Solved: Career Change to Remote Digital Marketing Roles

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It's completly understandable that you're looking for a change, especially one that offers more stability and remote work opportunities. A lot of people are in the same boat.

I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance from my perspective in paid advertising, which is a specific slice of the digital marketing world. Given your graphic design background, I think you might find it a surprisingly good fit. It's not all about intimidating corporate campaigns; at its core, it's about clear communication and understanding what makes people tick, which sounds like it could align with your interests.

Let's get into what it's *realy* like, beyond the buzzwords.

Your design background is your secret weapon...

First off, let's get one thing straight. Your graphic design background isn't just "some continuity." It's a massive head start. In paid ads, especially on platforms like Meta (Facebook & Instagram) and LinkedIn, the creative – the image or video – does about 80% of the heavy lifting. The ability to create visually compelling ads that stop someone scrolling is a skill that many ad specialists have to outsource or struggle with. You already have the foundational skills. You understand hierarchy, colour theory, and what catches the eye. That's a huge asset.

A lot of the job is remote-friendly. As long as you have a laptop and a decent internet connection, you can manage campaigns from anywhere. I've worked with clients across different time zones without any issues. So yes, if you want to travel, this career path definately supports that lifestyle far more than many other roles in marketing that require more in-person meetings or office presence.

So, what does a day *actually* look like?...

The idea of a "typical day" is a bit of a myth because it changes based on what's happening with your campaigns. But the work generally falls into a cycle. It's not just one thing; it's a loop of thinking, doing, and analysing.

Here's a rough idea of the workflow for any given project:

Some days are heavy on the creative side, where you're storyboarding a video ad or designing a set of images. Other days are deep in spreadsheets and analytics platforms, trying to figure out why one audience is performing better than another. It’s this mix of art and science that keeps it interesting. You're never just doing one thing. You’re part-detective, part-artist, and part-scientist.

You'll need to think like a problem-solver, not a marketer...

This is where most newcomers go wrong. They learn how to use the tools – how to set up a campaign in Facebook Ads Manager – but they don't learn how to think strategically. The tool is just the hammer; you need to know where to swing it.

The first and most important shift is this: forget demographics. "Companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees" is a useless starting point. It leads to boring, generic ads that get ignored. You have to start with pain. You need to identify your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) by their *nightmare*. What is the specific, urgent, expensive problem that keeps them awake at night?

For a B2B SaaS client we worked with, their ICP wasn't "Head of HR". It was "a Head of HR at a fast-growing tech company who is terrified of losing top talent because their onboarding process is a chaotic mess of spreadsheets and forgotten emails." See the difference? One is a job title; the other is a story filled with emotion and urgency. When you understand that nightmare, you know exactly what your ad needs to say. You don't sell "onboarding software"; you sell "a calm, organised first day that makes new hires feel valued and excited."

This is the work you do *before* you even open an ad platform. You have to become an expert in your customer's world. What podcasts do they listen to? What newsletters do they actually read? What influencers do they follow? This intelligence is the blueprint for your targeting and your ad copy.

The ugly truth: your ads will fail if the offer is weak...

Here’s the second biggest secret. The number one reason paid ad campaigns fail has nothing to do with the audience, the creative, or the budget. It's the offer. If what you're asking the user to do isn't compelling, they won't do it. Simple as that.

The absolute worst offer in B2B marketing is the "Request a Demo" button. It is arrogant. It assumes a busy, important person has nothing better to do than schedule a meeting to be sold to. It's high-friction and provides zero immediate value. It positions you as just another vendor begging for their time.

A great offer does the opposite. It delivers an "aha!" moment of undeniable value, for free, right now. It solves a small part of their problem to earn the right to solve the whole thing later.

-> For a SaaS company: A free trial (no credit card) or a freemium plan. Let them *use* the product. I remember one campaign we ran for a B2B software tool which saw a cost per trial of just $7 by focusing on getting people into the product, not onto a sales call.

-> For a service business (like an agency): A free, automated tool or high-value asset. This could be a website SEO audit, a data health check, or a 15-minute video training module. For our own consultancy, we offer a free 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns. We provide real value first.

Your job as an ad specialist isn't just to drive clicks. It's to help your client craft an offer so good that it makes the ad's job easy.

You have to know the numbers that matter...

This is where people from creative backgrounds sometimes get a bit nervous, but the maths is actually quite simple, and it's what separates the amateurs from the pros. The most important question isn't "How low can my cost per lead (CPL) be?" but rather "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a great customer?"

The answer comes from calculating the Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). This tells you what a customer is actually worth to the business over time.

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

Let's break that down with an example. Say you're working for a SaaS company:

-> Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): They make £300 per customer, per month.
-> Gross Margin %: Their profit margin is 70%.
-> Monthly Churn Rate: They lose 5% of their customers each month.

So, LTV = (£300 * 0.70) / 0.05 = £210 / 0.05 = £4,200.

Each customer is worth £4,200 in gross margin. A healthy business model aims for at least a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £1,400 (£4,200 / 3) to acquire a single new customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads, you can afford to pay £140 per lead. Suddenly, a £50 lead from a LinkedIn ad doesn't look expensive; it looks like a bargain.

This is the maths that allows you to scale campaigns confidently. Use the calculator below to see how these numbers interact.

I'd say you need to understand the battlefield before you fight...

Once you've got your strategy, your offer, and your numbers sorted, then you can think about which ad platform to use. The choice of platform depends entirely on where your audience is and what they are doing.

-> Google Ads: This is for capturing existing demand. People are actively searching for a solution to their problem ("emergency electrician near me", "best accounting software for small business"). It's powerful because the intent is high, but it can be expensive and competitive.

-> Meta (Facebook/Instagram) Ads: This is for creating demand. You're interrupting someone's social feed, so your ad needs to be visually engaging (hello, design skills!) and speak directly to a pain point they might not even be consciously thinking about. This is where you target based on interests, behaviours, or lookalike audiences of your existing customers.

A word of warning here: avoid "Brand Awareness" or "Reach" campaigns like the plague. When you choose that objective, you are literally telling Facebook's algorithm "find me the cheapest people to show this ad to." These are the users least likely to click, engage, or buy anything. Their attention is cheap for a reason. You are paying to find non-customers. Always, always optimise for a conversion objective further down the funnel, like leads or purchases. Awareness is a byproduct of sales, not the other way around.

-> LinkedIn Ads: This is your go-to for B2B. The targeting is unmatched. You can target by job title, company size, industry, specific company names, etc. It's expensive – one campaign we worked on generated leads for a client at around $22 per lead, which is much higher than on Meta – but the quality of the leads can be far superior if you need to reach specific decision-makers.

You probably should have a structure for your campaigns...

Whatever platform you chose, you need a logical structure. Don't just throw one ad at a broad audience and hope for the best. A common and effective way to structure your efforts is using a funnel approach: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

-> ToFu (Top of Funnel): This is for cold audiences who have never heard of you. Here, you'll use interest-based targeting or lookalikes of your website visitors. The goal is to introduce the problem and your solution.

-> MoFu (Middle of Funnel): This is for warm audiences. People who have engaged with your ads or visited your website but haven't taken a key action yet. Here you retarget them, perhaps with a different message or offer to bring them back.

-> BoFu (Bottom of Funnel): This is for your hottest audience. People who have added a product to their cart or started a checkout process but didn't finish. You retarget them with ads that overcome final objections, maybe with a reminder or a small incentive.

Here's a look at how that audience priority breaks down, especially for an e-commerce or SaaS business on Meta:

We'll need to look at what results actually cost...

Finally, it's helpful to have a realistic expectation of costs. It's not as simple as "how much does a click cost?". It depends massively on your industry, your target country, and what you're optimising for. A lead for a local cleaning service will cost much less than a lead for enterprise accounting software.

However, here are some very rough ballpark figures based on our experience with many campaigns. For something like a simple email signup in a developed country, you might pay between £0.50-£1.50 per click (CPC), with a landing page conversion rate of 10-30%. That puts your cost per signup (CPA) somewhere between £1.60 and £15. For an actual sale on an e-commerce store, conversion rates are lower (maybe 2-5%), so your cost per purchase could be anywhere from £10 to £75.

The chart below gives you a visual idea of these ranges. Notice how different the costs can be.

The goal isn't just to get the lowest CPA, though. A £2 signup from a low-income country might be less valuable than a £10 signup from the UK if the UK user is more likely to become a paying customer. It's about finding profitable pockets of customers, which brings us right back to strategy.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below as a sort of roadmap if you decide to explore this further:

This is a lot to take in, I know. But it's a field with immense opportunity if you approach it the right way. It’s challenging, requires constant learning as platforms evolve, but it's also incredibly rewarding when you see your work directly driving growth for a business.

You could certainly learn all this on your own through courses and trial and error, but the learning curve can be steep and expensive (you're spending real money to learn). This is why many people start by working at an agency or getting mentorship. It accelerates your learning tenfold because you're working on real accounts, with experienced people to guide you, and seeing what works across different industries.

I hope this detailed breakdown gives you a much clearer picture of what a career in paid ads could look like. It's a fantastic option for someone with your skills who values flexibility and tangible results.

If you'd like to chat more about this, feel free to book in a free, no-obligation consultation with our team. We're always happy to talk shop and offer some guidance.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh