Solved: Identifying the Best Meta Ads Agency for Business

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I understand you're finding it a bit of a minefield trying to pick a Meta Ads agency. There's a lot of noise out there, and it's tough to know who to trust. Happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance based on what I've seen work, and what I've seen go horribly wrong for businesses. Hopefully it'll give you a clearer framework for making a decision.

We'll need to look at how you pick the right partner...

This is the first and most important step. Picking the wrong agency is worse than doing nothing at all, because you'll burn through a lot of cash and end up more frustrated than when you started. The market is saturated with people who've taken a course and now call themselves an 'expert', so you've got to be careful.

Your first port of call should always be their case studies. And I don't mean glossy, one-page PDFs with a vague testimonial. You need to see proper, detailed evidence of their work. Are they showing you the actual results? Are they talking about Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), Cost Per Lead (CPL), or just vanity metrics like 'reach' and 'impressions'? Anyone can get a million impressions, that's easy. Getting profitable sales is another story entirely.

Look for experience in a niche thats at least similar to yours. It's not a dealbreaker if they haven't worked with your exact type of business before, but if you sell high-ticket B2B software, you don't want an agency whose only experience is selling cheap t-shirts on Shopify. The strategies are completely different. For example, we've worked on campaigns for everything from a women's apparel brand where we hit a 691% return, to a B2B SaaS where we got the cost per trial down to $7. The approach for each was worlds apart. If an agency can't show you that kind of range or specific expertise relevant to you, be wary.

A good case study should tell a story. What was the problem? What was the hypothesis? What did they test? What were the results? If it just says "we increased sales by 200%", that tells you nothing. How? From what starting point? What was the ad spend? You need context. Their willingness to be transparent with their numbers is a huge indicator of their confidence and honesty.

Next, get on a call with them. This is your chance to interview them. Don't let them just give you a sales pitch. Ask them direct questions about your business. What would their initial strategy be? What audiences would they test first? What kind of offers do they think would work? You're looking for genuine expertise here, not a rehearsed script. They should be asking you a lot of questions too, trying to understand your business, your numbers, your customers. If they just promise you the world without knowing your Customer Lifetime Value or profit margins, they're just guessing. In paid ads, you can't really promise anything. You can have a solid strategy, but you can't guarantee results. Anyone who does is lieing.

This is why we always offer a free initial consultation. We'll literally go through a potential client's ad account with them, live on the call, and point out what we'd do differently. It gives them a real taste of the expertise they'd be getting. Look for an agency that's willing to give you some value upfront, to prove they know their stuff before you've paid them a single penny.

And finally, look at their reviews. What are other clients saying? Are the reviews specific? "They were great to work with" is nice, but "They helped us reduce our CPA from £100 to £7" is much more powerful. That's a real result from a medical job matching client of ours, and it's the kind of specific feedback you want to see.

A quick word of warning from my side: if an agency has shown you detailed case studies, given you a free strategy session, and you've seen their positive reviews... and you still ask to speak to one of their current clients for a reference, that can be a bit of a red flag for the agency. Tbh, for us, it signals a deep lack of trust from the start, and that's not a great foundation for a partnership. A good agency-client relationship is built on mutual trust and respect for each other's expertise.

I'd say you need to understand your customer's real problem...

Once you've found a potentially good agency, or if you're evaluating their proposed strategy, the next thing to get right is the messaging. This is where most advertising fails. It's not the algorithm, it's not the button colours, its the message. Businesses spend so much time talking about themselves, their features, their company history. The brutal truth is that nobody cares.

You need to forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing person made. "Women aged 25-45 who live in London and like yoga" tells you almost nothing of value. It leads to generic ads that speak to no one. 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 demographic; it's a problem state. Let's imagine you sell project management software. Your ICP isn't "a manager at a tech company." It's "a manager who lies awake at 3 AM terrified that a major project deadline is about to be missed, that their best team member is about to quit from burnout, and that they'll look incompetent in front of their own boss." That is a nightmare. That is a problem you can solve. Your ads need to speak directly to that feeling.

Your ad needs to enter the conversation that's already going on in your customer's head. A great framework for this is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).

Problem: You state the nightmare. "Are your team's projects constantly running late and over budget?"
Agitate: You pour salt in the wound. You remind them of the consequences. "Are you tired of stressful status meetings and fielding angry emails from stakeholders? Worried about your reputation as a leader?"
Solve: You introduce your product as the way out. "Our platform gives you a bird's-eye view of every project in real-time, so you can spot bottlenecks before they become disasters. Get back in control."

Another powerful one, especially for SaaS, is Before-After-Bridge.

Before: Paint a picture of their current hell. "Your Monday morning: a mess of spreadsheets, 50 unread emails, and no clear idea of what your team is actually working on."
After: Show them the promised land. "Imagine opening a single dashboard and seeing every project, every deadline, and every team member's workload, all updated in real-time. Calm, clear, and in control."
Bridge: Position your product as the vehicle to get them there. "Our software is the bridge from chaos to clarity. Start your free trial and have your first fully-organised project set up in 10 minutes."

This is not about listing features. Nobody buys features. They buy outcomes. They buy a better version of themselves. They buy a good night's sleep. Your ads, your landing page, your entire marketing message must be laser-focused on that transformation. When we helped a course creator generate over $115k in revenue in just a month and a half from Meta ads, it wasn't because we talked about the number of video modules. It was because we sold the transformation from 'stuck in a dead-end job' to 'running a profitable freelance business'. That's what people pay for.

You probably should kill your 'Request a Demo' button...

Now we get to one of the biggest failure points in B2B advertising, and it applies to many B2C services too: the offer. What are you actually asking people to do when they click your ad?

The "Request a Demo" button is possibly the most arrogant, high-friction Call to Action ever invented. It presumes your prospect, who is likely a busy decision-maker, has nothing better to do than schedule a meeting to be sold to. It screams "I am going to take up an hour of your time to talk about myself." It offers them zero immediate value and positions you as just another commodity vendor they have to sit through a presentation from.

Your offer's only job is to deliver an "aha!" moment. A moment of undeniable value 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 bigger problem for a price.

If you're a SaaS company, this is your secret weapon. The gold standard is a free trial with no credit card required. Or a freemium plan. Let them actually use the product. Let them feel the transformation for themselves. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. You're not generating 'Marketing Qualified Leads' (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; you're creating 'Product Qualified Leads' (PQLs) who are already convinced. We've seen this time and again. We got 1,535 trials for one B2B SaaS client purely because they had a frictionless free trial offer that delivered value instantly.

If you're not a SaaS company, you're not off the hook. You must package your expertise into a tool or asset that provides instant value.

• -> If you're a marketing agency, offer a free, automated website audit that shows them their top 3 SEO opportunities.
• -> If you're a financial consultant, offer a free 'Cash Flow Forecaster' spreadsheet.
• -> If you're a corporate training company, offer a free 15-minute interactive video module on 'How to Handle Difficult Conversations'.

For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, our version of this is the free 20-minute strategy session where we audit a business's failing ad campaigns. We provide real, actionable value for free. This builds trust and demonstrates our expertise far more effectively than any sales pitch ever could. You need to figure out what your version of this is. Your ad shouldn't lead to a high-commitment 'sales meeting'. It should lead to a low-commitment, high-value 'aha!' moment.

You'll need to know who you're talking to...

So you've got a great message and a great offer. Now you need to get it in front of the right people on Meta. The platform is incredibly powerful, but most people use the targeting options poorly.

When you're just starting out and your Meta Pixel has no data, you'll begin with 'Top of Funnel' (ToFu) audiences. This is where you use Meta's detailed targeting options – interests, behaviours, and demographics. The key here is to be specific. Don't just target "business". That's way too broad. Think about your customer's nightmare. What software do they use (e.g., interest: HubSpot, Salesforce)? What publications do they read (e.g., interest: Harvard Business Review)? What public figures do they follow (e.g., interest: Tim Ferriss, Steven Bartlett)? You want to find interests that your ideal customer is much more likely to have than the general population. Layering interests can help too. For example, people who are interested in 'Shopify' AND are 'Facebook Page Admins'. This helps you narrow in on e-commerce business owners.

Once you start getting traffic to your website and people start converting on your offer (e.g., signing up for a trial, downloading your free tool), the real magic begins. You can now build 'Middle of Funnel' (MoFu) and 'Bottom of Funnel' (BoFu) audiences. These are your retargeting audiences.

I usually structure this in order of priority:

BoFu (Hottest Audience - Ready to Buy):
These are people who have shown strong intent but haven't converted yet. You'll show them ads designed to overcome last-minute objections, perhaps with a testimonial or a reminder of the core benefit.
-> People who added to cart but didn't purchase.
-> People who initiated checkout.
-> People who viewed your pricing page.

MoFu (Warm Audience - Engaged & Interested):
These people are aware of you but might need more nurturing. You can show them ads that educate them more about the problem or showcase different use cases for your solution.
-> People who have visited your website in the last 30 days (but excluded the BoFu audiences).
-> People who have watched 50% of one of your video ads.
-> People who have engaged with your Facebook or Instagram page.

After these, you move on to the most powerful tool for scaling: Lookalike Audiences. This is where you tell Meta, "Here is a list of my best customers (or trial signups, or leads). Go and find me millions of other people who look just like them." The better your source audience, the better the Lookalike will be. A Lookalike of your actual paying customers is far more valuable than a Lookalike of all your website visitors.

You should test Lookalikes in order of value:
1. Lookalike of your highest-value customers.
2. Lookalike of all customers.
3. Lookalike of people who completed your main conversion event (e.g., trial signup).
4. Lookalike of people who initiated checkout.
5. ...and so on, down the funnel.

By structuring your campaigns this way (ToFu, MoFu, BoFu), you ensure you're showing the right message to the right person at the right time. It's a system for moving people from being completely unaware of you to becoming a paying customer. It takes discipline and testing, but it's how you build a predictable and scalable advertising machine.

I'd say you have to know your numbers...

This final piece ties everything together. You can have the best agency, the best ads, and the best targeting, but if you don't know your numbers, you're flying blind. The most important question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead go?" but "How high a Cost Per Lead can I afford to acquire a great customer?"

The answer lies in calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). This is the total profit you can expect to make from a single customer over the entire time they're with you. Here's a simple way to work it out for a subscription business:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average amount a customer pays you per month? Let's say it's £200.
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after accounting for costs to serve them? Let's say it's 75%.
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month? Let's say it's 5%.

Now, the calculation is:
LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
LTV = (£200 * 0.75) / 0.05
LTV = £150 / 0.05
LTV = £3,000

In this example, each customer is worth £3,000 in gross margin to your business. Now you know what you can afford to spend to get one. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is often cited as 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £1,000 to acquire a single customer and still have a very profitable business model.

Let's say your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a paying customer. This means you can afford to pay up to £100 per qualified lead (£1,000 CAC / 10 leads). Suddenly, that £50 lead from Meta doesn't seem so expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. Without it, you're just guessing and trying to get the 'cheapest' leads, which are often the lowest quality.

This also helps set realistic expectations. For developed countries like the UK, you might see a Cost Per Click (CPC) of £0.50 - £1.50. If your landing page converts at a decent 10%, your cost per lead will be between £5 and £15. If your LTV is £3,000, paying £15 for a lead is fantastic. If you're selling a £20 product with no repeat purchases, it's a disaster. It's all relative to your own numbers.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

I know this is a lot to take in, but getting these foundational pieces right is the difference between a Meta ads account that bleeds money and one that becomes a predictable engine for growth. It's not just about pushing buttons in the Ads Manager; it's about deep strategic thinking before you ever spend a pound.

It's this strategic layer that businesses often miss, and where expert help can make a huge difference. If you'd like to have a chat and get a second pair of eyes on your own situation, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy call where we can look at your specific challenges and give you some actionable advice.

Either way, I hope this detailed breakdown has been helpful and gives you a much clearer path forward.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh