Solved: First Marketing Strategy in Newcastle (Step-by-Step Fix)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It's completely normal to feel a bit lost when you're just starting out with performance marketing. There's a lot of noise out there and it’s tough to know where to begin, especially for a new business in Newcastle. I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and a bit of a framework to help you build your first strategy from the ground up. It's not about throwing money at ads and hoping for the best; it's about building a system that works.

The biggest mistake I see new business owners make is jumping straight into tactics—choosing an ad platform or worrying about ad copy—without first getting the foundations right. Your entire strategy rests on three pillars: your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), your Offer, and your Call to Action. Get these wrong, and even the best ads in the world won't save you. Get them right, and you'll be miles ahead of the competition.

We'll need to look at your ICP, which is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic...

Right, let's get this sorted first because it's the bedrock of everything. Forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire might have made. "Companies in the finance sector in the North East with 50-200 employees" tells you absolutely nothing of value. It's a lazy shortcut that leads to generic ads that speak to no one and waste your budget.

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

Let's make this real. Imagine you sell fractional CFO services. Your target isn't "SMEs in Newcastle." It's the founder who lies awake at 3 AM staring at the ceiling, terrified because her cash flow projections are just a shot in the dark. She's worried that one bad month could mean missing payroll, while her competitors are confidently raising their next round of funding. That fear, that specific anxiety—that is your ICP. You're not selling accounting; you're selling a good night's sleep.

Or say you've built a B2B SaaS product for legal tech. The nightmare isn't 'needing document management'. It's the Senior Partner who just got a panicked call because a junior associate missed a critical filing deadline, exposing the entire firm to a multi-million-pound malpractice suit. The chaos, the risk, the potential for catastrophic failure—that's what you're targeting.

Once you've isolated that nightmare, your targeting becomes incredibly clear. Where does this person go to find solutions? What do they read? Who do they listen to? Find the niche podcasts they listen to on their commute. The industry newsletters they actually open, like 'Stratechery' if they're in tech. The specific SaaS tools they already pay for, like HubSpot or Salesforce. Are they members of the 'SaaS Growth Hacks' Facebook group? Do they follow people like Jason Lemkin on Twitter? This intelligence isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your entire targeting strategy. You need to do this work first, or you honestly have no business spending a single pound on ads.

I'd say you need a message they can't ignore...

Now that you know their nightmare, your ad's job is simple: hold up a mirror to their pain and show them the way out. Your ad needs to speak directly to the problems you've identified, using language they use. Forget features and benefits for a moment; focus on empathy and transformation.

There are a couple of powerful frameworks for this. For a high-touch service business, you deploy Problem-Agitate-Solve. You don't sell "fractional CFO services"; you sell a good night's sleep. Your ad would say, "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark? Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round? Stop guessing. Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth." See the difference? You've stated the problem, agitated the pain, and presented your service as the clear solution.

For a B2B SaaS product, you can use the Before-After-Bridge. You don't sell a "FinOps platform"; you sell the feeling of relief. Your ad would say, "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out. (Before). Now, imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see where every dollar is going and waste is automatically eliminated. (After). Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today. (Bridge)."

For high-ticket physical products, maybe something industrial or scientific, you attack the feature-obsession head-on. Don't just state the spec; state its consequence. "Our new mass spectrometer has a 0.001% margin of error. So what? So your lab can publish results with unshakeable confidence, securing more funding and attracting top talent that other labs can only dream of." Your message should never be about what your product *is*, but what it *enables* for the customer.

This is where so many campaigns fall down. The targeting might be okay, but the message is generic. It talks about the business, not the customer. When you can articulate your customer's problem better than they can themselves, they will automatically assume you have the solution. This is how you build trust and authority before they've even clicked the ad.

You probably should delete the "Request a Demo" Button...

Now we arrive at the most common failure point in all of B2B and even some B2C advertising: the offer. Or more specifically, the Call to Action (CTA). The "Request a Demo" button is perhaps the most arrogant and self-serving CTA ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, who is likely a busy 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 request that instantly positions you as a commoditised vendor, just another person asking for their time.

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 has to be something that helps them immediately, even if they never pay you a penny.

If you're a SaaS founder, your unfair advantage is the product itself. The gold standard is a free trial (with no credit card details required) or a generous freemium plan. Let them use the actual product. Let them feel the transformation from their current painful state to a better one. 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 and just need to know where to enter their card details. I remember one of our B2B SaaS clients saw incredible results, generating over 1,500 trials with this exact approach on Meta Ads, because the offer was frictionless and delivered instant value.

If you're not a SaaS company, you are not exempt from this rule. You must bottle your expertise into a tool, content, or asset that provides instant value.

• -> For a marketing agency, this could be a free, automated SEO audit that instantly 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 could 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. We solve a small part of their problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing. Your offer must be so good that people would feel stupid saying no.

You'll need to choose your battleground...

Only now, once you have your ICP, your Message, and your Offer sorted, should you even start thinking about which ad platform to use. The choice isn't about which platform is "best"—it's about where your ideal customer is and what their mindset is when they are there.

There are fundamentally two types of platforms, and you need to understand the difference:

1. Intent-Based Platforms (e.g., Google Search Ads)

This is where people go when they are actively looking for a solution to a problem they already know they have. They are typing things like "electrician near me," "accountant for small business," or "best project management software." They have what we call 'search intent'. They are raising their hand and asking for help.

If your business solves an urgent, known problem, Google Search is almost always the best place to start. For service businesses, it's a no-brainer. One campaign we're running for an HVAC company in a competitive area, and even though the cost per lead is around $60, it works because the leads are high-intent and the contract values are large. For a home cleaning company we worked with, the cost was just £5 per lead. The key is to target keywords that show commercial intent. For an electrician, you'd target "emergency electrician newcastle" not "how to fix a flickering light." One is a cry for help, the other is a search for information.

2. Discovery-Based Platforms (e.g., Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok)

This is where people go to be distracted, entertained, or to connect with peers. They are not actively looking for your solution. In fact, they might not even be aware they have the problem you solve. Your job here is to interrupt their scrolling with a message so relevant to their hidden pain that it stops them in their tracks.

This is where your deep understanding of the ICP's nightmare is so powerful.

• -> For B2B, LinkedIn is often the top choice because of its incredible targeting. You can target by job title, company size, industry, and even specific companies. We've run campaigns for B2B software where we got leads from decision-makers for as low as $22. But remember, they aren't searching for you, so your value-first offer is absolutely crucial.
• -> For B2C or B2B with a broader audience, Meta (Facebook/Instagram) can be incredibly powerful. We've scaled SaaS companies to thousands of trials and generated over $115k in revenue for a course creator in just six weeks using Meta Ads. The key is using interest and behavioural targeting that aligns with the ICP's pain points and hobbies.

The wrong platform means you're shouting into the void. The right platform puts your perfect message in front of your perfect customer at the perfect time. Start with the platform that aligns with your customer's mindset. Are they searching for a solution? Start with Google. Do you need to make them aware of the problem? Start with LinkedIn or Meta.

I'd say you need to understand the real cost of getting a customer...

This is a big one. New business owners often get fixated on the wrong metric. They ask, "What's a good cost-per-lead?" 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 to that question lies in its counterpart: Lifetime Value (LTV).

Understanding your LTV is what separates amateur advertisers from professionals. It's the metric that tells you how much a customer is worth to your business over the entire duration of their relationship with you. Once you know this, you can make much smarter decisions about your ad spend.

Let's break down the calculation. You need three numbers:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month (or year)?
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after deducting the cost of goods sold (COGS)?
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

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

For example, let's say your service costs £500/month (ARPA), your gross margin is 80%, and you lose 4% of your customers each month (Churn).
LTV = (£500 * 0.80) / 0.04
LTV = £400 / 0.04 = £10,000

In this scenario, each customer is worth £10,000 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. Now, a healthy benchmark for many businesses is a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single customer and still run a very profitable business. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a customer, you can now afford to pay up to £333 per qualified lead.

Suddenly, that £250 lead from a CTO on LinkedIn 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, low-quality leads. It allows you to outbid and outspend your competitors who are still stuck worrying about a £10 CPL.

To help you with this, I've put together a small interactive calculator. Play around with your own numbers and see what your LTV might be.

You'll need a simple structure for your campaigns...

Okay, let's get into the practical side of setting up your first campaigns, particularly on a platform like Meta (Facebook/Instagram). When I audit client accounts, a common issue is a messy structure with dozens of random audiences being tested. You need a logical framework. The easiest way to think about this is a marketing funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

This structure helps you talk to different groups of people with different messages based on how familiar they are with your business.

• ToFu (Top of Funnel - Cold Audiences): These are people who have never heard of you. Your goal here is to introduce them to the problem you solve and your solution. This is where your ICP work pays off.
• MoFu (Middle of Funnel - Warm Audiences): These are people who have shown some interest. They've visited your website, watched one of your videos, or engaged with your social media page. They know who you are, but they haven't taken a key action yet. Your goal is to build trust and encourage them to take the next step.
• BoFu (Bottom of Funnel - Hot Audiences): These are people on the verge of converting. They've added a product to their cart, initiated a checkout, or visited your pricing page. They are highly qualified, and your goal is to give them that final nudge to convert.

Here's a visual breakdown of how you might structure your audiences within this funnel. The audiences at the bottom are the highest intent and usually deliver the best return.

For a new business, you'll start at the top (ToFu). Use detailed targeting to reach people based on the interests and behaviours you identified in your ICP research. As soon as you get enough website traffic (you need at least 100 people in an audience, but more is better), you can start building out your MoFu and BoFu retargeting campaigns. The key is to test audiences methodically. Have one campaign for each funnel stage, and then test different audiences within that campaign. Turn off what doesn't work after it's spent a reasonable amount (e.g., 2-3x your target CPA) and scale what does.

You'll need to forget 'Brand Awareness'...

Here is an uncomfortable but crucial truth about awareness campaigns on platforms like Meta. When you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and very dangerous, command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, in its infinite wisdom, does exactly what you asked. It seeks out the users inside your targeting 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. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

This is a trap many new businesses fall into. They think they need to "build the brand" before they can make sales. It's the other way around. The best form of brand awareness for a startup or small business is a competitor's customer switching to your product or service and raving about it online. That only happens through conversion.

Awareness is a byproduct of having a great product that solves a real problem, not a prerequisite for making a sale. That is why, for 99% of new businesses, you should always choose a campaign objective that optimises for a conversion event further down the funnel. That means "Leads," "Sales," or whatever your primary business goal is. This tells the algorithm to find the people within your target audience who have a history of taking the action you want them to take. It's more expensive per impression, but infinitely more effective at finding actual customers.

Even for one of our luxury brand launch clients, where awareness was a goal, the campaign was still built around driving high-quality engagement and traffic, not just cheap impressions. Don't pay to reach non-customers. Pay to find real ones.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot to take in, but building a solid performance marketing strategy is a step-by-step process. Rushing into ads without a plan is the fastest way to lose money. Below is a summary table of the action plan I'd recommend you follow. Work through it in order, and you'll have a much stronger foundation than most of your competitors.

This process takes work, but it's the kind of foundational work that pays off for years. It turns advertising from a gamble into a predictable system for growth. Of course, there's a lot more nuance to it—optimising creative, analysing data, scaling budgets—and this is where expertise can make a huge difference.

Working with an expert can help you navigate this process much faster and avoid costly mistakes. We've helped businesses across dozens of niches, from reducing a client's cost per user from £100 to just £7, to generating over 5,000 software trials for another. That experience allows us to identify the right strategies and implement them efficiently.

If you'd like to have a chat and go through your specific situation in more detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy consultation. We can take a look at what you've got so far and give you some concrete advice on the next steps.

Hope this helps get you started!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh