Solved: Need help finding agency/freelancer for Facebook Ads

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out about your goals. It sounds like you're in a pretty good spot – doing well on TikTok is no small feat, and looking to expand to Facebook is the logical next step for an ecommerce brand like yours. You've asked how to find a good agency that won't cost the earth, which is the million-dollar question, isn't it?

I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts, based on my experience running paid ad campaigns for brands just like yours. This is a bit of a brain dump of what I'd be thinking if you were a client of ours. I'll cover how to spot a decent agency from a bad'un, and then I'll walk you through the exact strategy I'd be looking to implement on Facebook. There's a fair bit to get through, but hopefully it gives you a solid framework.

How to spot a good agency (and avoid the cowboys)

First off, let's talk about finding the right partner. It's a proper minefield out there, full of people promising the world. The number one red flag, for me, is anyone who 'guarantees' results. Tbh, in paid advertising, you can't really promise anything for certain. There are far too many variables – market changes, competitor actions, even a change in the weather can affect a campaign. Anyone promising a specific ROAS before they've even touched your account is either lying or naive. You want an expert, not a fortune teller.

So, what should you look for?

-> Real Case Studies: Don't just look at glossy logos on a website. Ask to see detailed case studies. And I mean *detailed*. They should be able to walk you through the problem, the strategy they implemented, and the results. Crucially, are these case studies relevant to you? Have they worked with other beauty or apparel brands? For example, we've worked on a campaign for a women's apparel brand and managed to get them a 691% return on their ad spend, and another eCommerce subscription box campaign hit over 1000% ROAS. An agency worth their salt should have similar stories and be able to explain exactly how they did it. It shows they have a repeatable process, not just dumb luck.

-> The Initial Call: This is where you really get to test their knowledge. When you get on a call with them, it shouldn't feel like a hard sales pitch. It should feel like a strategy session. They should be asking you smart questions about your business, your margins, your customer lifetime value, your current marketing. They should be giving you ideas and insights right there on the call. We offer a free initial consultation where we'll actually go through a potential client's ad account with them and give them actionable advice. 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.

-> Trust is everything: This is a bit of a contrarian take, but if you've seen their detailed case studies, had a great strategy call where they've demonstrated their expertise, and you've seen their reviews... and you *still* feel the need to ask for references to call one of their current clients, it might not be a good fit. From our side, that's often a bit of a red flag. It signals a lack of trust from the very beginning, and a partnership without trust is destined to fail. A good agency has already given you all the proof you should need to make an informed decision.

At the end of the day, you're not just paying for someone to click buttons in Ads Manager. You're paying for expertise, strategy, and a process that's been honed over years and millions in ad spend. That's what you need to look for.

We'll need to look at your numbers first... The Maths of Scaling

Before a good agency even thinks about a creative or an audience, they'll want to understand your unit economics. The most common mistake I see is brands focusing purely on a low Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), without knowing what they can actually *afford* to pay for a customer. This is where calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) becomes absolutely critical.

The question isn't "How low can my CPA go?" but "How high a CPA can I afford to acquire a fantastic customer who comes back again and again?"

Let's do a quick, back-of-the-napkin calculation for a hypothetical beauty brand. You'll need to plug in your own numbers here, but this is the framework:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's your average order value? Let's say it's £40. How many times does a customer buy from you in a year? Let's say it's 3 times. So, your ARPA is £120 per year, or £10 per month.
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on each sale after cost of goods? For beauty, this is often quite high, let's say it's 75%.
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month? This can be tricky to calculate, but a simple way is 1 divided by the average number of months a customer stays with you. Let's say a customer stays for 12 months on average, so your monthly churn is about 8.3% (1/12).

Now, the simple LTV calculation:

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

LTV = (£10 * 0.75) / 0.083
LTV = £7.50 / 0.083
LTV = ~£90

So, in this example, each new customer is worth roughly £90 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is typically 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £30 to acquire a single new customer and still run a very profitable business. Suddenly, a £25 CPA on Facebook doesn't look so scary, does it? It looks like a profitable investment.

Knowing this number changes everything. It dictates your budget, your bidding strategy, and your entire approach to scaling. Without it, you're just guessing.

You probably should forget 'Brand Awareness' on Facebook

Now that you know what a customer is worth, how do we find them on Facebook? Here's the second biggest mistake I see businesses make, and it costs them a fortune. They run "Brand Awareness" or "Reach" campaigns.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: when you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the Facebook algorithm a very specific 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 goes out and finds the users inside your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever buy anything. Why? Because those users aren't in demand. No one else is bidding for them. Their attention is cheap. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising platform to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

For a business like yours that needs to see a return, awareness is a byproduct of sales, not a prerequisite for them. The best form of brand awareness is a happy customer. That only happens through a conversion.

From day one, every penny of your budget should be in a campaign with a Conversion objective, optimising for Purchases. You need to tell the algorithm "Go and find me people who are not just like my current customers, but who behave like them and are likely to pull out their credit card and buy something *today*." This is the only way to build a scalable, profitable advertising engine on Meta platforms.

I'd say you need a proper account structure for Meta Ads...

Right, so we're optimising for conversions. How do we structure the campaigns to do that properly and not just chuck money at a single audience? We use a classic funnel structure: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

This sounds like jargon, but it's just a simple way of separating your campaigns based on who you're talking to: complete strangers, people who've shown some interest, and people who are on the verge of buying. You'll have separate, ongoing campaigns for each.

By structuring your account this way, you can tailor your message and budget to the 'temperature' of the audience. You can afford to spend more to acquire a brand new customer in your ToFu campaign, while your BoFu campaign should be your most efficient, delivering the highest ROAS and recovering what would have been lost sales. You mentioned you generate all your own creatives, which is great. With this structure, you can now show different creatives to different audiences. A product demo video might work for a cold audience, while a user-generated content (UGC) style review might be perfect for your MoFu audience, and a simple image ad with a discount code could be all your BoFu audience needs to get over the line. This level of organisation is what separates amatuer campaigns from professional ones.

You'll need a message they can't ignore

Having the best account structure in the world won't save you if your ads are boring. Since you're creating your own content, the most powerful thing you can do is nail the *messaging* within that content. Your ad copy and video scripts need to speak directly to the pain points and desires of your customer.

A framework I use constantly with my copywriter is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS). It's brutally effective for beauty products.

You don't just sell a "hydrating foundation". You sell the solution to a frustrating, confidence-sapping problem.

Let's break it down:

• Problem: State the problem your customer experiences in their own words.
  "Tired of your foundation looking dry and cakey by 3 PM?"


• Agitate: Poke the bruise. Describe the frustration and negative emotions associated with the problem.
  "You spend ages getting your makeup perfect, only to catch a glimpse in a shop window and see it’s settled into every tiny line. It's frustrating, makes you feel older, and you just want to go home and wash your face."


• Solve: Introduce your product as the clear, simple solution.
  "Our HydroGlow Foundation is different. It's infused with hyaluronic acid and botanicals that move *with* your skin, not sit on top of it. Get a dewy, flawless finish that looks just as fresh at cocktail hour as it did over your morning coffee. Finally, a foundation that works as hard as you do."

See the difference? The first is a feature. The second is a story that sells a feeling: confidence, relief, freedom from frustration. Every ad you run should be built around a core emotional driver like this. Think about the specific nightmares your products solve. Is it acne? The fear of looking tired? The frustration of makeup that won't stay put? Build your messaging around that, and your ads will be infinitely more powerful.

This is the main advice I have for you:

Putting it all together, if you were to work with us, this is what the roadmap would look like. This is the plan you should be looking to implement, whether with an agency or by yourselves. It’s a proven process for scaling eCommerce brands on Facebook.

As you can see, it's a methodical process. There's no magic bullet. It's about having a solid strategy, testing rigourously, understanding the data, and making smart decisions week after week. It's a lot to manage on top of actually running your business, developing new products, and managing logistics.

This is where a good agency earns its fee. They provide the expertise, the process, and the man-hours to execute this plan flawlessly, freeing you up to do what you do best. It's an investment in growth, not just an expense.

I know this was a lot of information, but I hope it's given you a much clearer picture of what 'good' looks like and a solid plan to move forward with. You're in a great position with a £10-20k monthly spend and your own creative production – you have all the ingredients to do very, very well on Facebook.

If you'd like a second pair of expert eyes to go over this and discuss how this framework could be applied specifically to your brand, we offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy session. We could review your current situation in more detail and give you some concrete next steps. No hard sell, just honest advice.

Either way, I wish you the best of luck with the expansion.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh