Solved: Scaling Paid Media in Denver (The Real Reason)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out.

I've had a look over your problem, and it's a classic one. You've had some initial success, but now you've hit a ceiling and you're trying to figure out how to scale. The immediate thought is to blame the local market – "the unique demographics and competitive landscape of Denver". Tbh, that's almost always a red herring.

The principles of scaling paid media are universal. They don't really change whether you're in Denver, London, or Dubai. The issue is rarely the city; it's the strategy. You're stuck because the foundational pieces of your advertising aren't strong enough to support a larger budget. Pouring more money on a weak foundation just makes the cracks show faster. So, I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how to rebuild that foundation properly so you can actually scale.

Your ICP is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic

Right, first things first. Let's scrap the idea of "Denver demographics". It's a distraction. Unless you're a brick-and-mortar business that physically cannot serve people outside a 10-mile radius, obsessing over local demographics is a massive waste of time and leads to the kind of generic ads that get ignored.

Your ideal customer isn't defined by their age, income, or the fact they live in Colorado. They're defined by a specific, urgent, and expensive problem they're desperate to solve. A problem that keeps them up at night. This is what I call their "nightmare scenario". Your entire strategy needs to be built around this, not some sterile persona document that says "we target 35-55 year old professionals in the Denver metro area". That tells you absolutely nothing of value.

You need to become an expert in their pain. Let me give you an example. Say you sell project management software. A demographic approach would target "companies with 50-200 employees". A nightmare-focused approach targets the Head of Operations who just had a multi-million dollar project go completely off the rails because her team is using a mess of spreadsheets and Slack messages, and she's terrified she's going to get fired. See the difference? One is a dataset, the other is a person with a career-threatening problem.

To scale, you need to find more of these people. They might be in Denver, they might be in Dallas. The internet makes geography secondary. What matters is their shared pain point. So, the first step is to stop thinking about *who* they are and start thinking about *what their problem is*. What specific pain do you solve better than anyone else?

• What's the career-threatening mistake they're afraid of making?
• What's the repetitive, soul-destroying task that wastes hours of their week?
• What's the missed opportunity that's costing their company millions?

Once you've defined that nightmare, you can find them. They'll be listening to specific podcasts (e.g., 'Acquired' for tech leaders), reading niche industry newsletters (e.g., 'Stratechery'), and using complementary software tools (e.g., HubSpot, Salesforce). This is your targeting. You target their watering holes, not their city. This work is non-negotiable. If you don't do this, you have no business spending another pound on ads.

We'll need to look at your maths... specifically your LTV

The second reason you can't scale is almost certainly because you don't know your numbers. Specifically, you don't know your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). You're probably trying to get the cheapest leads possible, and when you try to scale, the cost per lead (CPL) goes up and your whole model falls apart.

This is the wrong way to think about it. The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer is your LTV. Once you know what a customer is truly worth to you, it completely changes the game. You stop being scared of a £50, £100, or even £500 CPL if you know that customer will generate £10,000 in profit over their lifetime.

Here's the basic formula:

LTV = (Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's break it down:

• ARPA: What's the average amount a customer pays you each month?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after accounting for cost of goods sold (COGS)?
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month?

Calculating this is so important that I've built a little interactive tool for you below. Play around with it. See how small changes in churn or margin can dramatically affect your LTV, and therefore how much you can afford to spend on ads.

With a £10,000 LTV, a healthy 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to get one customer. Suddenly, a £250 lead doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent scaling and frees you from the tyranny of cheap, low-quality leads.

I'd say your offer is the real problem...

Now we get to the bit that trips up 99% of businesses: the offer. I'd bet my house that your main call to action is something like "Contact Us", "Book a Call", or the absolute worst offender, "Request a Demo".

These are possibly the most arrogant calls to action ever invented. They presume your prospect, who is a busy, important person, has nothing better to do than book a meeting to be sold to. It's high-friction and offers zero immediate value. It instantly positions you as a commodity and kills your conversion rates, making it impossible to scale profitably.

To scale, 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. You must solve a small, real problem for them for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing.

What does this look like in practice?

• For a SaaS company: A free trial with no credit card required. Or a freemium plan. Let them use the actual product and feel the transformation. We've worked with numerous SaaS clients, and this is almost always the highest converting offer. I remember one client who went from a £100 CPA to a £7 CPA just by switching from a demo request to a frictionless free trial offer.
• For a service business (like an agency): A free, automated audit tool. A free 15-minute strategy session where you solve one specific problem for them. For us, it's a free ad account review where we find opportunities. For one B2B client, we reduced their cost per lead by 84% by helping them replace their standard sales call offer with a high-value, low-friction alternative.
• For an eCommerce business: A quiz to find the perfect product. A valuable guide (e.g., "The 5 Mistakes People Make When Buying X"). A first-time buyer discount that feels substantial.

The goal is to lower the barrier to entry so much that it's a no-brainer for them to engage. You move from asking for their time and money to giving them value upfront. This fundamentally changes the dynamic and is the single biggest lever you can pull to improve conversion rates and enable scaling. Just look at the difference in the funnel flow below.

You probably should rethink your messaging...

Once you've defined your ICP's nightmare and created a high-value, low-friction offer, you need to connect the two with a message they can't ignore. Your current ads are probably feature-focused and generic. They talk about what your product *is*, not what it *does* for the customer in their darkest hour.

You need to use proven copywriting frameworks that speak directly to their pain.

For a service business, use Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).

• Problem: State their nightmare scenario directly. "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark?"
• Agitate: Pour salt in the wound. Make them feel the pain. "Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round?"
• Solve: Introduce your solution as the ultimate relief. "Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth."

For a SaaS product, use Before-After-Bridge (BAB).

• Before: Describe their current world of pain. "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out."
• After: Paint a picture of the promised land. "Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see where every dollar is going and waste is automatically eliminated."
• Bridge: Position your product as the vehicle to get them there. "Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today."

This is not about being clever or witty. It's about demonstrating a deep understanding of their problem so they feel seen, understood, and confident that you have the solution. Generic messaging gets generic results. Pain-focused messaging gets conversions.

You'll need to stop paying for non-customers...

Finally, a critical tactical point. There's a very good chance you're using the wrong campaign objectives on platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn. Many people who want to "build a brand" run "Reach" or "Brand Awareness" campaigns. This is a catastrophic mistake and a surefire way to burn your cash.

When you tell Facebook's algorithm to get you "Reach", you are giving it a very specific command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price." The algorithm does exactly that. It 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 their attention is cheap. No other advertiser wants them. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

To scale, you MUST use conversion-based objectives. That means optimising for Leads, Sales, Sign-ups, or whatever your most important business outcome is. This tells the algorithm, "I don't care about cheap impressions. Go and find the specific people within my audience who have a history of taking the action I want them to take, even if it costs more to reach them."

Awareness is a byproduct of effective conversion advertising, not a prerequisite for it. Every time you generate a lead or a sale, you're also generating awareness with the right kind of person. We see this all the time. A client running awareness campaigns gets tons of impressions but zero leads. We switch them to a lead generation campaign, and suddenly they're getting qualified leads. I remember one software client for whom we generated over 5,000 trials at only $7 per trial, primarily by shifting their campaigns to focus on conversion objectives and improving their offer.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

This is a lot to take in, I know. It's a fundamental shift away from thinking about tactics and locations towards building a proper, scalable marketing foundation. Here's a summary of the main advice I have for you:

As you can see, scaling paid media isn't about finding a magic "Denver hack." It's about a rigorous, strategic approach to these core pillars. Getting them right is the difference between a campaign that sputters out at £1,000/month and one that can scale profitably to £100,000/month and beyond.

This is complex work that requires deep expertise and constant testing. It's not a "set it and forget it" activity. This is where working with an expert can make a huge difference. We've spent years honing these strategies across dozens of clients, from SaaS startups to established eCommerce brands, driving results like generating $115k in revenue in 1.5 months for a course creator, or achieving a 1000% Return On Ad Spend for a subscription box service.

If you'd like to go through your specific situation and see how these principles could be applied to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a look at your current campaigns and give you some concrete, actionable advice on the spot.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh