Solved: Struggle with Paid Social Strategy (Real Reason Inside)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It sounds like you're in a spot a lot of businesses find themselves in. It's easy to burn through money on paid social if the strategy isn't right from the get go. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how we'd approach this. Honestly, the problem usually isn't about which buttons to click in Ads Manager; it's about a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes people stop scrolling and actually take action.

Most people think the goal is to find their "target audience". I'd argue that's the wrong way to look at it entirely. We need to stop thinking about demographics and start thinking about nightmares.

We'll need to look at your ICP, but not in the way you think...

Forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire made. "Companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees" tells you absolutely nothing of value. It's a lazy shortcut that leads to generic ads that speak to no one and get ignored by everyone. To stop burning cash, you have to define your ideal customer profile (ICP) by their pain.

You need to become an obsessive expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare. Your Head of Engineering client isn't just a job title; she's a leader terrified of her best developers quitting out of frustration with a broken workflow. Your legal tech SaaS prospect isn't just looking for 'document management'; he's a partner haunted by the fear of missing a critical filing deadline and exposing his firm to a malpractice suit. Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state. A really painful one.

Once you've isolated that nightmare, everything else falls into place. You can find the niche podcasts they listen to on their commute, like 'Acquired'. You can identify the industry newsletters they actually open, like 'Stratechery'. You know the SaaS tools they already pay for, like HubSpot or Salesforce. Are they members of the 'SaaS Growth Hacks' Facebook group? Do they follow people like Jason Lemkin on Twitter? This intelligence isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your entire targeting and messaging strategy. You have to do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads.

I'd say you need to stop paying Facebook to find non-customers...

Here is the uncomfortable truth about so-called "awareness" campaigns on platforms like Meta. When you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and very stupid, command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, in its infinite wisdom, does exactly what you asked. It diligently seeks out the users inside your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever pull out a credit card. Why? Because those users are not in demand. Their attention is cheap. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product. It's madness, but I see it in almost every new account I audit.

The best form of brand awareness for a startup or small business is a competitor's customer switching to your product and raving about it online. That only happens through conversion. Awareness is a byproduct of having a great product that solves a real problem, not a prerequisite for making a sale. That is why, to find customers that will actually buy from you, you should switch your campaign to optimise for a conversion objective, like sales, leads, or appointments. Always. No exceptions. I remember one campaign we took over for a medical job matching SaaS that was spending £100 per user acquisition on an awareness-style campaign. By switching to a conversion objective and fixing their targeting, we got it down to £7. That's the difference it can make.

You probably should focus on your offer...

This brings us to the number one reason why campaigns fail: the offer. An offer that's not providing enough value, or one that's targeting an audience with no need for that value. It's a fundamental lack of demand. I've seen so many founders chase what they think are brilliant ideas, building loads of features, spending years developing the 'perfect' product, only to launch to the sound of crickets because no one actually has the problem they're trying to solve.

So, how do you avoid that? You build your offer directly from the Nightmare ICP we just talked about. A truly successful offer does three things perfectly:

1. It focuses on a specific audience. This makes the offer and the ads incredibly relevant. When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one. But when you speak directly to a Head of Sales at a Series A startup, your message hits like a sniper rifle.
2. It identifies an urgent, expensive problem this audience has. A good agency doesn't just sell a "brand film". They sell a solution to a deep frustration: "We're a talented firm but we're struggling to build a client base because no one's heard of us." That emotional connection is what drives action.
3. It presents a crystal clear solution. The same agency then productises their service. It's not a vague project; it's a "1-Day Filming Process." It has a name, clear deliverables, and a defined timeline. This makes a complex service feel simple, tangible, and less risky for a buyer to invest in.

Your offer's only job is to solve the nightmare. If it doesn't, it doesn't matter how good your targeting is; your ads are doomed to fail.

You'll need to delete the "Request a Demo" button...

Now we arrive at the most common failure point in all of B2B advertising: the landing page offer. The "Request a Demo" button is perhaps the most arrogant Call to Action ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, a busy C-level decision maker you've just interrupted on social media, has nothing better to do than book a 30-minute meeting to be sold to by a junior SDR. It is high-friction, low-value, and instantly positions you as just another commoditised vendor begging for their time.

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. It must be as frictionless as possible.

For SaaS founders, this is your unfair advantage. The gold standard is a free trial (no card details needed) or a freemium plan. Let them use the actual product. Let them feel the transformation for themselves. We've worked with numerous SaaS clients, and the ones that scale fastest, like one who generated 5082 trials at just $7 each on Meta, almost always lead with the product itself. When the product proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You aren't generating Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you are creating Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) who are already convinced.

If you're not a SaaS company, you are not exempt from this rule. You must bottle your expertise into a tool, content, or asset that provides instant value. For a marketing agency, this could be a free, automated SEO audit that shows them 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, it's a 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns completely free. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing.

I'd say you need a message they can't ignore...

Once you have your Nightmare ICP and your high-value offer, you need to connect the two with a message that stops them dead in their tracks. Your ad copy needs to speak directly to their pain and present your offer as the obvious cure. There are a few tried-and-tested frameworks for this.

For a high-touch service business, you deploy Problem-Agitate-Solve. You don't sell "fractional CFO services"; you sell a good night's sleep. Your ad would say, "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark? Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round? Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth."

For a B2B SaaS product, you use the Before-After-Bridge. You don't sell a "FinOps platform"; you sell the feeling of relief. Your ad would say, "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out. Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see where every dollar is going and waste is automatically eliminated. Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today."

For high-ticket physical products, like lab equipment, you attack the feature-obsession head-on. Don't just state the spec; state its consequence. "Our new mass spectrometer has a 0.001% margin of error. So what? So your lab can publish results with unshakeable confidence, securing more funding and attracting top talent that other labs can only dream of." Your ad copy must be about *them* and *their* problems, not about you and your features.

And then there's the creative. The image or video. For software, we've had several SaaS clients see really good results with UGC (User-Generated Content) style videos. It feels more authentic and less like a slick corporate ad, which helps build trust, especialy on social media platforms.

You'll need to prioritise audiences logically...

Okay, so you've nailed your ICP's nightmare, built an irresistible offer, and written copy that speaks directly to their soul. *Now* we can talk about the tactical side of targeting on platforms like Meta. When I audit client accounts, I often see a complete mess of ad sets testing random audiences with no clear strategy. The key is prioritisation. The further along in the funnel an audience is, the more likely they are to convert, and the better they will usually perform. You should always start with the lowest-hanging fruit.

Here’s how I would typically structure and prioritise audiences for an eCommerce account, but the logic applies to almost any niche:

For new accounts, you have to start at the top (ToFu) to gather data. The key is to pick the right interests. Don't be lazy. If you're targeting eCommerce store owners, targeting "Amazon" is useless because that includes millions of shoppers. Instead, target interests like "Shopify", "WooCommerce", or people who are admins of a "Facebook Business Page". Think about what pages, tools, and influencers your ICP *actually* follows, not just broad categories.

As soon as you have enough data (you need at least 100 people in a custom audience, but more is much better), you build out your retargeting (MoFu and BoFu) and lookalike audiences. Always prioritise lookalikes based on the most valuable actions. A lookalike of "Purchasers" will almost always outperform a lookalike of "All Website Visitors". Test, test, and test again. Run long-term campaigns for each stage of the funnel and ruthlessley turn off audiences that don't perform after they've spent about 2-3x your target cost per conversion.

I'd say you need to understand your numbers...

So, what should you expect to pay for a conversion? This is the million-dollar question, and the honest answer is: it depends. A lot. It depends on your industry, your offer, your targeting, your creative, and the country you're targeting. However, based on the campaigns we've run for dozens of clients, we can give you some realistic ballpark figures.

For conversions that happen quickly, like a lead form submission or an email signup, here's a rough guide. In developed countries (UK, US, CAN, AUS), you're often looking at a Cost Per Click (CPC) between £0.50 and £1.50. With a decent landing page converting at 10-30%, your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) will land somewhere between £1.60 and £15.00.

For more complex conversions like an eCommerce sale, where conversion rates are typically lower (2-5%), that same traffic would result in a CPA between £10.00 and £75.00. For B2B leads, it can be even higher. One of our B2B software clients is getting leads for $22 on LinkedIn, which is actually fantastic for that platform. The key is to know what's realistic so you don't panic and turn off a campaign that's actually performing within a normal range.

And finally, you need to ask the right question...

The real question isn't "How low can my CPA go?" but "How high a CPA can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer lies in its counterpart: Lifetime Value (LTV). If you don't know this number, you are flying blind. You have no idea if a £50 lead is a bargain or a disaster. Let's do the maths.

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

Now, the calculation is simple:

LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

LTV = (£500 * 0.80) / 0.04

LTV = £400 / 0.04 = £10,000

In this example, each customer is worth £10,000 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. Now you have the truth. With a £10,000 LTV, a healthy 3:1 LTV:CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) ratio means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a customer, you can afford to pay up to £333 per qualified lead.

Suddenly, that £250 lead from a CTO on LinkedIn doesn't seem expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth and frees you from the tyranny of cheap, low-quality leads.

This is the main advice I have for you:

As you can see, developing an effective paid social strategy goes way beyond just picking some interests and hoping for the best. It's a systematic process of deep customer understanding, strategic offer creation, and disciplined execution. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Putting all of this together is, as you can probably tell, a lot of work. It requires a deep understanding of marketing psychology, platform mechanics, data analysis, and copywriting. This is where getting professional help can make a huge differance. It's not just about setting up an ad; it's about building a predictable growth engine for your business.

If you'd like to go through your specific situation in more detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session where we can have a look at your current setup and give you some more tailored advice. It's a great way to see if we might be a good fit to help you implement this kind of strategy properly.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh