what to scale.

Finally, there's Data Analysis and Scaling. This is what separates the pros from the amateurs. A good agency can read the data from your campaigns and understand what it means. Why did the Cost Per Lead suddenly jump? Is this audience fatigued? Is it time to expand to a new platform? They know how to take a campaign that's working at £50 a day and scale it to £500 a day without the performance falling off a cliff. This is a very specific skill, and it's what drives serious growth. We've taken on clients who were stuck and helped them scale their campaigns, like one e-learning client where we generated $115k in revenue in just six weeks by optimising their Meta Ads.

You're not going to find all of that in a single person at a small local firm. You're paying for a team of specialists, and that expertise is what delivers the ROI, not their physical location.

How to spot a pro from a pretender (wherever they are)

Okay, so you're convinced. You need an expert, not just a local. How do you find one and how do you know if they're any good? The vetting process is the most important part, and it's where most businesses go wrong. Here's a no-nonsense checklist.

1. Forget promises, demand case studies.
Any agency can talk a good game. They'll promise you the world. Don't listen. Ask to see their case studies. And don't just accept a pretty PDF with a logo on it. You need to scrutinise them.

• -> Is the case study for a business in a similar niche to yours? Getting results for a local restaurant is completely different from getting results for a national eCommerce brand.
• -> Do they talk about real business metrics? Look for numbers like Revenue, Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Vague metrics like "Reach" or "Impressions" are often used to hide poor performance. For one luxury brand launch, we focused on getting 10 million views, because that was the goal. For an eCommerce client, the goal was 8x return on ad spend, and that's what we reported. The metric must match the goal.
• -> Do they explain the 'how'? A good case study will briefly touch on the strategy, the challenges, and the solution. It shows they have a repeatable process.

2. The initial call is an interview (and you're the boss).
Once you've seen some promising case studies, book a call. This is not a sales pitch for them; it's an interview for you. A good agency will spend most of the time asking you questions about your business, your goals, your customers, and your numbers. A bad agency will spend the whole time talking about themselves.

Here are some killer questions to ask them:

• -> "Based on what I've told you, what would your initial 90-day strategy look like?" They shouldn't give you a full blueprint, but they should be able to outline a logical approach.
• -> "What's the biggest challenge you see in advertising for a business like mine?" This tests their niche knowledge.
• -> "How do you handle creative? Do we provide it, or do you create it?" This clarifies roles and responsibilities.
• -> "What's your testing methodology?" Listen for words like 'split testing', 'audience testing', 'creative testing'. If they just say "we'll see what works", run away.

A good sign is if they offer to do a free, no-obligation review of your existing ad account. We do this for potential clients. It's a great way for us to show our expertise and for the client to get some immediate value, building trust from day one.

3. Watch out for these massive red flags.
Some things should set alarm bells ringing immediately.

• -> Guaranteed results: No one can guarantee results in paid advertising. The market changes, platforms change. An expert will talk about a process for finding success, not promise a specific ROAS. Tbh it's impossible to predict performance.
• -> Long-term contracts from day one: A confident agency will often start with a 3-month trial period to prove their worth. Being locked into a 12-month contract before they've generated a single pound for you is a huge risk.
• -> Lack of transparency: You should always have full ownership and access to your ad account. If they want to run ads through their own account, it's a major red flag. They could be hiding poor performance or even holding your data hostage.

Ultimately, vetting an agency is about finding a partner you can trust. If they're defensive about their results or vague about their strategy, they're probably not the right fit. It really helps to have a clear understanding of what to look for when hiring a Meta ads expert, whether they're in Portsmouth or Perth.

Let's Talk Money: What Should a Portsmouth Business Budget for Instagram Ads?

This is the question on everyone's mind. "How much does it cost?" The answer is, it depends. But I can give you some realistic ranges based on our experience running hundreds of campaigns.

Your budget has two parts: the agency's fee and your ad spend (the money that goes directly to Meta). Agency fees for a proper specialist will typically start at £1,500 - £2,000 per month and go up from there, depending on the complexity and ad spend. If an "agency" in Portsmouth quotes you £500 a month, they are almost certainly just a freelancer who will 'boost' a few posts for you and not much else. You get what you pay for.

For ad spend, I usually recommend a minimum of £1,000 to £2,000 per month to start. Anything less, and you simply won't get enough data quickly enough for the algorithm to learn or for your agency to make smart decisions. This gives you enough room to test different audiences and creatives to find out what works.

But what results can you expect for that spend? The cost per result varies massively by industry. For a B2C service, like a home cleaning company we worked with, we were able to get leads for around £5 each. For a B2B SaaS client targeting decision-makers, a lead on LinkedIn might cost £22. For an eCommerce store, your Cost Per Purchase could be anywhere from £10 to £75 depending on your product price.

The key isn't just the cost per lead or sale; it's the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). If you spend £1 and make £4 back, that's a 4x ROAS. That's a healthy business. To help you get a feel for the numbers, here's a simple calculator.

This calculator demonstrates how small changes can have a big impact. A good agency's job is to increase that conversion rate and drive down the cost of traffic, which makes your entire budget work harder. A small improvement from a 1.5% conversion rate to 2.0% can be the difference between a failing campaign and a profitable one.

What a Professional Campaign Structure Looks Like

One of the easiest ways to tell if an agency knows what they're doing is to ask them about campaign structure. If they start talking about 'boosting posts' or just running one ad to a cold audience, they're amateurs. A professional structure is built around the customer journey, often called a marketing funnel.

We typically structure accounts into three key stages: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

This structure is vital for a few reasons. First, it allows you to tailor your message. You wouldn't ask a stranger to marry you on a first date, so why ask for a sale in the first ad they ever see? Second, it's efficient. You can allocate more budget to the audiences that are performing best, especially your warm BoFu audiences who are most likely to convert. For a smaller business in Portsmouth, having this kind of clear campaign structure is the easiest way to make your budget work as hard as possible.

An agency that understands this will talk about creating seperate campaigns for prospecting (ToFu) and retargeting (MoFu/BoFu). They'll discuss creating custom audiences based on website traffic and lookalike audiences based on your best customers. This isn't rocket science, but it's the fundamental blocking and tackling of good paid advertising that so many generalists miss.

So, should you hire an agency in Portsmouth?

After all this, the answer is: maybe, but only if they are genuinely the best possible agency for your specific business, and they just happen to be based in Portsmouth. The odds of that are slim. Your priority should not be finding a local supplier. It should be finding a strategic partner who can help you grow your business profitably.

Stop searching for "Instagram ads agency Portsmouth" and start searching for "Instagram ads agency for eCommerce fashion brands" or "paid ads expert for B2B software". That's how you find real expertise. Look at their case studies, grill them on their strategy, and assess them based on their track record, not their location.

The right agency will feel like an extension of your team. They'll be proactive, data-driven, and obsessed with your success. And when you find that partner, it won't matter if they're in Portsmouth or Portugal. All that will matter are the results they deliver to your bottom line. It's time to think bigger than your city's boundaries. Finding the right fit for your business is about aligning on expertise and goals.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below to summarise how you should approach this.

Navigating this process can be daunting, especially when you're busy running your business. Hiring an agency is a significant investment, and making the wrong choice can be a costly mistake. If you'd like an expert second opinion on your advertising strategy or want to understand how a specialist approach could benefit your business, consider getting professional help.

We offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session where we can review your current efforts and provide actionable advice. It’s a chance to get an expert perspective and see if we might be the right partner to help you achieve your growth goals. Feel free to book a consultation if you think it would be helpful.