Solved: Starting Performance Marketing in Atlanta (A Step-by-Step Fix)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how to get started with performance marketing in Atlanta. It can definitely feel a bit overwhelming at first, but the core principles are the same everywhere—it's just about applying them correctly to your local market.

The fundamental problem for most local businesses isn't the city they're in, but the fact their offer and advertising strategy aren't aligned with how customers actually buy. We'll need to fix that first.

We'll need to look at your customer, not your city...

You're asking about strategies for the Atlanta market, which is the wrong question. It implies that people in Atlanta buy services in some magical, unique way. They don't. A business owner in Atlanta with a critical IT failure has the same urgent nightmare as one in London or Tokyo. The "resources available locally" are the same global platforms: Google, Meta, LinkedIn. Your focus should be on the customer's problem, not their postcode.

The first and most important step is to stop thinking about demographics and start thinking about pain. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't "a business in Atlanta, GA." It's a specific person in a specific role experiencing a specific, urgent, and expensive problem that you can solve. For example, if you sell cybersecurity services, your ICP isn't a company. It's the Head of IT who just failed a compliance audit and is terrified of a data breach. Their nightmare is what you're selling a solution to.

You need to become an expert in that nightmare. What industry newsletters do they read? What podcasts do they listen to on their commute? Are they in specific Slack communities or local business groups in Atlanta? This intelligence is the blueprint for your targeting. Without it, you're just throwing money away on generic ads that speak to no one. Do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads. It's a hard truth, but it's the one that separates successful campaigns from failed ones.

I'd say you need to calculate what a customer is actually worth...

Before you spend a penny, you need to know how much you can afford to spend to acquire a customer. Most businesses get this completely backwards. They try to get the cheapest leads possible, which are almost always the worst quality. The real question is: "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a great customer?" The answer is your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Let's break it down. You'll need three numbers:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average monthly revenue from a client?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after accounting for the cost of delivering the service?
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of your clients do you lose each month?

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

This number is your North Star. A healthy business can often afford to spend up to a third of its LTV to acquire a customer (a 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio). So if your LTV is £9,000, you can spend up to £3,000 to get a new client. If your sales team closes 1 in 10 qualified leads, you can afford to pay £300 for that lead. Suddenly, paying for high-quality, targeted ads doesn't seem so expensive—it seems like a sensible investment.

I've put together a simple calculator for you to play with the numbers. You'll quicky see how small changes in churn or margin can dramatically change what you can afford to spend on marketing.

You probably should delete the "Contact Us" button...

Now we get to the most common failure point in performance marketing: the offer. I'm willing to bet your website has a "Contact Us" or "Request a Quote" button. This is a high-friction, low-value Call to Action. It asks a busy prospect to do work just to be sold to. It's arrogant, and it kills conversion rates.

Your offer's only job is to deliver an "aha!" moment of undeniable value that makes the prospect sell themselves on your service. You have to solve a small, real problem for them for free to earn the right to solve the big one for money. For an agency like us, it's a free 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad accounts. For you, it needs to be something similar.

Some ideas:

• If you're an IT firm: A free, automated "Network Security Scan" that identifies the top 3 vulnerabilities on their website.
• If you're a marketing agency: A free, "Local SEO Health Check" that shows their ranking for 5 key terms against 3 local competitors.
• If you're a financial consultant: A "Cash Flow Projection Tool" (a simple spreadsheet template) that helps them forecast the next 90 days.

The offer must be instant, automated if possible, and genuinely helpful. This builds trust and positions you as an expert, not just another vendor. It changes the dynamic from you chasing them to them wanting more of your expertise.

You'll need a simple, effective advertising plan...

With a defined ICP, a strong offer, and a clear understanding of your LTV, now you can finaly think about running ads. The strategy should be simple and focused on intent.

Forget social media for now. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are for generating demand, which is expensive and slow. You need to capture existing demand. That means Google Ads.

You want to target people who are actively searching for a solution to their nightmare. This means focusing on high-intent keywords. These are phrases that signal someone is looking to hire, not just learn.

For example, instead of targeting a broad term like "business consulting," you'd target specific, long-tail keywords like:

• "fractional CFO services atlanta"
• "emergency IT support for small business near me"
• "lead generation agency for law firms"

These searches are made by people with a problem who are looking for a credit card to solve it with. This is where you should spend 80% of your initial budget. Your ad copy must speak directly to their pain point, and the landing page must deliver your high-value, low-friction offer. I remember one campaign we're running for an HVAC company in a competitive area; using Google Ads, they are seeing costs of around $60 per lead. This is a clear example of what's possible when you focus on capturing high-intent customers who are actively looking for a solution.

The flowchart below outlines how you should think about prioritising your ad platforms and audiences. Start at the top and work your way down. Don't even think about the lower-funnel activities until you've mastered capturing high-intent search.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below. This is the exact process we'd follow if we were starting from scratch. It's not about complex tactics; it's about getting the fundamentals right.

This approach requires discipline. It's tempting to try everything at once, but focusing on this structured path is how you build a predictable, scalable lead generation engine. Getting these foundational pieces right is far more important than any specific "Atlanta" marketing trick.

It's a lot to take in, and implementation can be tricky. Getting the ICP right, writing compelling ad copy, and managing Google Ads campaigns requires expertise. A misconfigured campaign can burn through your budget with nothing to show for it. This is often the point where businesses decide to bring in professional help to accelerate the process and avoid costly mistakes.

If you'd like to chat through this in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute consultation where we can look at your specific situation and give you some more tailored advice. Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh