Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out! It's completely understandable that you're finding it tough to pick the right paid ads consultant. The market is flooded with people claiming to be experts, and when you're investing your own money, you need to be sure it's going to the right place and will actually generate a return. It's a massive headache for a lot of business owners.
I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience. Hopefully this'll give you a framework to help you sift through the noise and find someone who can genuinely help you scale. What you need is a way to see past the sales pitches and look for real substance.
I'd say you need to look past the sales pitch and at the proof...
The first thing I'd do is cut straight to their case studies. This is the single most important bit of evidence. Don't just glance at them; properly dig in. Are they just showing flashy vanity metrics like '10 million views', or are they talking about the numbers that actually matter to a business owner, like revenue, Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), or Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)?
For example, we worked on a campaign for a luxury brand where getting 10 million views was the goal, and that was great for them. But for most businesses, that number is meaningless. You'd rather want to see something like the campaign where we generated £107k in revenue at a 618% ROAS for a prize draw company, or the B2B software client for whom we got a $22 Cost Per Lead from decision makers on LinkedIn. These are the kind of reuslts that have a direct impact on the bottom line.
You've got to look for experience in a niche similar to yours, or at least with a similar business model. If you're an eCommerce store, you want to see that they've driven returns for other eCommerce clients, like the 691% return we got for a women's apparel brand or the 8x return for a company selling maps. If you're a SaaS business, you'd want to see they've handled things like scaling to 5,082 software trials or, even better, drastically reducing acquisition costs. I remember one medical job matching SaaS client where we managed to reduce their CPA from a painful £100 all the way down to just £7. That's a transformational change for a business. Look for that kind of specific, relevant proof.
Of course, you have to be realistic. Some niches are incredibly tough and the compatition is fierce. But a good consultant will be honest about that. Tbh, a massive red flag for me is anyone who *promises* you results. In paid advertising, you can't promise anything. There are too many variables. The platform algorithms change, market conditions shift, and it's impossible to predict exactly how a new campaign will perform out of the gate. Anyone promising you a specific ROAS before they've even run a single ad is either naive or lying. What they should be able to promise is a clear, logical process for testing and optimisation based on deep experience.
Get on a call with them. An initial chat or consultation should feel less like a sales pitch and more like a strategy session. They should be asking you smart questions about your business, your customers, and your goals. They should be offering you genuine advice right there on the call. We do this with a free initial consultation where we'll actually review a potential client's ad account with them. It gives them a real taste of the expertise they'd be getting. If you leave a call feeling like you've learned something valuable, that's a brilliant sign. If you leave feeling like you've just been read a brochure, they're probably not the one.
You probably should define your customer's nightmare, not their demographic...
This is something that almost everyone gets wrong, and it's why so much advertising spend is completely wasted. A good consultant won't just ask you "who is your customer?". They'll force you to go much deeper. Forget the bland, sterile profiles like "companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees". That tells you absolutely nothing useful and it leads to generic, boring ads that don't speak to anyone.
To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their specific, urgent, and expensive pain point. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. It's a nightmare that keeps them up at night.
Let's make this real. Imagine you're selling a project management tool. Your client isn't just a 'Head of Engineering'. She's a leader who is absolutely terrified that her best, most expensive developers are about to quit because they're so frustrated with the broken, chaotic workflow. That's the nightmare. Your tool isn't just for 'managing tasks'; it's a solution to stop a talent exodus.
Or say you're a legal tech SaaS. The nightmare isn't 'needing better document management'. It's the gut-wrenching fear of a senior partner missing a critical filing deadline because a document was lost, exposing the entire firm to a massive malpractice lawsuit. You're not selling software; you're selling professional survival.
Once you've nailed that nightmare, a proper expert will help you figure out where that person lives online. Not just "on LinkedIn", but where specifically. What niche podcasts do they listen to on their commute, like 'Acquired'? What industry newsletters do they actually read, like 'Stratechery'? What specific SaaS tools are they already paying for, like HubSpot or Salesforce? Are they lurking in the 'SaaS Growth Hacks' Facebook group? Who do they follow on Twitter? Jason Lemkin? This kind of intelligence is the blueprint for your entire targeting stratgey. If a consultant isn't pushing you to think this deeply, they're just going to take your money and target "business owners" on Facebook. You have to do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads.
You'll need to understand the numbers that actually matter...
The next thing a top-tier consultant will bring to the table is a focus on the right metrics. Most business owners are obsessed with the wrong question: "How low can my Cost Per Lead (CPL) go?". The real question, the one that unlocks proper growth, is "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?". The answer is found in its counterpart: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).
If you don't know this number, you're flying blind. A good consultant should be able to walk you through calculating it, or at least explain why it's so fundamental. It's not that complicated. Here’s a typical B2B example:
Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's a typical customer worth to you each month? Let's say it's £500.
Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after costs of service? Let's say it's a healthy 80%.
Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month, on average? Let's say it's 4% (meaning the average customer stays for 25 months).
The calculation is simple:
LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
Let's plug in the numbers:
LTV = (£500 * 0.80) / 0.04
LTV = £400 / 0.04
LTV = £10,000
Here's a small table to make it clearer:
| Metric | Example Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) | £500 / month | The average monthly fee from a client. |
| Gross Margin % | 80% | The profit left after delivering the service. |
| Monthly Churn Rate | 4% | The percentage of clients that cancel each month. |
| Calculated Lifetime Value (LTV) | £10,000 | The total gross profit a client is worth. |
Now you have the truth. Suddenly, things look very different. With a £10,000 LTV, a healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is about 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single new customer and still run a very profitable business. If your sales team converts 1 in every 10 qualified leads into a paying customer, you can afford to pay up to £333 per qualified lead.
That £250 lead from a CTO on LinkedIn that looked expensive before? Now it looks like an absolute bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. It frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to focus on acquiring high-value customers. Any consultant worth their fee should be having this conversation with you.
We'll need to look at what you're actually offering them...
This is probably the number one reason campaigns fail, and it's something a consultant should diagnose immediately: your offer. I see so many businesses with brilliant products or services that fall flat because their call to action is lazy and asks for too much, too soon.
Let's talk about the "Request a Demo" button. It is perhaps the most arrogant, high-friction Call to Action ever invented. It presumes your prospect, who is likely a very busy and important person, has nothing better to do with their day than book a meeting to sit through a sales presentation. It instantly screams "I'm going to sell to you", which makes people put their guard up. It's a huge barrier.
The only job of your offer is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. A good consultant helps you build this bridge.
If you're a SaaS founder, the gold standard is a free trial (no card details needed) or a freemium plan. Let them actually use the product. Let them feel the transformation for themselves. When the product proves its own value, the sale becomes a simple formality. You're not just generating Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you're creating Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) who are already half-convinced.
If you're not a SaaS company, you're not off the hook. You have to bottle your expertise into a tool or an asset that gives them instant value. For an agency, this could be a free, automated website audit. For a data analytics firm, a 'Data Health Check' that finds the top 3 issues in their database. For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, it's our free 20-minute strategy session where we audit a company's failing ad campaigns. You have to solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the bigger one.
This thinking also extends to the ad copy itself. It needs to speak directly to the nightmare we talked about earlier. Here's how that looks in practice:
| Business Type | Messaging Framework & Example |
|---|---|
| High-Touch Service (e.g., Fractional CFO) |
Problem-Agitate-Solve: "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark? (Problem) Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round? (Agitate) Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth. (Solve)" |
| B2B SaaS (e.g., FinOps Platform) |
Before-After-Bridge: "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) 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)" |
A good consultant thinks like a direct-response copywriter. They should be challenging your messaging and helping you craft an offer and a message that people can't ignore.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
This is a lot to take in, I know. But this is the level of strategic thinking you should be looking for. It's not just about what buttons to press inside the ad platforms. This is the main advice I have for you when you're assessing who to work with. It's about building a complete system for acquiring customers profitably. Here’s a summary of what you should be looking for and what a good partner should help you build:
| Area of Focus | Key Action to Take | Why It's Important |
|---|---|---|
| Vetting Consultants | Demand relevant case studies with real business metrics (ROAS, CPA, Revenue), not just views or clicks. Have a proper consultation call that delivers actual value. | This separates the real experts from the salespeople. Proof is in the past results and their ability to think strategically about your business from day one. |
| Defining Your Customer | Define your Ideal Customer Profile by their specific, urgent, expensive "nightmare", not just their demographics. | This is teh foundation for all effective targeting and messaging. It allows you to create ads that resonate deeply instead of generic ads that get ignored. |
| Financial Metrics | Calculate your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Use this to determine your maximum allowable Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). | This liberates you from chasing cheap, low-quality leads. It gives you a clear financial framework to scale your advertising aggressively and profitably. |
| Your Offer & Message | Delete the "Request a Demo" button. Replace it with a high-value, low-friction offer like a free trial, a free tool, or a valuable piece of content that solves a small problem. | This removes the barrier to entry, demonstrates your expertise, and gets prospects to sell themselves on your solution before you even have a conversation with them. |
| Ad Platform Strategy | Focus campaigns on conversion objectives (sales, leads), not awareness. Use a structured approach to test audiences, starting with those most likely to convert. | This ensures your budget is spent finding people who might actually buy, not just the cheapest eyeballs. A structured approach brings method to the madness of testing. |
This is the kind of framework a true partner will help you implement. It's a repeatable system, not a one-off campaign. It's a strategic approach that definately sets you up for long-term, scalable growth.
If you find a consultant who is talking to you about these things—about your business model, your customer's psychology, your core financial metrics, and your offer—then you are likely on the right track. If they just want to talk about keywords and budgets, I'd be very cautious.
This stuff can be complex to implement on your own, and getting it right requires a blend of strategic thinking, financial acumen, copywriting, and deep platform expertise. It's why many businesses decide to work with an expert partner who lives and breathes this every day. It allows them to focus on running their business, safe in the knowledge that their growth engine is being built properly.
If you'd like to have a chat about how these principles could be applied directly to your business, we'd be happy to schedule a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session to look over what you're doing now and identify some opportunities. No hard sell, just straightforward advice.
Hope that helps give you some clarity.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
