Solved: Boost Brand Interest (without Awareness Campaigns)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts on your situation. It sounds like you're in a common spot, trying to figure out the best way to build awareness and get those first customers in the door. It's a tough nut to crack, for sure.

The main thing I want to get across is that the whole concept of "brand awareness" is a bit of a trap for most businesses, especially when you're starting out. You're probably thinking about getting your name out there to as many people as possible, but that's often a fast track to burning through your budget with very little to show for it. We're going to completely reframe the problem away from "awareness" and towards solving a very specific, painful problem for a very specific group of people. That's how you actually generate interest that turns into sales.

Let's get into it.

We'll need to look at this idea of 'brand awareness'... because it's probably killing your budget

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about what happens when you tell an ad platform like Facebook or Instagram that you want "brand awareness" or "reach". You're giving its incredibly powerful algorithm a very simple command: "Find me the cheapest eyeballs you possibly can."

And the algorithm, being the ruthlessly efficient machine it is, does exactly that. It scours your target audience and finds the people who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively, least likely to ever buy anything from anyone. Why? Because these people aren't in demand. No other advertiser wants them, so their attention is dirt cheap. You are literally paying to advertise to the worst possible segment of your audience.

I remember one client who came to us after spending thousands on a "brand awareness" campaign. They had millions of impressions and a huge reach. They were chuffed. But they had almost zero website clicks and not a single lead. They paid to be ignored by millions. It's a common story.

The goal isn't to be seen by everyone. The goal is to be seen by the right one. The person who has the exact problem that you solve. True awareness, the kind that actually builds a brand, is a byproduct of performance. It’s what happens when a customer has such a good experience with your product that they tell their friends. It comes from solving real problems, not from shouting your name into the void. So, from this point forward, every ad campaign we talk about will have one goal: to get a specific person to take a specific action that moves them closer to becoming a customer. That means optimising for conversions, like leads or sales, right from the start.

I'd say you need to define your customer by their nightmare, not their demographic

This is the most important work you will ever do for your marketing. Forget the bland, sterile personas you've seen before. "Female, 35-50, lives in London, household income £100k+" tells you absolutely nothing useful. It leads to generic ads that speak to no one.

You need to define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) by their pain. You need to become a world-class expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare. Your customer isn't a job title; they are a person living in a 'problem state'.

Let's make this real. Imagine you sell a B2B SaaS product for legal firms. Your old, useless persona is "Law firms with 20-100 lawyers." Your new ICP is defined by the nightmare: "A senior partner is terrified of a junior associate missing a critical filing deadline, exposing the firm to a multi-million-pound malpractice suit and reputational ruin." See the difference? One is a spreadsheet entry; the other is a visceral fear that keeps someone awake at night.

Another one. Say you offer fractional CFO services. Your old persona is "SMEs with £1m-£5m turnover." Boring. Your new ICP is the founder who just stared at their bank balance and realised they're one bad month away from a payroll crisis, while their competitors are confidently plastering news of their latest funding round all over LinkedIn. You aren't selling accounting; you're selling a good night's sleep.

To do this properly, you need to answer these questions:

• What is the absolute worst thing that could happen to them professionally if they DON'T solve this problem? (e.g., They get fired, their project fails, they lose a major client, their business goes under).
• What are the second-order consequences of this problem? (e.g., Their best employees quit out of frustration, they have to work weekends instead of seeing their kids, their board loses confidence in them).
• What 'solutions' have they already tried that failed? (e.g., Hired a cheap freelancer, tried a competitor's tool that was too complex, built a messy spreadsheet). This tells you what they value and what they're frustrated with.
• What language do they use to describe their pain? Get on forums, read reviews of competing products, listen to sales calls. You need to use their exact words in your ads.

Once you have this 'nightmare profile', finding them becomes easy. Where does this person hang out online to solve their professional problems? They're not scrolling through generic news feeds. They're listening to niche podcasts on their commute (like 'Acquired' for tech leaders), reading industry newsletters they actually open (like 'Stratechery'), and asking for advice in private communities (like 'SaaS Growth Hacks' on Facebook). They follow specific influencers on Twitter (like Jason Lemkin). They use other specific software (like HubSpot or Salesforce), which you can often target directly as interests on platforms like Meta.

This intelligence is the entire blueprint for your targeting strategy. Do this work first, or you have absolutely no business spending a single pound on ads.

You probably should build a message they can't ignore

Now that you know their nightmare, you can stop talking about yourself. Nobody cares about your product's features. They only care about their problems. Your ad copy's only job is to reflect their pain back at them so accurately that they feel like you've been reading their mind.

There are a couple of classic copywriting frameworks that work exceptionally well for this. You don't need to be a creative genius; you just need to be empathetic to their problem.

For a high-touch service business, use Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).

1. Problem: State the nightmare you identified in their own language. Hit the nerve directly.
2. Agitate: Pour salt in the wound. Describe the second-order consequences and the frustration of it all. Make them feel the pain even more acutely.
3. Solve: Introduce your service not as a list of deliverables, but as the clear, obvious way out of the mess you just described.

Example for a recruitment agency specialising in tech roles:

• (P) "Your star developer just handed in their notice. Now you're staring at a 3-month project delay and a mountain of technical debt."
• (A) "You could post on job boards and get a hundred irrelevant CVs. Or you could waste weeks interviewing candidates who look good on paper but can't code their way out of a paper bag. All while your competition ships new features."
• (S) "We deliver 3 pre-vetted, technically-tested senior developers to your inbox in 72 hours. Get back to building, not hiring."

For a B2B SaaS product, use Before-After-Bridge (BAB).

1. Before: Paint a vivid picture of their world with the problem. This is their current, frustrating reality.
2. After: Describe their world once the problem is solved. This is the promised land. Make it feel tangible and desirable.
3. Bridge: Position your product as the simple bridge that takes them from the 'Before' state to the 'After' state.

Example for an accounting software:

• (B) "It's the end of the month. You're drowning in a sea of spreadsheets and receipts, trying to figure out your cash flow. You're basically guessing."
• (A) "Imagine opening a single dashboard and seeing your real-time profit & loss, cash position, and financial forecast in seconds. You make decisions with confidence, not anxiety."
• (S) "Our platform is the bridge. It connects to your banks and tools in minutes to give you that clarity. Start your free trial and see your real numbers today."

Notice how none of these examples mention a long list of features. They don't say "we have AI-powered analytics" or "we use a proprietary seven-step sourcing method." It's all about the customer's world and their transformation. That's what sells.

You'll need an offer that actually offers something of value

This is where the vast majority of B2B advertising campaigns fall apart. You can have the perfect audience and the perfect message, but if your call to action is "Request a Demo," you're dead in the water. That is, without a doubt, the most arrogant and self-serving Call to Action ever invented. It presumes that your prospect, a busy, important person, has nothing better to do with their time than schedule a meeting to be sold to. It's high-friction, low-value, and instantly signals that you're just another vendor. You have to do better.

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. You must solve a small, real problem for them for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing for money.

What does this look like in practice?

• If you're a SaaS company: The gold standard is a free trial with no credit card required. Let them actually use the software. Let them experience the 'After' state you promised in your ad. The product itself becomes your best salesperson. I've seen this work time and time again. One of our software clients generated over 5,000 trial signups at just $7 each on Meta by focusing purely on a frictionless free trial offer. Another got 1,535 B2B trials. The product did the heavy lifting.
• If you're an agency or consultancy: You must bottle up your expertise into a tangible asset. Don't offer a "free consultation," which just sounds like a sales call. Offer a "Free Google Ads Account Audit" that identifies the top 3 areas they're wasting money. Offer a "Personalised SEO Teardown" that shows them 5 keywords their competitors are ranking for that they aren't. For our own agency, we offer a free 20-minute strategy session where we actually go into their ad accounts and give them actionable advice they can implement immediately. It provides immense value and builds trust.
• If you sell a complex service: Create a valuable tool or resource. A corporate training company could offer a free 15-minute interactive video module on "How to handle difficult conversations with an employee." A data analytics firm could offer a free "Data Health Check" that scans their database and flags the top 5 inconsistencies.

The key is that the offer must deliver value *independently* of them ever paying you. It has to be so good that they'd almost feel guilty for not talking to you afterwards. By shifting from a high-friction "take" (give me your time) to a low-friction "give" (here's something valuable for free), you completely change the dynamic and your conversion rates will go through the roof.

I'd say you now have to think about how much you can afford to pay for a customer

This is the final piece of the strategic puzzle, and it's the one that separates the amateurs from the pros. The question isn't "How low can I get my cost per lead?" The real question is "How much can I afford to spend to acquire a great customer?" The answer lies in calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Most businesses don't track this, which is madness. Without this number, you're flying blind, making decisions based on feelings instead of facts. It's surprisingly simple to calculate a basic version:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): How much does a typical customer pay you each month?
• Gross Margin %: What is your profit margin on that revenue? (i.e., after your cost of goods or service delivery).
• Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month? (If you lose 2 out of 100 customers a month, your churn rate is 2%).

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

Let's use an example. Say your ARPA is £400, your gross margin is 75%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month (5% churn).

LTV = (£400 * 0.75) / 0.05

LTV = £300 / 0.05 = £6,000

This means that, over their entire 'lifetime', each customer you acquire is worth £6,000 in gross margin to your business. This number changes everything.

Now you can make intelligent decisions. A healthy ratio of LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is typically at least 3:1. This means for a customer worth £6,000, you can afford to spend up to £2,000 to acquire them and still have a very healthy business model.

Let's take it a step further. If your sales team (or you) converts 1 out of every 10 qualified leads into a paying customer, you can afford to pay up to £200 per qualified lead (£2,000 CAC / 10 leads).

Suddenly, that £150 lead you got from a LinkedIn ad doesn't look so expensive anymore, does it? It looks like an absolute bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent scaling. It frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to focus on acquiring high-value customers, even if they cost a bit more upfront. It's how you build a sustainable business, not just a campaign with a low CPL.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To wrap things up, the problem isn't a lack of "brand awareness." The problem is a lack of a sharp, focused strategy that treats advertising as a system for generating profitable customers, not just for getting seen. I've detailed my main recommendations for you in the table below. This is the exact process we'd follow.

I know this is a lot to take in, and it's a complete shift from how most people think about marketing. It moves away from vague notions of 'branding' and towards a systematic, repeatable process for acquiring customers. It's not easy, and there are lots of nuances in the execution—from the technical setup of conversion tracking to the constant testing and optimisation of audiences and creatives.

Getting this right can be the difference between a business that struggles to find its footing and one that scales predictably. If you feel like you could use an expert hand to guide you through this process and implement a strategy like the one I've outlined, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session. We can take a look at your specific situation and give you some clear, actionable next steps.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh