Solved: Seeking Marketing Consultant Advice

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. It's a shame you had a bad experience asking for advice before; that's not what professional communities should be about. Finding proper guidance can be a bit of a minefield, so I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and a bit of a framework on how I'd approach it. It's not just about finding someone to run ads, it's about finding a partner who can actually think strategically about your business.

We'll need to look at what 'good advice' actually means...

First off, let's get one thing straight. Anyone in markering who promises or guarantees you results is either lying or inexperienced. Paid advertising, when done right, is a process of rigourous testing, data analysis, and strategic iteration. It's not a magic button. The market dictates the results, our job is to navigate it as smartly as possible. So, the first sign of a good consultant is that they don't promise you the world. They promise you a solid process.

The best advice you can get is from someone who diagnoses before they prescribe. They should be asking you more questions than you ask them in an initial chat. They'll want to know about your business model, your margins, your sales process, your customers, and what you've tried before. If they jump straight into "Oh yeah, you need Facebook ads and a funnel," without understanding the fundamentals of your business, they're just selling you a cookie-cutter service. It might work, but it probably won't, and you won't know why.

Real results don't come from secret "hacks" or fancy campaign setups. They come from getting three things right: a compelling Offer for a specific Audience delivered with a clear Message. A great consultant spends 80% of their time working with you to nail these three things before they even think about which buttons to press in the ads manager.

I'd say you start by forgetting about 'marketing' and focus on the nightmare...

Most businesses get their targeting completely wrong. They come up with a sterile, demographic-based profile like "Companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees" or "Women aged 25-40 who like yoga". This tells you precisely nothing of value and leads to generic ads that speak to no one and get ignored.

To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their pain. Their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. A great consultant's first job is to help you excavate this.

For example, your client isn't just a 'Head of Engineering'. She's a leader terrified of her best developers quitting out of frustration with a broken workflow. You don't sell 'workflow software'; you sell 'developer retention'. For a legal tech SaaS, the nightmare isn't 'needing document management'; it's 'a partner missing a critical filing deadline and exposing the firm to a malpractice suit.' You don't sell a feature; you sell 'malpractice insurance'.

Once you've isolated that nightmare, your entire strategy becomes clear. You can find the niche podcasts they listen to on their commute, the industry newsletters they actually open, the SaaS tools they already pay for. This intelligence is the blueprint for your targeting. Any consultant who doesn't start here is just guessing with your money. You have to do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads.

You probably should get obsessed with your numbers (but not the ones you think)...

The second question a good consultant will ask, after "what's the nightmare?", is "what's your LTV?". If you don't know this number, you are flying blind. The real question in advertising isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead (CPL) go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer is your Lifetime Value (LTV).

It's a simple calculation, but it's the most important one in your business. Let's break it down:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's a customer worth to you each month? Let's say £500.
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit on that? Let's say it's 80%.
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month? Let's say it's 4%.

The calculation is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

In this example, that's (£500 * 0.80) / 0.04 = £10,000. Each customer is worth £10,000 in gross margin over their lifetime. A healthy ratio of LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single customer. If your sales team converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a customer, you can afford to pay £333 for that lead.

Suddenly that £250 lead from a CTO on LinkedIn doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. Chasing £5 leads from Facebook that never convert is a fool's errand. You need to be armed with this data before you can have a sensible conversation about ad budgets and targets.

You'll need to judge them on their thinking, not their sales pitch...

So, you know your customer's nightmare and you know your numbers. Now you can start talking to consultants or agencies. Here's how to see through the fluff.

Case Studies are Everything: This is non-negotiable. Don't just look at logos on a website. Ask for detailed case studies. A good case study isn't just "we got a 1000% ROAS". It explains the client's initial problem, the strategy they developed to solve it, the tests they ran, and the ultimate business outcome. Look for experience in a similar niche to yours, or at least a similar business model (e.g., B2B SaaS, high-ticket eCommerce). It shows they understand your world. We have detailed case studies walking through the full strategies for our clients which gives them a realy good idea of what we can do.

The Consultation Call is a Two-Way Interview: When you get on a call, pay attention to the questions they ask. Are they probing your ICP, LTV, and offer? Or are they just talking about themselves and their "proprietary system"? A good initial call feels like a workshop. They should give you ideas and challenge your assumptions right there on the call. We offer a free initial consultation where we review a potential client's strategy and ad account. It gives them a real taste of our expertise before they ever sign anything.

Reviews Tell a Story: Look at their reviews on sites like Clutch or Google. Are they generic ("They were great to work with") or specific ("They helped us reduce our cost per user acquisition for a medical job matching platform from £100 down to just £7"). Specifics are a sign of real results and a good working relationship.

And some red flags. Tbh if someone asks us for references to call one of our clients after they've reviewed our case studies and had a free audit, it signals a deep lack of trust that probably won't get better. A good partnership is built on trust in expertise. If you've seen the proof and spoken to them and still don't trust them, it's not a good fit for either of you. Also, wheter they are based near you is probably the least important factor. You want expertise, not proximity.

You'll need to fix your offer before you do anything else...

Now we get to the most common failure point in all of B2B advertising, and often B2C too: the offer. I've seen beautifully designed ads and perfectly targeted campaigns fall completely flat because what they were asking the user to do was rubbish. The number one reason campaigns fail is an offer that isn't valuable enough or is too much of a commitment.

The "Request a Demo" button is probably the most arrogant Call to Action ever invented. It assumes your prospect, a busy decision-maker, has nothing better to do than book a meeting to sit through a sales pitch. It's high-friction and low-value. Your goal shouldn't be to get a demo, it should be to create a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution.

How do you do that? You solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing.

• For a SaaS company: A free trial (no credit card) or a freemium plan. Let them use the actual product and see the value.
• For a marketing agency: A free, automated SEO audit that finds their top 3 keyword opportunities.
• For a data analytics platform: A free 'Data Health Check' that flags the top issues in their database.
• For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy: A 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns completely free.

You need to give value before you ask for it. A good consultant will challenge your current offer and help you brainstorm a low-friction, high-value alternative. If your offer is weak, no amount of advertising genius will save it.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I've detailed my main recommendations for vetting professional marketing help below. This is the process you should follow to avoid getting burned and to find a genuine strategic partner.

Finding the right consultant is about finding a strategic thinker who will become an extension of your team, not just a pair of hands to manage campaigns. They should push you, challenge your assumptions, and be relentlessly focused on the business metrics that actualy matter—not just clicks and impressions.

This is obviously a lot to take in and even more to implement on your own. If you'd like to have a chat about your specific situation and see how this framework could apply to your business, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can go through your goals, what you've tried so far, and give you some actionable advice you can use, whether you decide to work with us or not.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh