Solved: Scale Local Athens Leads Without Increasing CPL

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It sounds like you've hit a very classic "local ceiling" with your campaigns in Athens. Tbh, this is something we see constantly with geo-restricted campaigns. You start off strong, the algorithm finds the low-hanging fruit (the people actively looking for you), and your Cost Per Lead (CPL) looks great. But then, weeks or months later, performance just flatlines. Costs creep up, volume drops, and you're left scratching your head because you haven't really changed anything.

I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how to break through this plateau. The solution usually isn't doing more of what you're currently doing, but shifting your strategy from "harvesting" demand to "generating" it. It's a bit scary because it feels like you're losing control, but it's the only way to scale in a finite market like Athens.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below, breaking down exactly why this happens and the specific levers you need to pull to get volume up without blowing your budget.

The "Athens Plateau": Understanding Market Saturation

First off, let's look at why this is happening. Athens, while a decent-sized city, is mathematically a finite audience. If you are selling a service or product that appeals to a specific demographic, your "perfect" audience might only be 50,000 to 100,000 people. On platforms like Meta or Google, you might have already reached the top 5% of that audience who were ready to buy right now.

When you try to spend more to get more leads, the platforms have to show your ads to people who are less interested or less "ready." Naturally, these people click less (lower CTR) and convert less (lower CR), which drives your CPL up. It's not that your ads are suddenly broken; it's that you've eaten all the apples on the low branches.

Most advertisers panic here and try to narrow their targeting to find "better" people. This is usually a mistake. To scale, you actually need to go broader, but you need to change how you talk to them.

We'll need to look at Broadening Your Targeting (Scary, I know)

I know it sounds counter-intuitive. You want to keep costs low, so logic suggests you should target only the specific people who want your product. But when you are hitting a ceiling, narrow targeting restricts the algorithm's ability to find cheaper conversions in pockets of the population you might not have thought of.

I'd say you should test "Broad Targeting" on Meta (Facebook/Instagram). This means removing interest targeting and lookalikes and just targeting the location (Athens) + age range + gender. That's it.

Why? Because the AI is smarter than us. It looks at who is clicking and converting and finds more people like them within the broad Athens pool. We've seen this work wonders for local businesses because it lowers the CPM (Cost Per 1000 Impressions) significantly. Since the audience pool is larger, the ad auctions are less competitive.

However, you can't just run generic ads to a broad audience. This leads me to the next point.

You probably should use Creative as Your Targeting

If you open up your targeting settings, your ad creative becomes your targeting method. This is a concept that's changed the game in the last year or two.

If you run an ad that says "Best Service in Athens", everyone clicks, but only a few buy. Bad for lead quality. If you run an ad that calls out a specific pain point—"Struggling with [Specific Problem] in Athens?"—only the people with that problem will pay attention.

To scale without increasing CPL, you need to test creative angles that appeal to that "Problem Aware" audience I showed in the chart above. They aren't searching for you yet, so you need to hook them with the problem they are facing.

For example, if you are a B2B service provider (let's say IT support):
Current Ad (In-Market): "Expert IT Support in Athens. Call Now."
New Ad (Scaling): "Is your team complaining about slow WiFi? It's costing you productivity."

The second ad reaches a wider audience (business owners who haven't decided to hire IT support yet but feel the pain) and brings them into your funnel.

You'll need to Optimise Your Funnel Math

This is the boring bit that everyone ignores, but it's where the money is made. When you go for a wider audience, your conversion rate on the landing page often drops because the traffic is "colder".

If your traffic cost (CPC) stays the same, but conversion rate drops, your CPL goes up. To counter this, you must improve the landing page experience. Even a 1% bump in conversion rate can allow you to bid much more aggressively for traffic.

I've built a calculator below so you can see exactly how these metrics play off each other. Have a play with the sliders to see what happens to your CPL if you manage to bump your Conversion Rate (CR) up just a little bit.

I'd say you look at "Demand Gen" vs "Demand Capture"

If you are relying heavily on Google Search Ads, you are limited by the number of people searching. In Athens, that volume hits a hard wall. You can't force more people to search for your service.

To reach a "wider local audience" as you mentioned, you have to move to platforms where people spend their time, not just where they search. This means Meta (Facebook/Instagram), perhaps YouTube, or even TikTok depending on your demographic.

The strategy here is different. On Search, you answer a question. On Social, you have to interrupt a scroll. This requires what I call a "Stop-Scroll" creative strategy. Video ads usually work best here. We've found that raw, authentic videos (UGC style) often outperform polished studio ads because they look like native content.

For example, if you run a local gym in Athens:
Search: Bidding on "Gym Athens". Limited volume, high competition.
Social: Video of a member showing "3 exercises I did to lose 5kg for my Greek summer holiday". This appeals to a huge audience who want to lose weight but aren't currently typing "gym" into Google.

Improving the Offer

Sometimes the bottleneck isn't the ad, it's the offer. A generic "Contact Us" or "Get a Quote" is very high friction. It asks the user to do a lot of work and risk a sales call.

To scale locally without increasing costs, try a "Lead Magnet" or a lower-barrier offer.
- Instead of "Book a Consultation", try "Get our Athens Property Market Report 2024".
- Instead of "Buy Now", try "Get a Free Sample Kit".

This gets more people into your system (leads) at a lower cost. You then nurture them via email or phone to convert them into paying customers. Yes, the initial lead is less "qualified" than a direct buyer, but the volume is there, and the math often works out better in the long run.

Retargeting: The Safety Net

As you broaden your reach, you'll get more site visitors who don't convert immediately. It is crucial (sorry, I mean it's really important!) to have a robust retargeting setup. Since you are in a specific city, your retargeting audience won't be massive, so you don't need a huge budget here.

But you should show them:
1. Testimonials/Reviews (Social Proof).
2. Case studies specific to Athens.
3. An expiring offer to create urgency.

This "sweeps up" the people who were interested in your broad ads but got distracted.

Budget Allocation Strategy

One mistake I see is spreading budget too thin. If you have €2000/month, don't try to be on LinkedIn, Google, FB, TikTok, and Twitter. You'll never exit the learning phase on any of them.

Pick one "Scale" channel (likely Meta for local reach) and one "Intent" channel (Google Search). Put 70% of your budget into the Scale channel to feed the funnel, and 30% into Intent/Retargeting to capture the conversions.

Common Pitfalls in Athens/Local Markets

A few specific things to watch out for in the Greek market or similar local geos:
1. Language: Ensure your ads are in the language your audience actually speaks. In Athens, this is obviously Greek for the most part, but for B2B tech, English might actually perform better. Test both.
2. Seasonality: Athens has huge seasonal shifts (August is dead for B2B, crazy for tourism). Adjust your bids accordingly.
3. Placements: Don't just rely on Newsfeed. Stories and Reels often have cheaper CPMs locally because fewer advertisers have good vertical video assets.

It's worth noting that scaling almost always involves an initial period of instability. When you launch broad campaigns, your CPL might wobble for a week while the pixel learns. You need to hold your nerve. If you panic and pause after 2 days, you'll never scale.

Also, check your frequency. In a city like Athens, ad fatigue sets in faster than in a country-wide campaign. If your frequency hits 3.0 or 4.0 in a week, people are sick of seeing that ad. You need to refresh creatives much more often locally. I'd recommend having a rotation of 3-5 active ads and swapping one out every couple of weeks.

This is the main advice I have for you:

Scaling a local campaign is a bit of a balancing act. You have to accept that you won't get those super cheap, high-intent leads from day one forever. That gold rush ends. The next phase is building a machine that manufactures interest, and that costs a bit more effort in creative and strategy, but it's the only way to grow past the ceiling.

If you're finding this all a bit overwhelming or just want a second pair of eyes on your specific account structure to see where the leaks are, it might be worth considering expert help. We offer a free consultation where we can look at your current Athens setup and give you a roadmap tailored exactly to your numbers.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh