Solved: Best PPC approach with a limited budget?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It's good that you're looking to get serious about paid ads, and it's even better that you're willing to put some skin in the game to learn properly. That mindset already puts you ahead of most people.

I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance. You've asked how to spend your first $500 to learn, and the blunt answer is that you're asking the wrong question. The goal isn't to "learn PPC" in a vacuum. The goal is to learn how to make money with PPC. If you just fiddle with settings, you'll learn how the platforms work, but you won't learn how to get results, and your £500 will vanish with very little to show for it. We need to flip this on its head and treat this like a real business from day one, even if it's just a small test.

Let's get into it.

Your first job isn't advertising, it's building a weapon-grade offer...

This is the single biggest reason campaigns fail, and it has nothing to do with keywords or ad copy. It's the offer. I see so many founders and marketers spend months, even years, perfecting a product or service, only to find that nobody really cares. They lack demand.

Your £500 experiment lives or dies right here. Before you even think about opening Google Ads, you need an offer that solves a specific, urgent, and expensive problem for a very specific group of people. A vague offer to a vague audience is like trying to boil the ocean. It just won't work.

So, forget "lead gen vs. e-commerce" for a second. That's just the mechanism. The real question is: What painful problem are you solving, and for who?

A successful offer has three parts:

1. A specific audience: Not "small businesses". That's a demographic. We need a tribe. "UK-based artisan bakeries struggling to get online orders" is an audience.
2. An urgent problem: They don't just want a website. Their problem is that they see local competitors with slick online ordering systems stealing their customers, and they feel powerless and left behind. That's a pain point.
3. A clear solution: You don't sell "web design". You sell a "Baker's Dozen Launch Package" – a one-week service to get their top 13 products online with a simple, effective ordering system. It's a productised service. It's tangible, clear, and less risky for them to buy.

You need to think like this. What's a small, tangible problem you can solve? Maybe it's setting up Google Analytics goals for therapists. Maybe it's writing 5 high-converting product descriptions for Etsy sellers. Pick something you know, make it specific, and package it up. This is your test product. Without this, your ads are just shouting into the void.

You need to stop thinking about demographics and start thinking about nightmares...

Once you have a rough idea for an offer, you need to define who you're selling it to. And I'm not talking about "females, 25-34, interested in yoga". That's useless. It leads to generic ads that nobody clicks because they don't feel seen.

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is not a person; it's a problem state. It's a nightmare. Your job is to become an absolute expert in that nightmare.

Let's take a B2B example. You're not selling project management software to a "Head of Operations". You're selling it to a leader who lies awake at night terrified that a critical project deadline will be missed, costing the company a huge client and damaging their own reputation. Their nightmare is chaos, missed deadlines, and a lack of control.

How do you find this out? You get into their world.

• -> What podcasts do they actually listen to on their commute? (Probably not the generic business ones).
• -> What niche industry newsletters do they read?
• -> What software tools do they already pay for? (This tells you what they value).
• -> What specific jargon or phrases do they use when they describe their problems?

This deep understanding is your targeting blueprint. It tells you what keywords they'll type into Google when they're desperate for a solution. It tells you what interests to target on Meta. It tells you exactly what to write in your ad copy to make them stop scrolling and think, "Finally, someone gets it." If you do this work, the targeting almost takes care of itself. If you skip it, you're just guessing, and your £500 will pay for you to be wrong.

Let's visualise this process. It's not a random set of tasks; it's a logical flow from a core business idea to a targeted ad campaign.

You should probably stick to one platform, and it's not the one you think...

Your question about Google vs. Meta is the right one to ask with a limited budget. Spreading £500 across both is a surefire way to get statistically insignificant data from both and learn nothing. You need to pick one and go deep.

Here’s the fundamental difference:

• Google Search is for capturing demand. People are actively typing their problems into a search bar. They have high intent. They are looking for a solution right now.
• Meta (Facebook/Instagram) is for creating demand. People are scrolling through pictures of their friends' holidays. You have to interrupt them with an ad that's compelling enough to make them stop and pay attention. This is much, much harder.

For a £500 learning budget, I'd almost always recommend you start with Google Search Ads. Why? Because it’s a more direct test of your offer. If people are genuinely searching for a solution to the problem you solve, you can get in front of them at the exact moment of their need. The feedback loop is faster and clearer. If nobody clicks on your ad for "emergency Squarespace help for bakers," you learn very quickly that either nobody has that problem, or you've described it wrong. A lesson well worth the small cost.

A huge mistake I see people make is starting with 'awareness' campaigns on Meta. They think they need to "build the brand" first. This is a complete waste of money for a small business or a test campaign. You are literally paying Facebook to find the people in your audience who are least likely to ever buy anything, because their attention is cheap. You must always, always optimise for conversions—a lead, a sale, a booking. Awareness is a byproduct of making sales and delighting customers, not a prerequisite for it.

I remember one client in the B2B environmental controls space who came to us with an extremely high cost per lead. They were running broad campaigns that weren't reaching the right decision-makers. By refining their targeting on platforms like LinkedIn and Meta and focusing only on conversion objectives, we managed to reduce their cost per lead by 84%. It's a powerful demonstration of what happens when you stop shouting at everyone and start talking to the right people who have a problem you can solve.

You'll need to understand the math that actually matters...

This is where your technical background gives you a massive advantage. Most marketers are scared of numbers. You can use them to build an unbeatable edge. The most critical concept you need to grasp is the relationship between Lifetime Value (LTV) and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

It's not about getting the 'cheapest' lead. It's about understanding how much you can afford to spend to acquire a valuable customer. Let's break it down:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): How much does a typical customer pay you per month/year?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin after delivering the service/product?
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

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

Let's imagine you're selling a small subscription service. A customer pays you £50 a month (ARPA). Your gross margin is 70%. And you lose about 5% of your customers each month (Churn).
LTV = (£50 * 0.70) / 0.05 = £35 / 0.05 = £700.

Each customer is worth £700 in gross profit over their lifetime. A healthy LTV:CAC ratio is at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £233 to acquire a single customer and still have a very profitable business. If you know your sales process converts 1 in 5 qualified leads into a customer, you can afford to pay up to £46.60 per lead.

Suddenly, a £30 cost per lead doesn't look expensive anymore, does it? It looks like a great deal. This is the maths that allows you to scale aggressively while your competitors are panicking about their CPLs creeping up. Play around with the calculator below to get a feel for how these numbers interact. It's a game-changer.

I'd say you need to avoid the 'Request a Demo' trap...

So you have an offer, an audience, a platform, and you understand the numbers. The final piece of the puzzle before you launch is the call to action (CTA). This is where most B2B advertising, in particular, completely falls apart.

The "Request a Demo" or "Contact Us" button is possibly the most arrogant, high-friction CTA ever invented. It assumes your prospect, who is probably a busy decision-maker, has nothing better to do than schedule a meeting to be sold to. It offers them zero immediate value and positions you as just another commodity vendor begging for their time. You're asking them to do work for you.

Your offer's only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes them sell themselves on your solution. You must give them something valuable for free to earn the right to ask for their time or money.

What could this look like for your £500 test?

• If you're a service business: Don't offer a "free consultation". Offer a "Free 15-Minute Website Teardown" where you record a quick video pointing out the top 3 conversion killers on their site. It's specific, valuable, and low commitment for them.
• If you have a SaaS idea: Forget a demo. Build a free, simple tool that solves one tiny part of the bigger problem your software will solve. A marketing agency could offer a free headline generator. A data analytics company could offer a 'Data Health Check'.
• If you're selling a course: Give away the first module for free. Or a really comprehensive checklist or template that is immediately useful to your target audience.

For us, when we talk to potential clients, we offer a completely free, 20-minute strategy session where we audit their existing ad accounts. We solve a real problem for them right there on the call. That's how you build trust and demonstrate expertise, not by forcing someone into a sales demo. Your offer must solve a small problem for free to earn the right to solve the big one for money.

You'll need a simple, actionable plan for your first £500...

Alright, let's put this all together into a concrete plan. This is what I would do if I were in your shoes with £500 and a desire to learn what actually works. The objective here is not to build a profitable business in a week, but to get the clearest possible signal on whether your offer has any legs.

I've detailed my main recomendations for you below in a table to give you a clear overview.

This approach transforms your £500 from a "learning expense" into a strategic investment in market research. You're not just learning how to use Google Ads; you're learning if you have a viable business idea, which is a far more valuable lesson.

As you can probably tell, there's a lot more to this than just setting up an ad and hoping for the best. It's a complex process that combines business strategy, psychology, data analysis, and technical skill. It's very easy to make small, costly mistakes that drain your budget without you even realising why its not working.

This is where professional guidance can make a huge difference. Getting an expert to review your strategy before you spend a penny can save you your entire budget and months of frustration. We've seen it all, and we can quickly spot the flaws in an offer or the gaps in a targeting strategy that a beginner might miss.

If you'd like to chat through your specific idea and get a second pair of eyes on your plan, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a look at what you're thinking and give you some honest, actionable feedback to ensure you get the absolute most out of your first campaign.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh