Solved: Paid Ads Without Organic Profiles - Agency Advice

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

That's a really interesting question and something we see a fair bit of. It's good that some of your clients are seeing the light and recognising that paid can often deliver results far quicker and more predictably than organic, especially when resources are tight. I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance on how we navigate this exact situation.

Honestly, your question about using Gmails to set up profiles is touching on a symptom, not the root of the issue. The real conversation isn't about the logistics of creating placeholder profiles; it's about a fundamental, and I'd say much needed, strategic shift away from the "you must be everywhere" organic content hamster wheel towards a more focused, results-driven paid advertising approach. You're on the right track by questioning the necessity of a full-blown organic presence for every client.

We'll need to look at the "Paid vs. Organic" fallacy...

Let's be brutally honest for a moment. For years, the digital markering world has pushed this narrative that every business needs a thriving, engaging, content-rich organic profile on every platform. Agencies have sold it, clients have bought it, and countless hours have been sunk into creating content that, for many businesses, does very little to actually move the needle. It's a resource drain that often serves vanity metrics—likes, shares, followers—over the only metrics that actually pay the bills: leads and sales.

Your clients who are pushing for a paid-only approach are, perhaps unknowingly, onto something very important. They're instinctively understanding that their time and money are finite. Why spend £2,000 a month on a retainer for someone to post three times a week on a Pinterest profile that gets 50 views, when that same £2,000 in a well-structured ad campaign could generate £10,000 in direct sales? It's a simple question of ROI.

The biggest myth we need to bust is the idea of "brand awareness." I've seen so many agencies run awareness campaigns on platforms like Meta, Pinterest, or Snap with the objective set to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness." Here's the uncomfortable truth about what you're actually doing: you are giving the algorithm a direct command to "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price." And the algorithm, being the ruthlessly efficient machine it is, does exactly that. It finds the users inside your targeting parameters who are the least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively, least likely to ever buy anything. Why? Because their attention is cheap. Nobody else is bidding for it. You are literally paying to advertise to the worst possible segment of your audience.

True, valuable awareness is a *byproduct* of effective conversion advertising, not a prerequisite for it. When you run a campaign optimised for sales, and a customer buys your product and has a great experience, they become aware of your brand. When they see a targeted ad that speaks directly to their most urgent problem, they become aware. Awareness without a path to conversion is just noise. Your clients are right to be skeptical of it.

I'd say you should solve the tactical problem first...

Right, let's get your actual question answered. How do you technically manage this? It's much simpler than you think and you should absolutely NOT be using random personal Gmail accounts. That's a recipe for disaster, account suspensions, and a complete lack of professionalism.

Every major ad platform (Meta, Pinterest, Snap, TikTok, etc.) operates through a business-level account manager. For Meta it's Business Manager (or Meta Business Suite), for Pinterest it's a Business Account, and so on. Your agency should have its own Business Manager, and your clients should have theirs. You then gain partner access to their assets (ad account, pixel, etc.).

For the platforms that require a linked "profile" or "page" to run ads, the process is straightforward. You create a minimal, professional, but fundamentally inactive "shell" profile. This profile exists for one reason only: to satisfy the platform's technical requirement to have a public-facing entity attached to the ad account. It is not a community-building tool. It's a key to start the engine.

Here's the process:

1. Use a Professional Email: The client should create their Business Account using their proper company domain email (e.g., marketing@clientcompany.com). This establishes legitimacy.
2. Create the Shell Profile: Inside their Business Manager, create a new Page or Profile. Give it the company name. Upload their logo as the profile picture and a professional banner image.
3. Fill in the Basics: Add the website link, a one-sentence description of the business, and contact information in the 'About' section. That's it. You're done. No posts, no content, no engagement strategy.
4. Link and Forget: Link this new shell page to their ad account within the Business Manager. Now you can run ads that appear to come "from" this page.

The beauty of this is that on most platforms, especially in-feed ads on platforms like Pinterest or in Instagram Stories, the user's attention is on the ad creative itself, not the profile that posted it. They see a compelling image or video, they read the headline, and they click the call-to-action button. Very few will ever click through to the profile, and if they do, seeing a professional but inactive page isn't a red flag. It's just a page. A lack of posts is better than a feed full of low-quality, zero-engagement organic content that you were forced to create.

You probably should focus on what realy matters: The Offer

So, we've established that the profile is a technicality. This should be liberating, because it allows you and your client to focus 100% of your energy on the two things that actually determine the success or failure of a paid campaign: the Offer and the Targeting.

The single biggest reason I see campaigns fail, whether they have an organic presence or not, is a weak offer. Too many businesses lead with a high-friction, low-value Call to Action. The classic example is the "Request a Demo" button on a B2B SaaS website. It's arrogant. It presumes the prospect is so desperate for a solution that they're willing to schedule a meeting to be sold to by a sales rep. In reality, they're busy, skeptical, and have a dozen other tabs open with your competitors.

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 free to earn you the right to ask them to pay to solve the whole thing.

What does this look like in practice for the kind of clients you're running ads for on platforms like Pinterest or Nextdoor?

• For an e-commerce client on Pinterest: Instead of just "Shop Now," the offer could be a "Free Guide to Styling Your Living Room for Spring" that features their products. Or a quiz: "Find Your Perfect Scent Profile" for a candle company. These offers provide value upfront, capture an email address, and then sell on the backend.
• For a local service provider on Nextdoor: Instead of "Get a Quote," the offer could be "Free 21-Point Roof Inspection Checklist" for a roofer, or a "Lawn Health Calculator" for a landscaping company. These are value-first assets that position your client as an expert and build trust before asking for the sale.
• For a B2C SaaS app on Snapchat: Forget "Download Now." A better offer is "Try our Premium Filter Pack for Free for 3 Days" or "Create Your First Video Project, No Credit Card Needed." Let them experience the magic of the product. Once they've created something, they're far more likely to pay. We've seen how powerful this can be; for one app, we drove over 45,000 signups at under £2 each.

The offer has to be a no-brainer. It has to feel like the user is getting the better end of the deal. If your client's offer is weak, no amount of ad spend or clever targeting will save it.

You'll need to get the targeting right, too...

Once you have an irresistible offer, you need to put it in front of the right people. This is where so many agencies fall down. They use sterile, demographic-based profiles: "Women aged 25-45 who live in London and are interested in fashion." This tells you almost nothing of value and leads to generic ads that speak to no one.

You must define your client's Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) not by who they *are*, but by the *nightmare* they are trying to escape. Your targeting should be based on their pain. What is the specific, urgent, expensive problem they are facing right now?

For example, you're not targeting "new homeowners" on Pinterest. You're targeting the person who is staring at a blank wall in their new living room, feeling completely overwhelmed and terrified of choosing the wrong paint colour. Your ad creative and copy needs to speak directly to that feeling of anxiety and offer a simple, elegant solution (your client's product or service). You're not selling "handcrafted jewelry"; you're selling the feeling of confidence a woman gets when she wears a unique piece that makes her stand out.

This "pain-based" targeting allows you to find your audience everywhere. On Pinterest, you can target keywords and interests related to the problem ("living room decor ideas," "how to choose art"). On Snap, you can target audiences who have shown interest in related apps or content. On Nextdoor, you are already inside a geo-fenced community of homeowners who are actively discussing local problems ("anyone know a good plumber?").

Once you understand their pain, you can calculate what solving that pain is worth to them, and in turn, what acquiring them as a customer is worth to your client. This is where you move from thinking about "Cost Per Lead" to thinking about "Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) in relation to Lifetime Value (LTV)". This single calculation is what separates agencies that burn cash from agencies that build empires.

Suddenly, a £50 lead from a highly-targeted ad doesn't seem so expensive when you know that customer is worth £10,000 to the business. This is the math that allows you to scale aggressively and intelligently. It frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to focus on acquiring truly great customers, which is the whole point of this exercise.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To wrap this all up, your agency is on the cusp of a much more sophisticated and effective way of operating. By leaning into your clients' desire for a paid-only approach, you can position yourself as a strategic partner focused purely on tangible business growth, not on fluff. Here are the key recomendations I'd make.

Navigating this requires more than just knowing how to set up an ad account. It requires a deep understanding of business strategy, customer psychology, and the underlying mechanics of the ad platforms. It's about building a coherent system where a powerful offer is delivered to a precisely targeted audience, with every pound of ad spend justified by a clear return on investment. This is where real expertise comes in.

If you'd like to chat through how you could apply these strategic frameworks to your specific clients, we offer a completely free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session where we can audit a campaign and give you some actionable advice. It might be a good way to see how a specialist approach could help you deliver even better results.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh