Solved: Best UK Marketing Channels (Data Inside)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

That's a really common question, especially in the UK market where things can get competitive fast. Trying to figure out where to put your ad spend is a massive headache for a lot of businesses. The good news is, there's a much better way to think about it than just picking a platform and hoping for the best. It's less about asking "which channel is best?" and more about asking "where is my ideal customer, and what do I need to say to get their attention?".

I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and a bit of a framework that we use. It should help you cut through the noise and make a much more informed decision. It all starts with forgetting about channels for a minute, and focusing on the people you're actually trying to sell to.

First things first: Your ICP is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic

Before you spend a single quid on an ad, you have to get this right. Most marketing fails because it's aimed at a ridiculously generic profile. I see it all the time: "Our target audience is SMEs in the financial sector with 50-200 employees". That tells you absolutely nothing useful. It's a sterile description that leads to boring, generic ads that nobody clicks on because they don't feel seen.

You need to get rid of this thinking. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a set of demographics. It's a problem state. A nightmare. You need to become an absolute expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, and maybe even career-threatening problem.

Let's make this real. Your client isn't just a 'Head of Sales'. She's a leader who's terrified of missing her quarterly target because her team is wasting half their day on manual data entry instead of selling. That's her nightmare. She's not lying awake at night thinking "I need a CRM integration tool". She's lying awake thinking "I'm going to lose my best salespeople if I don't fix this broken process".

Or for a service business, maybe a fractional CFO. You don't sell "outsourced accounting". Your client is a founder who just raised a seed round and is suddenly petrified of running out of cash before he can show any real traction to his investors. He doesn't know what a proper cash flow forecast even looks like. That's his nightmare. He's not looking for a bookkeeper; he's looking for certainty and a good night's sleep.

Once you've isolated that specific nightmare, everything else becomes easier. You can figure out where these people hang out online. What niche podcasts do they listen to on their commute? What industry newsletters (the ones they *actually* open) are in their inbox? What software tools are they already paying for? Are they in specific Facebook groups or following certain influencers on LinkedIn? This isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your entire targeting strategy. If you don't do this work first, you have absolutley no business spending money on ads. You're just gambling.

Next, you'll need a message they can't ignore

Once you understand their nightmare, you can craft a message that speaks directly to it. Your ad copy stops being about you and your features, and starts being about them and their pain. There are a couple of simple frameworks for this that work incredibly well.

For a service business, you can use Problem-Agitate-Solve. You state the nightmare, you poke the bruise to make it hurt a little more, and then you present your service as the painkiller.

-> Example (for that fractional CFO):

Problem: "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark?"
Agitate: "Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round?"
Solve: "Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth."

See how that's a million times more powerful than "Affordable Fractional CFO Services"?

For a software (SaaS) product, you can use the Before-After-Bridge framework. You paint a picture of their current world of pain, show them the promised land, and then position your product as the vehicle to get them there.

-> Example (for that sales CRM tool):

Before: "Your best sales reps are threatening to quit. They're bogged down in spreadsheets and manual data entry, spending more time typing than talking to prospects."
After: "Imagine your sales team closing deals, not doing admin. Every lead is automatically logged, every follow-up is scheduled, and they have all the info they need at their fingertips."
Bridge: "Our CRM is the bridge that gets you there. It automates 90% of the busywork so your team can focus on what they do best: selling. Start a free trial and see your team's productivity double."

This kind of messaging works because it's rooted in emotion and transformation, not just features. It makes your audience feel understood, which is the first step to building trust.

Before we pick a channel, let's do the maths: How much can you afford to spend?

Here's another massive mistake I see people make. They get obsessed with finding the cheapest leads. They ask, "What's a good Cost Per Lead (CPL)?". That's the wrong question entirely. The real question is, "How high a CPL can I afford to pay to acquire a truly great customer?".

The answer to that lies in a simple but powerful metric: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). This tells you how much profit a customer will generate for your business over their entire relationship with you. Once you know this, you know how much you can spend to get them.

Here's the basic formula:

LTV = (Average Revenue Per Customer Per Month * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate %

Let's break that down:

• Average Revenue Per Customer (ARPA): Simple enough. What's your average monthly fee or sale?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after costs of goods/service are deducted?
• Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month?

Calculating this manually is a pain, so I've built a simple calculator for you below. Play around with the sliders to see how small changes in your numbers can dramatically affect your LTV.

Let's use the default example. If a customer is worth £10,000 in gross margin to you, a healthy business model suggests you can spend up to a third of that to acquire them. That's a Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) of £3,333. Suddenly, paying £50 or even £250 for a highly qualified lead from LinkedIn doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that frees you from the tyranny of cheap leads and unlocks real, sustainable growth.

Now, let's pick your battlefield: Search vs. Social

Okay, with a clear picture of your customer's nightmare and what you can afford to spend, we can finally talk about channels. The choice boils down to one simple question: Is your ideal customer actively searching for a solution to their problem right now?

The answer dictates your entire channel strategy.

If the answer is YES, they are searching... You start with Google Ads.

This is for businesses where the need is urgent and recognized. Think electricians, accountants, or a specific type of software people know they need. They go to Google and type in their problem. Your job is to be there with the answer. We're talking about Google Search ads, where you bid on keywords that signal high intent. For instance, for an outreach software, you'd target keywords like "contact info finding tool" or "software for lead generation". You're not trying to convince someone they have a problem; you're just showing them you have the best solution for the problem they already know they have. This is about capturing existing demand. It's often the fastest path to ROI.

If the answer is NO, they aren't searching... You start with Social Ads (Meta or LinkedIn).

This is for innovative products, new categories, or services that people don't know exist or don't realise they need yet. Your ideal customer isn't searching for you because they don't know a solution like yours is even an option. Your job is to interrupt their day, show them the nightmare they're living in, and introduce your solution as the way out. This is about creating demand.

-> LinkedIn Ads: This is your weapon of choice for hyper-specific B2B targeting in the UK. If you need to reach 'Chief Financial Officers' at 'SaaS companies with 50-200 employees' based in 'London', LinkedIn is the only place you can do that with precision. The leads are more expensive, but the quality is usually much higher because you're reaching the exact decision-makers. I remember one campaign we ran for a B2B software client where we were getting highly qualified leads from decision makers for about $22 a pop, which was a fantastic result for them.

-> Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram): This is more powerful than people give it credit for, even in B2B. While the targeting isn't as granular as LinkedIn, you can still reach business owners ("Facebook page admins", "small business owners"). More importantly, you can target interests based on the 'nightmare' profile you built. What tools do they use? (e.g., target people interested in 'Salesforce'). What publications do they read? (e.g., 'The Economist'). Who do they follow? (e.g., 'Jason Lemkin'). You layer these interests to build a proxy for your ideal customer. It takes more testing, but the scale and cost-efficiency can be huge. In one campaign for a B2B software client, we generated 4,622 registrations at just $2.38 each using this exact approach on Meta.

A deeper look at Meta Ads and the trap of 'Brand Awareness'

If you do go down the social ads route, there's a critical mistake to avoid. Many businesses, especially new ones, are tempted to run "Brand Awareness" or "Reach" campaigns on platforms like Facebook. This is almost always a catastrophic waste of money.

When you tell the Meta algorithm to optimise for "Reach," you're giving it a very clear command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price." The algorithm is brilliant at its job. It goes out and finds all the users in your target audience who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever buy anything. Why? Because their attention is cheap. Nobody else is bidding for them. You are actively paying the most powerful advertising machine in history to find you the worst possible prospects.

The best kind of brand awareness is a new customer telling their friends how great your product is. That only happens after a sale. For any business that needs to see a return on its spend, you should almost always be running a conversion-optimised campaign. That means telling the algorithm to find people who are most likely to take a specific action – make a purchase, fill out a lead form, book a call. The algorithm is smart. Give it the right goal, and it will find the right people.

To do this effectivly, you need to structure your campaigns properly, thinking about the different stages of a customer's journey.

You split your campaigns by funnel stage. You have a 'prospecting' campaign (ToFu) to find new people using interest and lookalike audiences. Then you have a separate 'retargeting' campaign (MoFu/BoFu) to bring back people who visited your website or engaged with an ad but didn't convert. This structure allows you to tailor your message and budget to where someone is in their buying journey.

So, what's the plan? Here's what I'd recommend

This all might seem like a lot, but it can be broken down into a clear, step-by-step process. Instead of randomly testing channels, you build a strategic foundation that gives your ads the best possible chance of success from day one. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below in a table to make it clearer.

Ultimately, your goal isn't just to get clicks or leads; it's to get a profitable Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). This simply measures how much revenue you generate for every pound you spend on advertising. A 3x ROAS means for every £1 you spend, you get £3 back. The calculator below can help you visualise this.

Why you might want some expert help

I know this is a lot to take in, and frankly, the framework is the easy part. The real difficulty lies in the execution: writing compelling ad copy day-in and day-out, navigating the complexities of each ad platform, analysing data to make smart optimisation decisions, and constantly testing new ideas to avoid ad fatigue.

This is where working with a specialist can make a huge difference. It's not just about saving you time (which it does, a lot of it). It's about leveraging years of experience from running campaigns across dozens of industries. We've seen what works and, more importantly, what doesn't. We've made the expensive mistakes so you don't have to. For one medical job matching software client, we took their Cost Per User Acquisition from £100 down to just £7 by restructuring their accounts and refining their targeting on Meta and Google.

If you'd like to chat through your specific situation in more detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a look at your business, your goals, and give you some concrete, actionable advice on what your first steps should be. It's a great way to get a second pair of expert eyes on your strategy.

Either way, I hope this detailed breakdown has been genuinely helpful and gives you a much clearer path forward for choosing your marketing channels.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh