Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out! It sounds like you're in a spot a lot of businesses find themselves in. The whole world of digital advertising can feel like a complete maze, and it’s completely understandable to feel overwhelmed. Happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance on this, because finding the right help isn't just about picking someone from a list, it's about understanding what you're actually trying to achieve.
The truth is, most people who look for an 'ad spend optimisation consultant' are already thinking about the problem in the wrong way. It's not really about just tweaking your ad spend. That's the last step. The real wins, the ones that change a buisness, come from getting the strategy right first. Get that wrong, and you're just finding more efficient ways to burn your cash.
We'll need to look at what 'optimisation' really means...
This is probably the biggest myth in paid advertising. People hear 'optimisation' and they think about fiddling with bids, changing the ad button colour, or pausing an ad set that's a few quid over budget. That's all surface-level stuff. It has its place, but it's not where the money is made or lost.
Real optimisation is about your entire sales process, from the first time someone sees your ad to the moment they become a long-term, happy customer. A consultant who only wants to talk about your Cost Per Click (CPC) without asking about your offer, your customer's problems, or your website is missing the point entirely. They're a technician, not a strategist.
I see this all the time. A business comes to us with a campaign objective set to 'Brand Awareness' or 'Reach' on Facebook. They're happy because they're getting thousands of impressions for a tiny cost. But they're selling nothing. Of course they aren't. They've literally instructed the world's most powerful advertising algorithm to find them the largest number of people who are cheapest to show ads to. These are the people who never click, never engage, and certainly never buy anything. Their attention is cheap for a reason. You're actively paying to find the worst possible audience for your product. That's not optimisation; it's just waste with a fancy name.
The best optimisation is to align your campaign objective with your actual buisness goal. If you want sales, you need to tell the platform to find you people who are likely to buy. It sounds obvious, but you'd be amazed how many people get this wrong. A good consultant's first question shouldn't be "What's your budget?". It should be "What is a conversion worth to you, and who are we actually trying to convert?". Which leads me to the most important part of this whole thing...
I'd say you first need to define your customer's nightmare...
Forget the ideal customer profile your last marketing person put together. "We target SMEs in the finance sector with 50-200 employees". Tbh, that tells me absolutely nothing useful. It's a sterile, demographic box that leads to boring, generic ads that nobody clicks on because they don't speak to anyone's actual problems.
To stop burning cash and start making it, you have to define your customer not by who they are, but by the specific, urgent, and expensive nightmare they are living through. Your customer isn't a job title; they are a person in a state of pain, looking for a way out.
Think about it. The Head of Engineering at a tech startup isn't just a 'demographic'. She's a leader who lies awake at night terrified that her best developers are about to quit because their workflow is a complete mess and they're drowning in technical debt. The partner at a law firm doesn't just need 'document management software'. He's haunted by the fear of missing a critical filing deadline and exposing his entire firm to a malpractice lawsuit that could end careers. That fear, that nightmare, that's what you're selling a solution to.
Once you've really understood that deep-seated problem, then you can find them. Where do they go to find solutions? What niche podcasts do they listen to on their commute? What industry newsletters do they actually read instead of instantly deleting? What software tools do they already pay for? Are they in specific Facebook groups? Do they follow certain influencers on LinkedIn?
This isn't just market research; it's the entire blueprint for your targeting strategy. A reliable consultant will force you to have these uncomfortable conversations. They'll dig deep into this, because they know that without this intelligence, you have no buisness spending a single pound on ads. If a consultant you're talking to doesn't ask you these kinds of questions, they are not the one.
You probably should calculate what a customer is actually worth to you...
Once you know who you're targeting and what problem you're solving, the next question is about economics. The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead go?" but rather "How high a Cost Per Lead can I afford to acquire a fantastic customer?". The answer to that is found in its counterpart: Customer Lifetime Value, or LTV.
Most businesses have no idea what their LTV is, and it cripples their ability to grow. They choke their ad spend because a lead 'feels' too expensive, without doing the basic maths. Let's do it now. It's simpler than you think.
You need three numbers:
-> Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average you make from a customer each month? Let's say it's £500.
-> Gross Margin %: What's your actual profit on that revenue after costs of service? Let's say it's 80%.
-> Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month? Let's be conservative and say it's 4% (meaning the average customer stays for 25 months).
Here’s the simple calculation:
LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
Let's plug in our numbers:
LTV = (£500 * 0.80) / 0.04
LTV = £400 / 0.04 = £10,000
Have a look at this laid out in a table:
| Metric | Example Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) | £500 / month | The average monthly fee you charge. |
| Gross Margin % | 80% | Your profit margin on the service delivered. |
| Monthly Churn Rate | 4% | The percentage of customers you lose per month. |
| Calculated Lifetime Value (LTV) | £10,000 | This is the total gross margin a customer is worth. |
This number changes everything. In this example, each new customer is worth £10,000 in gross margin to your business. A healthy ratio for LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single customer and still run a very profitable operation. If your sales team converts 1 in every 10 qualified leads into a customer, you can afford to pay up to £333 per qualified lead.
Suddenly that £50 lead from Google Ads or that £250 lead from a perfectly targeted LinkedIn campaign doesn't seem so expensive anymore, does it? It looks like an absolute bargain. This is the maths that unlocks intelligent, aggressive growth. Without it, you're flying blind and making decisions based on fear instead of data. A good consultant will not only understand this but will insist on calculating it with you before a single campaign is launched.
You'll need an offer they can't ignore...
So you know their nightmare, and you know what they're worth. Now you need to make them an offer. And this is where almost every single B2B company gets it disastrously wrong. This is the biggest failure point I see in ad accounts we take over.
Please, I'm begging you, delete the "Request a Demo" button from your website. It is the most arrogant, high-friction, and low-value call to action ever invented. It presumes your prospect, a busy decision-maker, has nothing better to do with their time than schedule a meeting to be sold to by a stranger. It instantly positions you as a commodity, another vendor begging for a sliver of their attention. It doesn't work.
Your offer's only job is to provide a moment of undeniable value. An "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your full solution. You have to solve a small, real problem for them for free to earn the right to ask for their money to solve the big one.
What does this look like?
-> For a SaaS company: The gold standard is a free trial or a freemium plan. No credit card required. Let them use the actual product. Let them experience the transformation first-hand. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a simple formality. We've seen this work time and again for our SaaS clients, generating thousands of trials that convert into paying customers. For example, we got one client 5082 software trials from Meta ads alone by focusing on a frictionless free trial offer.
-> For a service business: You are not exempt. You have to bottle your expertise into something tangible. For a marketing agency, it could be a free, automated SEO audit that shows them their top 3 keyword opportunities. For a data analytics firm, 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 a company's failing ad campaigns and give them an actionable plan. We give away our best thinking upfront.
This is about changing the dynamic from "please listen to my sales pitch" to "here is something genuinely useful for you, for free". A good consultant helps you craft this irresistible offer, because they know without it, even the best ads in the world will fail.
We'll need to look at picking the right platforms and audiences...
Only now, with all that strategic groundwork in place, should you even start thinking about platforms like Google and Meta. The choice of platform isn't about which one is 'best'; it's about matching the platform to your customer's behaviour.
Is your customer actively searching for a solution to their nightmare? If someone is typing "emergency electrician near me" or "best accounting software for startups" into Google, they have a clear intent. They want a solution right now. This is where Google Search ads are unbeatable. You're not creating demand; you're capturing it. For one of our clients, a medical job matching SaaS, we used a mix of Google and Meta ads to take their cost per user from a painful £100 down to just £7. A huge part of that was capturing the high-intent searches on Google.
Is your customer NOT actively searching? If you're selling something innovative or they don't know a solution like yours exists, you need to use platforms like LinkedIn or Meta (Facebook/Instagram). Here, your job is to interrupt their day with a message that resonates so strongly with their hidden pain that they have to stop and listen. For B2B, LinkedIn is often the top choice because you can target by job title, company size, and industry with incredible precision. We've generated leads for high-ticket B2B software for as little as $22 per lead on LinkedIn by targeting the exact decision-makers.
Once you're on a platform like Meta, audience selection becomes everything. So many people just throw a few broad interests into an ad set and hope for the best. This is a recipe for disaster. You need a structured, prioritised approach. This is how I would usually structure it for an eCommerce client, but the logic applies to almost any buisness:
| Funnel Stage | Audience Type | Priority & Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - Highest Priority | Retargeting (Warmest) | People who almost bought. Target these first. -> Added to Cart (but not purchased) -> Initiated Checkout -> Added Payment Info |
| Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - High Priority | Retargeting (Warm) | People who showed interest. -> Visited a key landing page or product page -> Watched 50% of your video ad -> All Website Visitors |
| Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Medium Priority | Lookalike Audiences | Find new people who look like your best customers. -> 1% Lookalike of your 'Purchasers' list -> 1% Lookalike of 'Initiated Checkout' |
| Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Lower Priority | Detailed Targeting (Cold) | Targeting based on interests, behaviors. -> Interests related to competitor tools -> Job titles (on LinkedIn) -> Followers of industry publications |
You start with the people closest to converting and work your way out. You test audiences methodically within these tiers. You turn off what doesn't work and scale up what does. This structure brings discipline to your testing and prevents you from just randomly trying things. A good consultant brings this kind of methodical process to the table.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
This might all seem like a lot, and it is. But getting this foundation right is the difference between success and failure. Before you even hire a consultant, you should have a clear idea of these pillars. This table summarises the main advice I've given you, and these are the things a reliable consultant will focus on with you.
| Recommendation | Why It Matters | Actionable First Step |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Define Your ICP's Nightmare | Generic targeting leads to generic, ineffective ads. Pain-based targeting leads to ads that connect and convert. | Interview 5 of your best customers. Ask them what was going on in their buisness the week before they signed up with you. What was the *real* problem? |
| 2. Calculate Your LTV | This tells you how much you can actually afford to spend to get a customer, freeing you from making fear-based decisions on ad spend. | Gather your ARPA, Gross Margin, and Churn Rate. Plug them into the formula: (ARPA * GM%) / Churn Rate. |
| 3. Fix Your Offer | A high-friction "Request a Demo" offer kills conversion rates. You need to provide real value upfront to earn trust. | Brainstorm one thing you could give away for free that solves a small, tangible problem for your ICP. A checklist, a calculator, a short video course, an audit. |
| 4. Prioritise Your Audiences | Randomly testing audiences wastes money. A structured approach focusing on high-intent audiences first maximises your budget. | Set up your retargeting audiences (e.g., website visitors from the last 30 days) even if you don't use them yet. Start collecting that data. |
| 5. Evaluate Consultants Strategically | A good consultant is a strategist, not just a button-pusher. Their value is in their thinking, not just their ability to set up a campaign. | When you talk to a potential consultant, ask them about LTV and their process for understanding your customer's pain. If they look blank, walk away. Look at their case studies – do they have real, provable results in niches similar to yours? |
Hiring a consultant isn't about abdicating responsibility. It's about bringing in an expert who has the frameworks, experience, and strategic depth to guide you through this process. It’s not just about managing ad spend; it's a partnership to grow your business intelligently. They should be challenging your assumptions and bringing new ideas to the table, not just taking orders.
This is a complex process, and frankly, it's a full-time job to do it properly. That's where we come in. We live and breathe this stuff every single day, working with businesses from SaaS startups to established eCommerce brands to build and scale profitable advertising systems based on these exact principles.
If you'd like to see how this approach could apply specifically to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session. We'll have a look at what you're doing now, run through some of these core ideas with you, and give you a clear, actionable plan you can use, whether you decide to work with us or not.
Hope this helps give you a clearer picture!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
