Solved: Scaling Meta Ads in Portsmouth (The Untapped Audience)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I had a look at your question about struggling to scale your Meta Ads in Portsmouth. It's a really common problem, and honestly, one that trips up a lot of businesses when they're working in a specific geographic area. It feels like you hit a wall, and just pumping more money into the ads doesn't seem to move the needle, or worse, it just makes everything more expensive.

The good news is that the issue probably isn't your budget or the potential within Portsmouth. The problem is almost always the approach. "Scaling" in a defined local area like Portsmouth isn't the same as scaling a national ecommerce brand. You can't just increase the spend and expect a proportional increase in results. You have to get a lot smarter and more strategic about how you find and convert the right people within that limited audience pool. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and a bit of a roadmap on how I'd tackle this. It's about shifting your mindset from 'scaling' to 'deepening penetration' and maximising the value you get from the audience that's actually available.

First, let's redefine what 'scaling' means for Portsmouth...

This is probably the most important mental shift you need to make. When a national SaaS company talks about scaling, they mean pouring more money into ads to reach millions of new people across the country or even the globe. For you, in Portsmouth, the potential audience is finite. There are only so many people living in and around the city who could possibly become your customer.

If you just keep increasing your budget while targeting the same broad "everyone in Portsmouth" audience, a few very bad things happen:

• -> Frequency Skyrockets: People start seeing your ad five, ten, fifteen times. At first, it's a reminder. Then it becomes annoying. Then they start hiding your ads, which tells Meta's algorithm your ads are poor quality, and your costs go up.
• -> CPMs Explode: CPM means "Cost Per Mille," or the cost to show your ad to 1,000 people. As you force Meta to show your ad to the same limited pool of people over and over again, you're essentially competing with yourself and other advertisers for the same eyeballs. The algorithm's auction system will charge you a premium for this. Your cost to reach people can easily double or triple, destroying your profitability.
• -> Ad Fatigue Kills Your Creative: Even the best ad creative stops working when people have seen it too many times. Your Click-Through Rate (CTR) will plummet, and your cost per result will go through the roof.

This is a concept called 'Audience Saturation'. You've essentially squeezed all the easy, cheap results from your initial audience, and now you're paying a massive premium for every additional lead or sale. It's the point of diminishing returns, and it happens much faster in a geographically-restricted campaign.

Think of it like this: you're trying to fish in a pond. At first, the fish are biting, and it's easy. But as you catch more, you have to wait longer and work harder for each new bite. Just throwing more bait in the same spot won't help; you need to find new spots in the pond where different fish are hiding. In Portsmouth, your job isn't to spend more; it's to become a better fisherman and find those hidden spots.

I'd say your Ideal Customer is a Nightmare, Not a Postcode...

So how do we find these new fishing spots? We start by forgetting demographics and postcodes. I'd wager your current targeting is something like "Men and Women, aged 25-65, living within a 10-mile radius of Portsmouth". This is the default, lazy approach and it tells Meta's algorithm almost nothing useful.

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

Let's make this practical for a local Portsmouth business:

• -> If you're a plumber: Your ICP isn't "homeowners in Southsea". It's the sheer panic of "a burst pipe flooding the kitchen at 10 PM on a Sunday night." The nightmare is the water damage, the disruption, and the fear of being ripped off by an unreliable tradesperson.
• -> If you run a restaurant: Your ICP isn't "people who like food". It's the soul-crushing boredom of "another Tuesday night with nothing in the fridge, facing another bland takeaway." The nightmare is culinary monotony and the disappointment of a wasted evening.
• -> If you're a financial advisor: Your ICP isn't "people with high incomes". It's the gnawing anxiety of "being in my 40s, earning well, but having no real plan for retirement and seeing my friends buy holiday homes." The nightmare is a future of financial uncertainty and regret.

Once you've isolated that nightmare, everything changes. Your ad copy, your imagery, and your targeting all become laser-focused on that specific problem. You stop talking about yourself ("We are Portsmouth's premier plumbing service") and start talking about them ("Flooded kitchen? Get a trusted, local plumber to your door in under an hour").

This deep understanding of the customer's pain is the foundation. Without it, you have no business spending another single pound on ads. You're just shouting into the void and hoping someone who happens to have a problem right at that second is listening.

You're probably paying Meta to find non-customers...

Here’s an uncomfortable truth about how Meta's ad platform works. When you select a campaign objective like "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and very literal, command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm is incredibly good at its job. It does exactly what you asked. It scours Portsmouth for the users inside your targeting who are the least likely to click an ad, the least likely to engage with a post, and absolutely, positively the least likely to ever pull out a credit card and buy something. Why? Because those users aren't in high demand. Their attention is cheap. Other, smarter advertisers who are optimising for conversions have told Meta not to show ads to these people. So, you're actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

This is a mistake I see all the time. Business owners think they need to "build awareness" first. For a small local business, this is nonsense. The best form of brand awareness is a happy customer telling their neighbour in Copnor about the fantastic job you did. That only happens through a conversion. Awareness is a byproduct of doing good work for real customers, not a prerequisite for making a sale.

From this moment on, you should only ever use campaign objectives that are tied to a real business result:

• -> Sales: If you're an ecommerce business.
• -> Leads: If you need people to fill out a contact form or a quote request.
• -> Messages: If your sales process happens over Messenger or WhatsApp.
• -> Calls: If you want your phone to ring (tracked via the website).

When you tell Meta "find me leads," its algorithm completely changes its behaviour. It stops looking for cheap impressions and starts analysing user behaviour to find the people within Portsmouth who have a history of filling out forms, making enquiries, and becoming leads for other businesses. You're now paying for quality, not quantity. Yes, your CPM might be higher, but your cost per actual result will be far, far lower. You'll stop wasting money on digital window shoppers.

We'll need to look at the untapped audiences in your backyard...

Right, so we've established we need to find new fishing spots and we're using the right bait (a conversion objective). Now, where do we actually find these people in Portsmouth? This is where methodical testing comes in. You need to stop thinking in terms of one big campaign and start thinking like a scientist, with multiple small experiments running at once.

Here's a priority list of audiences you should be testing, adapted for a local business. One campaign we worked on for a home cleaning company got the cost per lead down to £5, and the principles are always the same: start with your highest-intent audiences first.

1. Retargeting Audiences (Your Hottest Prospects)

These are people who have already shown an interest in your business. They've visited your website, watched your videos, or engaged with your Facebook page. In a small city like Portsmouth, someone might not be ready to buy the first time they see you. Long-term retargeting (up to 180 days) is absolutly essential. You're staying top of mind so when their 'nightmare' finally happens, you're the first person they think of.

• -> Website Visitors (Last 30, 90, 180 days)
• -> People who engaged with your Facebook/Instagram Page (Last 365 days)
• -> Video Viewers (People who watched at least 50% of your ad videos)
• -> Previous customer list (you can upload this to create a custom audience)

You can start with a very small budget here, maybe £5-£10 a day. These audiences are small but they convert at a much higher rate than cold audiences.

2. Lookalike Audiences (Finding Clones of Your Best Customers)

This is arguably the most powerful tool on Meta, yet it's often overlooked by local businesses who think their customer list is too small. It isn't. You can upload a list of as few as 100 of your past customers, and Meta's AI will go out and find other people in Portsmouth who share thousands of similar data points and behaviours. It's like creating an army of clones of your perfect customer.

Prioritise creating lookalikes from your most valuable sources:

• -> Lookalike of your uploaded customer list (especially a list of your *best*, highest-spending customers).
• -> Lookalike of people who have become a Lead or Purchase on your website.
• -> Lookalike of people who have spent the most time on your website.

Start with a 1% lookalike in the UK, but then add a second layer of targeting to restrict it just to Portsmouth and the surrounding area. This creates a hyper-qualified local audience.

3. Hyper-Local Detailed Targeting (Going Beyond the Obvious)

This is where your deep knowledge of Portsmouth becomes an unfair advantage. You need to think about what your ideal customer does, where they go, and what they're interested in *locally*. Don't just target "Portsmouth Football Club". Get more granular.

You want to test different 'themes' of interests in separate ad sets. For example:

• -> Local Affluence: People interested in Gunwharf Quays, luxury car dealerships in the area (e.g., Porsche Centre Portsmouth), local private schools, or marinas like Port Solent.
• -> Local Community: People who have engaged with pages like 'Southsea Mums', local news pages (The News, Portsmouth), or community groups.
• -> Local Competitors: People who have shown an interest in the Facebook pages of your direct competitors.
• -> Related Interests: If you're a landscaper, target people interested in local garden centres. If you're a personal trainer, target people who are members of local gyms (if they have a Facebook page you can target).

The key is to create seperate ad sets for each of these audience 'themes'. Don't lump them all together. You want to run them against each other and see which one delivers the cheapest, most qualified leads. After a week or two, you'll have clear data. Turn off the losers, and move the budget to the winners. This is how you systematically 'scale' in a local area.

You'll need to do the math that unlocks local dominance...

This might be the single biggest piece of advice I can give you. The real question isn't "How low can my cost per lead (CPL) go?" but rather "How high a CPL can I afford to pay to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer to that question comes from knowing your numbers, specifically your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Most local businesses have no idea what a customer is actually worth to them over the long term. They focus on the profit from the first transaction, and then make bad decisions based on that incomplete data. They see a £50 cost per lead from a Facebook ad and panic, thinking it's too expensive, without realising that customer might go on to spend £5,000 with them over the next few years.

Let's calculate it. We need three numbers:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month or per year? Be realistic.
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after accounting for costs of goods or service delivery?
3. Monthly or Annual Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month or year? (If you lose 10 out of 100 customers a year, your annual churn is 10%).

The simple formula is: LTV = (Average Annual Revenue Per Customer * Gross Margin %) / Annual Churn Rate

Let's take a local B2C service business, like a window cleaner, as an example:

• Average Annual Revenue: £20 (monthly clean) * 12 months = £240
• Gross Margin: 70% (after cleaning supplies and travel)
• Annual Churn Rate: 20% (you lose 1 in 5 customers each year)

LTV = (£240 * 0.70) / 0.20 = £168 / 0.20 = £840

Suddenly, things look very different. Each new customer is worth £840 in gross margin over their lifetime. A general rule of thumb for sustainable growth is to maintain a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £840 / 3 = £280 to acquire a single new customer.

Now, if your sales process converts 1 in 4 qualified leads into a customer, you can afford to pay up to £280 / 4 = £70 per lead. All of a sudden, that £50 lead from Facebook doesn't look expensive at all. It looks like an absolute bargain. This is the maths that frees you from the tyranny of cheap leads and allows you to advertise confidently and aggressively to dominate the Portsmouth market.

Use the calculator below to figure out your own numbers.

You probably should craft a message they can't ignore...

Once you know who you're talking to (their nightmare), where to find them (your tested audiences), and what they're worth (your LTV), you need to actually say something that grabs their attention. Generic ads get ignored. Hyper-local, problem-focused ads get clicks.

You deploy the classic Problem-Agitate-Solve formula, but with a Portsmouth twist.

1. Problem: Hit them with the pain point you identified. Call it out directly.

2. Agitate: Twist the knife a little. Remind them of the consequences of not solving the problem.

3. Solve: Introduce your business as the simple, obvious solution.

Let's write some ads for hypothetical Portsmouth businesses:

For a local solicitor specialising in conveyancing:

Headline: Buying in Portsmouth? Don't let slow solicitors ruin your dream move.

Body: Is your property chain on the verge of collapse because you're stuck waiting for paperwork? The stress of chasing your solicitor is often worse than the move itself. We're a local Portsmouth firm that prides itself on clear communication and getting you the keys to your new home, faster. Get a fixed-fee quote online in 2 minutes.

For a local dog walker:

Headline: Stuck at work? Your dog deserves more than a rushed walk around the block.

Body: That guilty feeling when you get home late to an energetic, bored dog is the worst. They've been waiting all day for you. Let us give your best mate the adventure they deserve with a proper run on Southsea Common or a splash at Eastney beach. First walk is 50% off for all PO postcodes.

For a high-end local butcher:

Headline: Tired of pale, tasteless supermarket meat?

Body: You plan the perfect Sunday roast, but the centrepiece is a dissapointment. Life's too short for bad meat. We source our beef, lamb and pork from local Hampshire farms, so you get incredible flavour every time. Come and see the difference for yourself on Albert Road. Your family will thank you.

See the difference? These ads speak to a specific frustration and feel like they're from a real local business, not a faceless corporation. They use local landmarks and language. This is how you cut through the noise and connect with people.

And finally... You'll need to fix your offer...

This is the final piece of the puzzle and often the most common failure point. You can have the best targeting and the best ad copy in the world, but if your offer is weak or high-friction, people won't take action. The most arrogant and lazy Call to Action (CTA) in marketing is "Contact Us". It puts all the work on the potential customer. Your offer's only job is to provide undeniable value and make it incredibly easy for the prospect to take the next step.

For a local business, this means creating what we call a 'low-friction offer'. It's a small, easy 'yes' that gets them into your world without them having to commit to a big purchase.

Here’s how you can transform your offers:

Your offer must solve a small, real problem for free (or at a discount) to earn you the right to solve the whole thing. It's about building trust and demonstrating value upfront. A strong, low-friction offer can easily double the conversion rate of your landing page, which in turn halves your cost per lead. It's that powerful.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below in a more structured format. This is the main advice I have for you and the process I would follow to start turning things around.

I know this is a lot to take in, but breaking out of that "scaling" plateau in a local market is entirely possible. It just requires a more methodical, intelligent, and customer-centric approach than simply throwing more money at the problem. It's not about out-spending your competitors; it's about out-thinking them.

Working through these steps—redefining your strategy, fixing your campaign objectives, systematically testing audiences, understanding your numbers, and crafting a message and offer that resonates—is the proven path to achieving it. It takes work and a bit of discipline, but the results are predictable and sustainable.

If you feel this is a bit overwhelming or you'd simply prefer to have an expert take a look under the bonnet of your ad account, that's something we do. We often start with a completely free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session where we can audit your current campaigns together and give you some specific, actionable advice. Sometimes a second pair of expert eyes is all it takes to spot the one or two key things that will unlock growth for you.

Either way, I hope this detailed breakdown has been genuinely helpful for you.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh