Solved: Are Paid Ads or Social Posts Better for Audience?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some of my initial thoughts on your question. It's a really common one, this whole 'organic vs paid' debate, and frankly, a lot of the advice you see online from so-called gurus is complete rubbish. They sell you this dream that you can build a massive audience for free just by posting a few times a day, but the reality is often quite different.

The short answer is that launching ads is almost always the most effective and fastest way to get a real, engaged audience that actually buys something. But it’s not just about chucking £2k at Facebook and hoping for the best. That's how you lose money. It's about being strategic. I'll walk you through how I think about it, from the ground up, and hopefully debunk a few myths along the way.

We'll need to look at your offer first... because it's everything

Before we even talk about spending a single penny on ads, or a single minute on a subreddit, we have to talk about the one thing that will make or break your entire bussiness: your offer. This is the number one reason I see campaigns fail, and it has nothing to do with the ad platform. It's because the offer itself isn't valuable enough, or it's aimed at an audience that doesn't have a burning need for it.

I see so many founders building what they think is a great product, adding feature after feature, only to launch to the sound of crickets. They haven't validated the demand. They haven't found a group of people with a real, urgent problem that they are desperate to solve.

So, forget demographics for a second. "Women aged 25-34" or "SMEs in the tech sector" is useless information. It leads to generic, boring ads that nobody clicks on. You need to define your ideal customer by their nightmare. What is the specific, expensive, career-threatening problem that keeps them awake at night? Your Head of Sales client isn't just a job title; he's a guy terrified of missing his quarterly target and getting fired. Your e-commerce customer isn't just someone who likes handcrafted jewellery; she's someone frustrated with mass-produced junk and looking for something unique that tells a story.

Your entire business, your messaging, and your ads need to be built around solving that nightmare. A successful offer does three things really well:

1. It focuses on a specific audience. You can't be everything to everyone. The more niche you are, the more your message will resonate.
2. It identifies an urgent, painful problem. You don't sell 'AI implementation services'; you sell a solution to the deep-seated fear that their competitors are getting ahead with technology while they're being left behind. Emotion is what drives action.
3. It presents a clear, tangible solution. You need to package your product or service in a way that feels simple and de-risked for the buyer. A "1-Day Brand Filming Process" is much easier to understand and buy than a vague "video production service".

If you haven't nailed this, stop everything. Don't spend money on ads. Don't waste time posting on X. Fix your offer first. Talk to potential customers. Understand their pain. Once your offer is built to solve a real nightmare for a specific group of people, getting an audience becomes a thousand times easier, whichever channel you use.

I'd say you need to understand the true cost of 'free' traffic

Right, so let's talk about these "free" methods. Making posts on X, engaging in subreddits, trying to go viral on TikTok. Can it work? Yes, occasionally, for some people, if the stars align. But it's not a reliable, scalable strategy for building a business. And it is absolutely not free.

The currency you're spending is your time. And your time is your most valuable asset. Let's say you spend 20 hours a week creating content, engaging, and posting. That's 80 hours a month. If your time is worth even a modest £50/hour, you've just spent £4,000 of your own time to maybe, just maybe, get a handful of followers or a few website clicks. Is that a good return on investment?

Paid ads, on the other hand, trade money for time and data. You can spend £500 and in a few days have concrete data on which message resonates, which audience is interested, and whether people are actually clicking through. You've bought speed. You've bought market feedback. The £4,000 in 'time-cost' you spent on organic posting gives you almost no reliable data. It's just a shot in the dark.

This isn't to say you should never do organic. It's great for community building and engaging with existing customers. But as a primary method for acquiring new customers and building an initial audience? It's slow, unpredictable, and incredibly expensive in terms of your time.

You probably should think of ads as an accelerant, not a magic bullet

So where do ads fit in? They're not a magic wand. They are an amplifier and a data-gathering tool. Ads take your good offer and your compelling message and put it in front of thousands of the right people, instantly. They allow you to test things with scientific rigour that is impossible with organic.

Think about it. In one week with a small budget, you could run a campaign testing:

• -> Three different headlines (addressing different pain points).
• -> Two different images or videos.
• -> Three different target audiences (e.g., one based on interests, one based on job titles, one a lookalike of your existing customers).

By the end of the week, you'll have real data. You'll know that Headline A with Image B shown to Audience C gets you the cheapest leads. You've just learned something invaluable about your market that would have taken you months or even years to guess at through organic posting. This is how you find product-market fit. This is how you find your winning message. You don't guess; you test. Ads let you do this at speed and scale.

We see this principle in action constantly. I remember one campaign for a medical job matching SaaS platform where we managed to reduce their cost per user from £100 down to just £7. This wasn't achieved by a single magic bullet, but by methodically testing different ad creatives, messages, and audiences to discover precisely what resonated. The ads didn't just get them cheaper customers; they provided clear, data-driven insights into their market that informed their entire growth strategy.

This is the proper way to think about paid advertising. It's a strategic tool for learning and growth, not just a button you press to buy customers.

You'll need to decide where to find your audience

Okay, so you're ready to test. The next question is, which platform? This comes back to your customer and their mindset. The easiest way to think about it is 'search vs. discovery'.

A) Are people actively searching for a solution to their problem? If someone's boiler has just broken, they're not scrolling through Instagram hoping to see an ad for a plumber. They're on Google typing "emergency plumber near me". This is called 'high intent'. They have a problem, and they're looking for a solution right now. For these situations, Google Search ads are unbeatable. You're simply putting your solution in front of people who are already raising their hand to say they need it. The same goes for many B2B services and software. If a business needs a new accounting system, they're going to search for it. In my experience, for any business where customers are problem-aware, Google Ads should be your first port of call.

B) Are people NOT actively searching? If you're selling a new type of subscription box, a unique piece of art, or innovative software they don't even know exists, then nobody is searching for you. You need to get in front of them and make them aware. This is where 'discovery' platforms like Meta (Facebook/Instagram) and LinkedIn come in. Your job here is to interrupt their scrolling with an ad so compelling it stops them in their tracks.

• For B2B, particularly if you need to reach specific decision-makers (e.g., 'Head of Marketing' in 'Software companies with 50-200 employees'), LinkedIn Ads is the best tool for the job. The targeting is incredibly precise. We ran a campaign for a B2B software client and were able to get leads from very senior decision makers for just $22 each, something that would be impossible on any other platform.
• For most B2C products and services, and even some small business B2B, Meta Ads are brilliant. Their algorithm is incredibly powerful at finding people likely to convert, even with broader targeting. We've seen huge success for ecommerce clients on Meta, like a 1000% return on ad spend for a subscription box and generating £107k in revenue for another client.

The key is to match the platform to the customer's intent. Trying to sell a high-ticket B2B service with a flashy Instagram ad is probably going to fail. Trying to build awareness for a new fashion brand with dry Google text ads is also likely to fall flat. Start with where your customer is most likely to be when they're in the right mindset to hear your message.

We'll need to look at what you can expect to pay... and it's probably not what you think

This is the million-dollar question, isn't it? "How much will a lead/sale cost me?" Tbh, anyone who gives you a definite number without knowing your business, offer, and audience is lying. However, based on the hundreds of campaigns we've run, I can give you some realistic ballpark figures.

Costs depend massively on what you're optimising for and where you're targeting. Getting a simple email signup is much cheaper than getting someone to complete a £100 purchase.

Here's a rough breakdown:

• For simple conversions (like signups, email subscribers): In developed countries (UK, US, etc.), you can expect to pay between £0.50 - £1.50 per click (CPC). With a decent landing page converting at 10-30%, your cost per acquisition (CPA) would land somewhere between £1.60 and £15.00. In developing countries, the costs can be much lower, maybe £0.33 to £5.00, but the quality of the lead is often significantly lower too.
• For purchases (eCommerce): The conversion rate is naturally lower, usually around 2-5%. So with the same CPCs, your cost per purchase could be anywhere from £10 to £75 in developed countries. This is why knowing your numbers is so important. A £75 cost per sale is disastrous if you're selling a £50 product, but it's fantastic if you're selling a £500 product.

For one of our app clients, we managed to get over 45,000 signups at under £2 per signup, which is on the very low end of that range. But for an HVAC company we work with in a competitive area, their cost per lead is closer to $60. It varies massively. The goal isn't just to get the lowest cost; it's to get a cost that is profitable for your business.

You can use the calculator below to get a feel for how these numbers interact. Play around with the click cost and conversion rate to see how it impacts your final cost per lead.

I'd say you need a solid targeting strategy from day one

Throwing money at ads without a clear targeting strategy is like shouting into the void. A lot of people I see just pick a few broad interests and hope for the best. That's not a strategy. You need to be methodical and test audiences in a logical order, from coldest to warmest.

Here’s how I prioritise audiences for a platform like Meta, and the same logic applies elsewhere. We move from the bottom of the funnel (people who know you and are close to buying) up to the top (brand new people).

For a new account, you won't have any BoFu or MoFu audiences, so you have to start at the Top of the Funnel (ToFu). Your job is to test different interests, behaviours and demographics to see who responds. The key mistake people make here is being too broad. If you sell high-end camera equipment, targeting the interest "Photography" is too vague. It includes everyone from professionals to people who just take photos on their iPhone. You need to target interests like specific camera brands, famous professional photographers, or photography magazines. Get specific.

As soon as you have enough data (you need at least 100 people in a custom audience, but ideally more), you start building your MoFu and BoFu audiences. These are your retargeting pools, and they are almost always your most profitable campaigns. Someone who has already visited your site or added a product to their cart is far more likely to convert than a complete stranger.

Then, the real power comes from creating Lookalike Audiences. You can take your list of best customers and tell Facebook, "Go find me more people exactly like these." This is incredibly powerful and is how you scale campaigns profitably. You start with lookalikes of purchasers, then move to lookalikes of people who initiated checkout, and so on, working your way back up the funnel.

This structured testing is what separates professional advertisers from amateurs. You build your audiences brick by brick, based on real data, not guesswork.

You probably should avoid these common (and expensive) mistakes

I want to wrap up by highlighting a couple of contrarian points that go against what a lot of people will tell you, but which are absolutely critical to getting a return from your ad spend.

1. Stop running "Brand Awareness" campaigns. This is the biggest waste of money for any small or new business. When you select "Reach" or "Brand Awareness" as your campaign objective on Meta, you are literally telling the algorithm: "Please find me the cheapest people to show my ad to, regardless of whether they ever click or buy anything." The algorithm happily obliges, showing your ad to people who are known to be passive scrollers and never engage with anything. You're paying to reach the worst possible audience. The best form of brand awareness is making a sale to a happy customer who then tells their friends. From day one, your campaigns should be optimised for a conversion action – a lead, a signup, a purchase. Let the algorithm find you people who actually do stuff.

2. Delete the "Request a Demo" button. This is the most arrogant Call to Action in B2B marketing. It assumes your prospect has nothing better to do than schedule a meeting to be sold to. It’s high-friction and low-value. Your offer's only job is to provide a moment of undeniable value, an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect want to learn more. For a SaaS company, this is a free trial (no credit card!). Let them use the product and see the value for themselves. For a service business, it could be a free automated audit, a valuable checklist, or a short, insightful video training. We offer a free 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad accounts. You have to give some value to earn the right to ask for their time and money.

You'll need a way to measure what truly matters: Lifetime Value

Finally, we need to shift your entire mindset from cost to value. Worrying about a £10 vs £12 cost per lead is missing the point. The real question is not "How low can my CPL go?" but "How much can I afford to pay to acquire a great customer?" The answer to that is your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

LTV tells you how much profit a customer is worth to you over the entire time they do business with you. Once you know this, everything else becomes clear. Here’s the simple math:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What you make per customer, per month.
• Gross Margin %: Your profit margin on that revenue.
• Monthly Churn Rate %: The percentage of customers you lose each month.

The formula is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's say your ARPA is £200, your gross margin is 70%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month. Your LTV would be (£200 * 0.70) / 0.05 = £2,800. Each customer is worth £2,800 in profit to you.

A healthy business model aims for at least a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. So, in this example, you can afford to spend up to £933 (£2,800 / 3) to acquire a single customer. Suddenly that £60 lead from LinkedIn doesn't seem so expensive, does it? If you close 1 in 10 of those leads, you can afford to pay up to £93 per lead and still have a very healthy business. This is the math that unlocks aggressive, intelligent scaling.

Use the calculator below to figure out your own LTV.

So, to answer your question...

Is launching ads the most effective way? Yes, I believe it is. Not because it's a magic money machine, but because it's the fastest, most reliable, and most data-driven way to find your audience, refine your message, and build a scalable system for customer acquisition. Organic posting is a complementary activity, not a primary growth engine.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below as a summary of the approach I'd take.

As you can see, there's a lot more to it than just boosting a post. It's a proper discipline that requires strategy, testing, and a deep understanding of the platforms and human psychology. It's not just about setting up an ad and hoping for the best; it's about building a system.

That's where getting professional help can make a huge difference. An expert can help you avoid the common pitfalls, speed up the learning process, and implement a strategy that actually works, saving you a lot of time and wasted ad spend in the long run.

If you'd like to chat through your specific situation in more detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session where we can take a look at what you're doing and give you some actionable advice. Feel free to book one in if you think it would be helpful.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh