Solved: Ad copy not resonating in Swansea (Real Reason Inside)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I had a look at your question about writing ad copy for the Swansea market. It's a common problem, and honestly, most people get the solution completely wrong. They think 'local' means chucking in a few references to the Mumbles Pier or the Swans, but that's just surface-level stuff that doesn't actually make anyone buy.

Your current efforts are falling flat not because you don't know Swansea well enough, but probably because you're focusing on the wrong thing entirely. The real issue is almost always a disconnect between your message, your offer, and the deep-seated problem your customer is desperate to solve. So, I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts on how we'd approach this. We're not going to talk about local slang; we're going to talk about the universal language of pain points and how to solve them, which is what actually drives conversions, wether in Swansea or anywhere else.

We'll need to look at your customer's nightmare, not their postcode...

Right, let's get one thing straight from the off. Forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire made. "Homeowners in Swansea, aged 35-55, income of £40k+" tells you absolutely nothing of value. It's a completely useless peice of information. It leads to the kind of generic, beige advertising that people's eyes just slide right over. It’s why your ads are failing. To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer not by where they live, but by their pain.

You need to become an absolute expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening, or life-disrupting nightmare. Your customer isn't just a demographic; they are a person in a problem state. They're lying awake at 3 am worrying about something. Your job is to know what that something is, and show them you're the only one who can make it go away.

Let's make this real. Imagine you're a local accountant in the Uplands. Your target customer isn't 'a small business owner in Swansea'. Your target customer is 'a frantic freelance graphic designer in Gorseinon who's just received a brown envelope from HMRC, is terrified of getting their taxes wrong, and is losing billable hours trying to figure out QuickBooks'. The nightmare isn't 'needing accounting services'; it's the gut-wrenching fear of a massive, unexpected tax bill and the shame of not knowing what you're doing with your own business finances.

Or say you're a B2B software company based in the city centre. Your Head of Engineering client isn't just a job title; she's a leader terrified of her best developers quitting out of sheer frustration with a broken, inefficient workflow. Her nightmare isn't a lack of software; it's the prospect of losing top talent to a competitor in Cardiff because her team is bogged down in manual tasks. She's not buying your tool; she's buying team retention and project velocity.

Once you've truly isolated that nightmare, everything else falls into place. You can start to build a real picture of this person. Where do they go to complain about this problem or look for solutions? Are they members of the 'Swansea Small Business Network' Facebook group? Do they listen to specific podcasts like 'The Diary of a CEO' on their commute? Do they read certain industry newsletters? This intelligence isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your entire targeting and messaging strategy. You have to do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads. Your ad copy will start writing itself once you understand this, because you'll stop talking about what your service *is* and start talking about the pain it *removes*.

I'd say your offer is the real problem...

Now, this is probably going to sting a bit, but it needs to be said. Even if you write the most powerful, emotionally resonant ad copy in the world, it will fail spectacularly if the offer it leads to is rubbish. And the most common failure point in all of advertising, especially for local and B2B businesses, is the offer.

The "Contact Us for a Quote" or "Request a Demo" button is perhaps the most arrogant and lazy Call to Action ever conceived. Think about what you're asking. You're asking a busy person, who doesn't know you or trust you yet, to stop what they're doing, fill out a form, and commit to spending 30 minutes of their valuable time being sold to. It is incredibly high-friction and offers them zero immediate value. It instantly positions you as just another commodity, another salesperson wanting a slice of their time and budget. Why would anyone do that unless they were absolutely desperate?

Your offer’s only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. It has to be so good that it feels like a no-brainer. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to ask them to pay you to solve the whole thing.

If you're a service business, you are not exempt. You must bottle your expertise into a tool, a peice of content, or an asset that provides instant value. Let's go back to our Swansea accountant. Instead of "Contact Us," their offer could be a "Free 5-Minute Welsh Business Tax Health Check." It could be a simple online calculator or a downloadable PDF guide titled "The 3 Most Common Tax Mistakes Swansea Freelancers Make." This gives them immediate value, demonstrates your expertise, and starts to build trust. They get a solution to a small part of their problem, and you get a highly qualified lead who has already raised their hand to say "I have this exact problem."

For a local marketing agency, it could be a free, automated website audit that shows a business their top 3 keyword opportunities in the Swansea area. For a corporate training company, it could be a free 15-minute interactive video module on 'Managing Hybrid Teams'. For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, it's a 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns completely free. We solve a real problem, for free, to show we can solve the bigger one.

Look at the difference in the customer journey. One is a dead end, the other is the start of a relationship.

Fix your offer before you spend another penny on ads. A great offer makes your ad copy ten times more effective because you're not just making claims, you're making a promise of immediate help.

You probably should use a proven copywriting framework...

Once you've nailed your customer's nightmare and created an irresistible offer, it's time to actually write the ad. But you don't need to be a creative genius or a literary wizard. In fact, it's better if you're not. The best ad copy is simple, direct, and follows a formula. It's about clarity, not cleverness.

Two of the most effective frameworks are Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) and Before-After-Bridge (BAB). They work because they mirror the natural thought process of someone with a problem.

1. Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS)

This is the workhorse of direct response copy. It's powerful, emotional, and perfect for service businesses.

• Problem: You state the customer's nightmare back to them in a way they instantly recognise. You hit the nail on the head.
• Agitate: You pour salt in the wound. You remind them of the frustration, the cost, the consequences of not solving this problem. You make the pain more vivid.
• Solve: You introduce your service as the quick, easy, and obvious solution to make all that pain go away.

Let's imagine you run a local IT support company in Swansea targeting small businesses.

Standard, boring copy: "Swansea IT Support Services. We offer reliable tech support for local businesses. Contact us today."

PAS copy:
(P) Is slow, unreliable IT holding your business back?
(A) Wasting hours on hold with tech support while your team can't work and deadlines are looming? Worried that one server crash could wipe out your entire business?
(S) Get instant, local IT support from a team that's right here in Swansea. We fix problems before they happen, so you can focus on running your business, not your computers.

See the difference? The first is a statement. The second is a conversation about their biggest fears. It just works.

2. Before-After-Bridge (BAB)

This framework is brilliant for SaaS products, training, or anything that represents a transformation. It paints a picture of a better future.

• Before: Describe their current world. It's full of the problems and frustrations you've identified. It's the 'nightmare' state.
• After: Paint a vivid picture of the world after they use your product. All the problems are gone, replaced by ease, efficiency, and success. It's the dream state.
• Bridge: Position your product or service as the simple bridge that gets them from the 'Before' state to the 'After' state.

Let's say you're selling a project management software to creative agencies in the area.

Standard, boring copy: "The ultimate project management tool for creative agencies. Manage tasks, clients, and timelines all in one place."

BAB copy:
(Before) Your project board is a mess of missed deadlines, confused clients, and a creative team on the verge of burnout.
(After) Imagine every project running smoothly. Clients are happy, your team knows exactly what to do, and you're hitting profit targets without the chaos.
(Bridge) Our platform is the bridge. It's the simple way to get from chaos to calm. Start your free trial and feel the relief today.

These frameworks give your copy structure and purpose. They force you to be customer-centric. Stop talking about your features and start talking about their future. Your conversion rates will thank you for it, and you'll find it's a much more effective way to write, especialy when your current copy isn't working.

You'll need to understand what you can afford to pay...

So, we've talked about understanding your customer and crafting a message and offer that resonates. But there's a critical peice of the puzzle missing that stops most businesses from ever scaling their ads successfully. They don't know their numbers. The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead go?" but "How high a Cost Per Lead can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?"

The answer lies in a metric called Lifetime Value (LTV). This is the total profit you can expect to make from a single customer over the entire course of your relationship. When you know this number, everything changes. You stop being scared of ad spend and start seeing it as a predictable investment in growth.

Let's break down how to calculate it. You need three things:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month on average?
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? (Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold) / Revenue.
3. Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of customers do you lose each month, on average?

The calculation is simple:

LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's use our Swansea IT support company as an example. Let's say their average client pays £400/month (ARPA), their gross margin is 70%, and they lose about 3% of their clients each month (Churn Rate).

LTV = (£400 * 0.70) / 0.03
LTV = £280 / 0.03 = £9,333

Now they have the truth. Each new customer is worth over £9,000 in gross margin to their business. A healthy business model aims for a 3:1 ratio of LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). This means they can afford to spend up to £3,111 (9,333 / 3) to acquire a single new customer.

If their sales process converts 1 in 5 qualified leads into a paying customer, they can now afford to pay up to £622 per qualified lead. Suddenly, that £50 lead from Google Ads doesn't seem expensive, does it? It looks like an incredible bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth and frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality leads that never convert.

Here’s a calculator you can use to play around with your own numbers. See for yourself how small changes in churn or revenue can massively impact what you can afford to spend on marketing.

Once you know your LTV, you can set realistic budgets and performance targets. You can also start to understand what kind of lead quality you need. For example, in a developed country like the UK, you have to be realistic about costs. Trying to get sales for a few quid each just isn't going to happen for most businesses.

Knowing this stops you from making the classic mistake of turning off a campaign because the "Cost Per Click is too high" when, in reality, those expensive clicks are from your perfect customers who are worth thousands to your business. It allows you to write copy that qualifies, not just clicks. You can be bold, speak directly to high-value customers, and not worry about scaring off the tyre-kickers who were never going to buy anyway.

We'll need to put this all together...

So, we've gone through quite a bit. It’s clear that fixing your ad copy is about much more than just the words you use. It’s a complete shift in strategy, from the inside out. It starts with a deep, almost obsessive understanding of your customer's pain, flows into creating an offer so valuable it feels foolish to refuse, is structured with a proven copywriting framework, and is all underpinned by a solid grasp of your business's financial metrics.

Trying to fix the copy without addressing these foundational elements is like repainting a house with crumbling foundations. It might look better for a week, but it’s going to fall down regardless. You need to fix the core problems first.

To make it really clear, I've broken down the main advice I have for you into an actionable table. This is the exact process we'd follow to diagnose and fix a campaign that's failing to convert.

Following these steps will completely reframe how you approach your advertising. It moves you from guessing and hoping to a systematic process of attracting and converting your ideal customers.

This is a lot to take in, I know. Implementing all of this correctly takes time, experience, and a lot of testing. It's not just about setting up an ad; it's about building a predictable growth engine for your business. That's where expert help can make a huge difference, helping you avoid costly mistakes and get to profitability much faster.

If you'd like to go through your specific situation in more detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a look at your current ads and website and give you some tailored advice on where the biggest opportunities are. It's a great way to get a second pair of expert eyes on your strategy.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh