Solved: Conflicting Ad Advice in Exeter (The Real Reason)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It sounds like you're caught in the crossfire of endless conflicting advice on ad creatives, which is a really common and frustrating place to be. Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on this.

The honest truth is that the problem you're facing probably has very little to do with the visual design of your ads. Most businesses that struggle with conversions are failing long before they even think about colours or fonts. They're failing on strategy. The secret isn't about finding the 'best creative for Exeter'; it's about building a message so powerful it would work almost anywhere, because it speaks directly to a person's deepest problems.

Let's unpack what that actually means.

Your ICP is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic

Right, let's get one thing straight. Forget every sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire made. "Small business owners in Exeter" or "females aged 25-40 in Devon" tells you absolutely nothing of value. It's a lazy shortcut that leads to generic, ignorable ads that speak to no one. To stop burning cash on ads that don't convert, you must redefine your customer not by who they are, but by their pain.

You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, and sometimes career-threatening nightmare. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. A mess they are desperate to get out of.

Let's make this real. Imagine you're a local IT support company in Exeter. Your ICP isn't 'companies with 10-50 employees'. That's useless. Your real ICP is the 'Office Manager at a 20-person solicitors firm in Southernhay who is terrified that their ancient server is about to die, taking all their client data with it. She lies awake at night worrying about it, her boss won't listen, and she knows if it goes down, it's her job on the line'.

See the difference? One is a bland demographic. The other is a story, a fear, a motivation. You can write an ad for that person. You can solve her specific nightmare. You can't do anything with 'companies with 10-50 employees'. The same is true if you're selling coffee, clothes, or coaching. There is always a deeper problem you are solving.

Your first job, before you spend another penny on advertising, is to define this nightmare with absolute clarity. Once you've isolated it, you can find where these people exist online. What niche Facebook groups are they in? What local publications do they read? What industry podcasts do they listen to on their commute up the M5? This intelligence isn't just data; it's the blueprint for you're entire advertising strategy. Do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads.

Here’s a quick exercise. Try to fill this out for your business. Be brutally honest.

A message they can't ignore

Once you have a crystal-clear picture of your customer's nightmare, crafting the "creative" becomes ten times easier. Your ad is no longer a desperate plea for attention; it's a targeted strike directly at their biggest source of pain. The goal is to make them stop scrolling and think, "How do they know? That's exactly what I'm going through."

This has nothing to do with flashy design and everything to do with world-class copywriting. There are proven frameworks for this. One of the most effective for any service-based or B2B business is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).

You don't sell "IT Support in Exeter." You sell peace of mind. Here's how it works:

• Problem: You state the nightmare you just defined, simply and directly. You hold up a mirror to their pain.
• Agitate: You pour salt in the wound. You describe the consequences of the problem not being solved. You twist the knife by reminding them of the frustration, the cost, the fear.
• Solve: Now, and only now, you introduce your business as the clear, obvious solution. The escape route. The painkiller.

For our fictional IT Support company targeting the worried Office Manager, the ad copy writes itself:

(Problem) "Is your office server groaning every time someone saves a file? Are you one power cut away from losing years of critical client data?"
(Agitate) "Imagine the chaos. The partners screaming for documents that no longer exist. The deadlines missed. The ICO knocking on your door. All because of a piece of hardware you knew was on its last legs."
(Solve) "Get total peace of mind with our Proactive IT Management. We'll migrate you to a secure cloud system with zero downtime, so you can stop worrying about disasters and get back to your actual job. It’s a switch we’ve helped many businesses make, giving them total peace of mind."

That message, even written on a napkin, will outperform a beautifully designed ad that just says "Exeter IT Services - Call for a Quote" every single day of the week. Because it's not selling a service, it's selling a solution to a nightmare.

Another powerful framework, especially for a product or SaaS, is the Before-After-Bridge.

• Before: Describe their world now, with the problem. Paint a picture of the frustration and limitation.
• After: Describe the dream world, where the problem is gone. Paint a picture of the relief, the success, the freedom.
• Bridge: Position your product or service as the simple, elegant bridge that takes them from the 'Before' state to the 'After' state.

Let's say you're a SaaS that automates invoicing for freelance creatives in Exeter.

(Before) "It's the end of the month. You're staring at a spreadsheet, trying to remember who owes you what, and dreading the 4 hours you're about to waste creating and chasing 12 different invoices."
(After) "Imagine it's the end of the month, and you click one button. All your invoices are sent, tracked, and you get a notification the second you're paid. You spend your afternoon at the Quay, not hunched over your laptop."
(Bridge) "Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Connect your projects and get your time back. Start your free 14-day trial and send your first invoice in minutes."

The message is everything. A powerful message makes the visual design secondary. Focus all you're energy here first.

You probably should change your current offer

Now we arrive at the most common failure point in all of local business advertising: the offer. I'm willing to bet your website's main call to action is something like "Contact Us", "Learn More", or the dreaded "Request a Quote".

The "Request a Quote" button is perhaps one of the most arrogant and ineffective Calls to Action ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, a busy person already stressed by their 'nightmare', has the time and energy to enter into a sales process with you. It is high-friction, low-value, and instantly positions you as a commoditised vendor they have to haggle with. It kills conversions.

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, real problem for them for free, earning you the right to solve the whole thing later. You must give value before you ask for a sale.

If you're not a SaaS company with a free trial, you are not exempt from this rule. You must bottle your expertise into a tool, a piece of content, or an asset that provides instant value. The goal is to lower the barrier to entry so much that saying 'yes' is an easy decision. For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, it's a 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns completely free. We solve a small problem (why are my ads not working?) to earn the right to solve the big one (run my ads for me).

What could this look like for a business in Exeter?

• For a local accountant: Stop offering a "Free Consultation". Start offering a "Free 15-Minute 'Find Your Hidden Cashflow' Analysis" where you find one tangible saving for them on the call.
• For a tradesperson (e.g., electrician): Stop saying "Request a Quote". Start offering a "Free Home Electrical Safety Checklist (PDF)" in exchange for an email, or a "Free Virtual Socket Placement Survey" over a 10-minute video call.
• For a local marketing agency: Stop offering a "Marketing Audit". Start offering a "Free Automated SEO report showing your Top 3 Keyword Opportunities your Exeter competitors are missing".
• For a local gym: Stop selling "Memberships". Start offering a "Free 1-on-1 'Fix Your Form' Session" with a personal trainer.

These offers are specific, valuable, and low-risk. They give the prospect a taste of success and build immense trust. They move you from a pushy salesperson to a helpful expert. This is how you get conversions. Not with a prettier logo.

You'll need to know the only numbers that matter

Once you have the right message and the right offer, you need the right way to measure success. And I guarantee the way you're thinking about it is wrong. Most business owners are obsessed with "Cost Per Click" (CPC) or "Cost Per Lead" (CPL). They try to get these numbers as low as possible, thinking that's a win.

This is a trap. The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer lies in its counterpart: Lifetime Value (LTV).

Knowing your LTV is the key that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. It tells you exactly how much you can afford to spend to acquire a new customer (your Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC) and remain profitable. Without this number, you are flying blind.

Here's the basic formula:

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

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month/year on average? Let's say our Exeter accountant charges an average of £250/month.
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after deducting the costs to service that customer? Let's say it's high, at 80%.
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month? Let's say it's a sticky service, so only 2% of clients leave each month.

Now, the calculation:
LTV = (£250 * 0.80) / 0.02
LTV = £200 / 0.02 = £10,000

In this example, each new accounting client is worth £10,000 in gross margin to the business over their lifetime. A healthy business model aims for a 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio. This means for every £1 you spend acquiring a customer, you should get at least £3 back in lifetime gross margin. In our example, the accountant can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single £10,000 customer.

Suddenly, a £100 lead from a Google Ad doesn't seem so expensive, does it? If they can convert 1 in 10 of those leads into a client, their CAC is £1,000 – well below the £3,333 threshold. This is the maths that allows you to outbid and outspend your competitors who are still naively chasing £5 leads that never convert.

Use the calculator below to get a rough idea of your own LTV. It will change how you view your ad spend forever.

Now, where do we actually run these ads?

Only now, after you've defined the nightmare, crafted the message, built the offer, and understood your numbers, can we even begin to talk about which advertising platform to use. The platform is a distribution channel for your strategy; it is not the strategy itself.

The choice is simpler than you think and it comes back to your customer's nightmare:

Is your ideal customer actively and urgently searching for a solution to their problem? If the answer is yes, then you need to be on Google Ads. They are typing keywords like "emergency electrician exeter" or "best accountant for construction firms" into a search bar. Your job is to show up with an ad that perfectly matches that intent, using the PAS framework we discussed, and leading to a landing page with your low-friction offer. This is about capturing existing demand.

Is your ideal customer suffering from the problem but not actively searching for a solution? They might not even know a solution like yours exists. If the answer is yes, then you need to be on platforms like Meta (Facebook/Instagram) or LinkedIn. Your job is to interrupt their scrolling with an ad that diagnoses their pain and presents your solution. This is about creating demand. You target them based on their interests, job titles, or behaviours that correlate with their nightmare.

One final, critical point. When you use platforms like Meta, there is a massive trap waiting for you: the "Brand Awareness" or "Reach" campaign objective. Here is the uncomfortable truth: when you select these objectives, you are giving the algorithm a very specific command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, being ruthlessly efficient, does exactly what you asked. It seeks out the users inside your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and definately least likely to ever pull out a credit card. Why? Because those users are not in demand by other advertisers. Their attention is cheap. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

Always, always, always optimise your campaigns for conversions. Sales, leads, sign-ups for your high-value offer. This forces the algorithm to find people who not only see your ad but are also statistically likely to take the action you want them to take. It costs more per impression, but you are fishing in a pond full of buyers, not just viewers. Awareness is a byproduct of effective conversion advertising, not a prerequisite for it.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below as a final summary of this approach:

I know this is a lot to take in, and it's a completely different way of thinking about advertising than what you've likely seen elsewhere. That's because this is the strategic foundation that most 'gurus' and agencies skip over. They'd rather sell you tactical tricks because the foundational work is hard. But getting this right is the only path to predictable, profitable growth from paid advertising.

Putting this all into practice – setting up the campaigns correctly, writing the high-converting copy, testing different messages and offers, and managing the platforms – is where deep expertise really pays off. It's one thing to have the map, and another to navigate the terrain.

If you'd like to discuss how this strategic framework could be applied specifically to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a look at what you're doing now and build a tailored plan to get your conversions heading in the right direction.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh