Solved: Cheapest UK Traffic? (Avoid Wasting Your Ad Budget)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance on your question about finding the cheapest way to get traffic with paid ads in the UK. I'll be blunt: chasing 'cheap traffic' is probably the single biggest mistake I see businesses make, and it's a surefire way to burn through your marketing budget with nothing to show for it. It's a trap.

The goal isn't to get the most clicks for the least money. The real goal is to acquire profitable customers in a predictable way. To do that, we need to completely reframe how you think about advertising, away from cost and towards value. Instead of asking "what's the cheapest traffic?", we need to start asking "what's the highest CPL (Cost Per Lead) or CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) I can afford to pay to acquire a great customer?". The answer to that question is what unlocks scalable, profitable growth. Below, I'm going to walk you through exactly how to figure that out and build a strategy that actually works.

Your Current Goal is a Nightmare, Not a Strategy

Let's talk about the uncomfortable truth of 'cheap traffic'. When you go onto a platform like Meta (Facebook/Instagram) and set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving its incredibly powerful algorithm a very specific, and very dangerous, command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, being the ruthlessly efficient machine it is, does exactly what you asked. It scours your target audience and identifies the users who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever pull out a credit card. Why? Because those users are not in demand. Their attention is cheap. No other advertiser is bidding for them because they're known to be unresponsive. So, you end up "winning" the auction for their eyeballs at a very low cost. You've successfully paid the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product. You'll get a report full of impressive-looking 'reach' and 'impression' numbers, but your bank account will be none the wiser. It's a vanity metric that actively harms your business.

This is the fundamental flaw in seeking cheap traffic. You get what you pay for. The best form of brand awareness for a small or growing business isn't an impression; it's a competitor's customer switching to your product and raving about it. That only happens through a sale. Awareness is a byproduct of having a great product that solves a real problem and is marketed effectively, not a prerequisite for making a sale. For 99% of businesses, especially those with a limited budget, you should never, ever run a campaign that isn't optimised for a tangible business outcome, like a lead, a signup, or a purchase. Anything else is just donating money to Mark Zuckerberg.

Think about the difference in intent. A conversion-focused campaign tells the algorithm, "Go find me people within this audience who have a history of doing the thing I want them to do (e.g., filling out forms, making online purchases)." The platform then uses its trillions of data points to find users who look and behave like your existing customers. Yes, the cost to reach these people—the CPM (Cost Per Mille) or CPC (Cost Per Click)—will be higher. But that's because they are valuable. They are in-market, active, and sought after by your competitors. You are paying a premium to get in front of people who actually buy things. This is the only game worth playing.

You need to understand your numbers first...

So, if 'cheap' is the wrong metric, what's the right one? The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but rather "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer to this is found by calculating its counterpart: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Most business owners I talk to don't know this number, and it's like flying a plane without an altimeter. You have no idea if you're about to crash into a mountain. LTV tells you exactly how much gross margin a customer will generate for your business over their entire relationship with you. Knowing this number changes everything. It turns advertising from a cost centre into a predictable profit engine. Let's break down teh calculation. You only need three numbers:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you typically make from a customer each month (or year, if that's your model)? Let's use a monthly example and say it's £500.
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after accounting for the cost of goods sold (COGS) or the direct costs of servicing that client? Let's say it's 80%.
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month, on average? This is a crucial one. If you lose 4 out of 100 customers a month, your churn rate is 4%.

Now, we put it together in a simple formula:

LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Using our examples:

LTV = (£500 * 0.80) / 0.04
LTV = £400 / 0.04
LTV = £10,000

In this scenario, each customer you acquire is worth £10,000 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. This is your truth. This is the number that should guide every single marketing decision you make.

With this, we can determine your target Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). A healthy, sustainable business model typically aims for an LTV:CAC ratio of at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to a third of your LTV to acquire a customer. In our example, that's £10,000 / 3 = £3,333. You can afford to spend over three thousand pounds to get one new customer and still have a very profitable business model.

Let's take it a step further. If your sales process converts, say, 1 in 10 qualified leads into a paying customer (a 10% lead-to-customer rate), then you can afford to pay up to £333 per single qualified lead (£3,333 / 10). Suddenly, that £50 lead from a Google Search ad or that £250 lead from a hyper-targeted LinkedIn campaign doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth and frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, worthless leads.

We'll need to look at your ICP...

Once you know your numbers, the next step is to figure out exactly who you're targeting. And I need you to forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire made. "Companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees" or "Women aged 25-45 in the UK" tells you almost nothing of value. It leads to generic ads, generic messaging, and wasted money because you're speaking to everyone and therefore no one.

To stop burning cash, you must define your customer by their pain. You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, and potentially career-threatening nightmare. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. A deep frustration.

Let me give you a couple of examples. Your Head of Engineering client isn't just a job title; she's a leader who lies awake at night terrified that her best developers are about to quit out of sheer frustration with a broken, inefficient workflow. She's not buying "CI/CD software"; she's buying a way to retain her top talent and hit her product deadlines. For a legal tech SaaS, the nightmare isn't 'needing better document management'; it's 'a senior partner missing a critical filing deadline due to a lost document and exposing the entire firm to a multi-million-pound malpractice suit.' That's the pain. That's what you sell against.

Once you've isolated that core nightmare, your targeting becomes infinitely easier and more effective. Instead of broad demographics, you find the digital watering holes where these people congregate. Find the niche podcasts they listen to on their commute, like 'Acquired' or 'The Diary of a CEO'. Find the industry newsletters they actually open every morning, like 'Stratechery' for tech leaders. Identify the specific software tools they already pay for, like HubSpot, Salesforce, or Xero. Are they members of the 'SaaS Growth Hacks' Facebook group? Do they follow specific influencers like Jason Lemkin or Rand Fishkin on LinkedIn or Twitter? This level of intelligence isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your entire paid advertising strategy. Do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads.

I'd say you need to pick the right battleground...

Now that you know how much you can spend (from your LTV) and who you're targeting (based on their pain), you can finally choose the right ad platform. The choice isn't about which platform is "cheapest"; it's about which platform gives you the most effective access to your ICP when they are most receptive to your message.

Broadly, we can split platforms into two camps based on user intent:

1. Active Searchers (High Intent) - Google Ads
This is where people go when they have an urgent problem and are actively looking for a solution. They are typing queries like "emergency electrician near me," "best accounting software for small business," or "how to reduce employee churn." This is the lowest-hanging fruit. The intent is so high that even if the Cost Per Click seems expensive (£5, £10, even £50+ in some UK markets), the conversion rates are often much higher, making it incredibly profitable. I remember one campaign we are running for an HVAC company in a competitive area, and they are seeing costs of around $60 per lead from Google Search ads. It sounds high, but one boiler installation job is worth thousands, so the return is fantastic. If your product or service solves an immediate, recognised need, you MUST be on Google Ads. It's not optional.

2. Passive Scrollers (Problem-Aware/Unaware) - Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok etc.
This is what we call "interruption marketing." People on these platforms are not actively looking for your solution. They're scrolling through photos, connecting with colleagues, or watching videos. Your job is to stop them in their tracks with an ad so relevant to their secret pain point that they can't help but pay attention. This is where your deep understanding of their "nightmare" becomes your primary weapon. The creative and the offer are everything here.

• Meta (Facebook/Instagram): Excellent for B2C and some B2B, especially if you can target interests related to their pain. For instance, instead of targeting "small business owners" (too broad), you could target people who are admins of a Facebook Business Page AND have an interest in 'Shopify' or 'WooCommerce'. That's a much clearer signal of an e-commerce business owner. The costs are generally lower than Google or LinkedIn, but the lead quality can be more varied. For one B2B software client, we generated 4,622 registrations at just $2.38 each on Meta by targeting very specific interests related to their industry's problems.
• LinkedIn Ads: This is the king for B2B. It's expensive, there's no way around that. But the targeting is unparalleled. You can target by specific job title, company size, industry, and even specific company names. If your ICP is a "Head of Sales at a SaaS company with 50-200 employees," you can reach exactly that person on LinkedIn. The high cost is justified because you're eliminating wastage. We ran a campaign for an environmental controls company and reduced their cost per lead by 84% by moving from broader platforms to a hyper-specific LinkedIn strategy. The leads were more expensive individually, but they were the *right* leads, so the final cost per qualified customer plummeted.

You probably should fix your offer...

Now we arrive at the most common failure point in all of advertising: the offer. You can have the best targeting in the world and know your numbers inside and out, but if what you're asking people to do is weak, you will fail. The number one reason campaigns don't work is a bad offer.

The "Request a Demo" or "Contact Us for a Quote" button is perhaps the most arrogant and ineffective Call to Action ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, a busy and sceptical decision-maker, has nothing better to do than book a 30-minute slot in their calendar to be sold to by a stranger. It is a high-friction, low-value proposition that instantly positions you as just another commoditised vendor. It screams, "I want to take your time before I've provided any value."

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. It must solve a small piece of their larger nightmare, for free, right now.

• For SaaS Founders: This is your superpower. The gold standard is a free trial (no credit card) or a freemium plan. Let them use the actual product. Let them feel the transformation from their current painful process to your better way. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You aren't generating Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you are creating Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) who are already convinced. I remember one B2B SaaS client who couldn't get traction with a demo model. We helped them switch to a free trial offer and their signups jumped from a handful a week to over 1,500 in a few months.
• For Service Businesses: You are not exempt. You must bottle your expertise into a tool, a piece of content, or an asset that provides instant value. For a marketing agency, this could be a free, automated website audit that shows them their top 3 keyword opportunities. For a data analytics platform, it could be a free 'Data Health Check' that flags the top issues in their database. For a corporate training company, it might be a free 15-minute interactive video module on 'Handling Difficult Conversations' for new managers. For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, it's a 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns completely free of charge. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing.
• For eCommerce: The offer is often a discount, free shipping, or a bundle deal. But it can be more creative. For a high-ticket product, it might be a detailed buyer's guide or a free virtual consultation to help them choose the right model. For one of our eCommerce clients selling women's apparel, we achieved a 691% return not just through great targeting, but by testing different offers until we found that a "20% off your first order + free returns" message massively outperformed a simple "Shop Now" call to action.

Your offer is the bridge between their pain and your solution. Make it easy, valuable, and irresistible for them to cross.

You'll need a proper strategy...

So, let's put all this together into an actionable plan that moves away from "cheap traffic" and towards a professional, results-driven advertising strategy for the UK market.

First, let's set some realistic expectations for costs. The UK is a developed, competitive market. Based on our experience across hundreds of campaigns, you should be prepared for these kinds of numbers. For something like a lead or a signup, you could be looking at a Cost Per Click (CPC) between £0.50 and £1.50. With a decent landing page converting at 10-30%, your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) will likely fall between £1.60 and £15.00 per lead. For eCommerce sales, where conversion rates are lower (typically 2-5%), your CPA could be anywhere from £10 to £75 per sale. These are not just numbers I've pulled from thin air; they are based on real-world client data. If your numbers are wildly outside these ranges, something in your strategy—targeting, creative, offer, or website—is likely broken.

Here is the step-by-step process I would recomend for any business starting out with paid ads correctly:

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

As you can see, this is a world away from simply trying to "get cheap traffic." It's a professional, repeatable system for growth. It requires more upfront thinking, but the payoff is a predictable machine that brings you valuable customers, rather than a leaky bucket that just drains your budget.

It's not just about setting up an ad and hoping for the best. It's about deeply understanding your audience's psychology, the economics of your own business, creating compelling offers, and ruthlessly optimising based on hard data. This is what separates businesses that succeed with paid advertising from those that fail.

That's where expert help can make a huge difference. With years of experience and a deep understanding of this entire process, we can help you avoid the common pitfalls and accelerate your path to profitability. We can provide insights that you might not have thought of and take over the entire implementation and optimisation process for you, ensuring that every pound you spend is working as hard as possible to grow your business.

If you'd like to discuss your specific situation in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session where we can review your goals and give you some tailored advice. It might be the most valuable 20 minutes you spend on your marketing this year.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh