Solved: Market Expansion in Dundee (Data Inside)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I've had a look at your situation. Struggling with market expansion in Dundee because you haven't nailed your target audience is a really common problem, probably the most common one I see. It's the root cause of almost every failing ad campaign. You're right to focus on it, because without it, you're just throwing money into a black hole and hoping for the best.

You're essentially trying to shout a message into a crowded room without knowing who you're trying to talk to. It's no surprise it's not resonating or generating a return. The good news is, this is entirely fixable. It just requires a complete shift in how you think about "targeting". I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how we'd approach this. We're going to forget about broad demographics for a moment and instead focus on the one thing that actually drives a purchase: pain.

Your ICP is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic

Right, let's get straight to it. The first thing you need to do is take that vague idea of a target audience you have in your head and set it on fire. Forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire made. "Businesses in Dundee with 10-50 employees" or "Females aged 25-40" tells you absolutely nothing of value. It leads to generic, boring ads that speak to no one and get scrolled past without a second thought.

To stop burning cash, you must define your customer by their pain. You need to become an obsessive expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. What keeps them awake at 3 AM? What's the one thing that, if it goes wrong, could get them fired or cause their business to fail? That is what you're selling a solution to.

Let's make this real. Imagine you sell a B2B SaaS product for legal tech. The demographic approach is "targeting lawyers in Scotland". Useless. The pain-point approach is targeting the partner who is terrified of a junior associate missing a critical filing deadline, exposing the entire firm to a malpractice suit and reputational ruin. Your ad doesn't talk about "document management features"; it talks about "never missing a deadline again". See the difference? One is a feature, the other is a rescue from a nightmare.

Or say you're a B2C service, like a high-end home cleaning company in Dundee. The demographic approach is "homeowners with an income over £60k". Again, weak. The pain-point approach is targeting the busy professional couple who just had their first child. Their nightmare isn't a messy house; it's the feeling of failure and overwhelm, of their beautiful home turning into a chaotic space they no longer control, and the constant arguments it causes. You're not selling cleaning; you're selling peace, control, and a happier relationship. Your ads should reflect that emotional reality.

Your first job, before you spend another penny on ads, is to do this work. Interview your best existing customers. Ask them what was going on in their business or life that made them search for a solution like yours. What was the "before" state? What was the specific pain? Write it down in their exact words. Once you've isolated that nightmare, your entire advertising strategy becomes clear.

You then find out where these people congregate. What niche podcasts do they listen to? What industry newsletters do they actually open? What software tools do they already pay for? Are they members of specific Facebook groups or following certain influencers? This intelligence isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your entire targeting strategy on platforms like Meta or LinkedIn. Do this work first, or you have no business spending a single pound on ads.

How to Pay Facebook to Find Non-Customers

Now that you understand you're targeting a problem, not a person, we need to talk about how you instruct ad platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram) to find these people. This is where most businesses, especially early on, make a catastrophic mistake.

Here is the uncomfortable truth about so-called "awareness" campaigns. When you log into your Ads Manager and set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and very literal, command: "Find me the largest number of people inside my targeting for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, in its infinite wisdom and efficiency, does exactly what you asked. It scours your audience—even the pain-point-based one you've just defined—and seeks out the users who are the absolute cheapest to show an ad to. Who are these people? They're the ones who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever pull out a credit card and buy something. Why? Because those users are not in demand by other advertisers. Their attention is cheap because it's worthless from a commercial perspective.

You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product. You're paying to be ignored by people who were never going to be your customers in the first place. It's madness.

I've seen so many accounts where people say "we're just running some awareness campaigns to get our name out there in Dundee". It's a total waste of money. The best form of brand awareness for any business, especially a smaller one trying to expand, is a competitor's customer switching to your product and raving about it. That only happens through a conversion. Awareness is a byproduct of having a great product that solves a real problem, not a prerequisite for making a sale.

So, what do you do instead? It's simple. You ALWAYS optimise for the action you actually want. If you want leads, you set your campaign objective to 'Leads'. If you want sales on your eCommerce store, you set it to 'Sales'. If you want appointments booked, you choose the relevant conversion event.

When you do this, you give the algorithm a completely different command: "Find me the people within this audience who are most likely to convert and are similar to people who have converted in the past." The platform will then use its trillions of data points to find users who exhibit behaviours of buyers, not just passive scrollers. This is infinitely more powerful. Yes, your CPMs (cost per 1,000 impressions) will be higher. Your cost per click might be higher. But your cost per actual customer will be dramatically lower, because you're fishing in the right part of the pond. We see this work time and time again. I remember one B2B software client who was struggling to get signups; by switching to conversion-focused campaigns on Meta, we were able to generate 4,622 registrations for them at just $2.38 per registration. That's real growth, not just empty impressions.

Even if your goal is market expansion and getting your name known, you do it by running conversion-focused campaigns. A campaign that generates 50 high-quality leads in Dundee does more for your "brand awareness" among people who matter than a campaign that gets 100,000 meaningless impressions on people who will forget your name in five seconds.

A message they can't ignore

Okay, so you've defined the nightmare and you've set up your campaign to optimise for conversions. Now, what do you actually say in your ads? This is where you connect your solution to their pain. Your ad copy's only job is to get the right person to stop scrolling and think, "That's me. They understand my problem."

You have to stop talking about yourself, your company, and your product's features. Nobody cares. They only care about their own problems. Your ad needs to enter the conversation that's already happening in their mind. There are a few classic copywriting frameworks that work exceptionally well for this.

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

For a B2B SaaS product, you use the Before-After-Bridge (BAB). You don't sell a "FinOps platform"; you sell the feeling of relief.
-> Before: "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out before you can do any real work."
-> After: "Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see exactly where every dollar is going, and waste is automatically eliminated."
-> Bridge: "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 specialist 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? The prospect is thinking. You have to finish the thought for them: "So your lab can publish results with unshakeable confidence, securing more funding and attracting top talent that other labs can only dream of."

Notice how none of these examples talk about being "the best" or "industry-leading". It's all about the customer's world, their problems, and their desired outcome. The copy is empathetic. It shows you understand their specific nightmare because you've done your research. When someone in Dundee who is living that nightmare sees that ad, it won't feel like an ad. It'll feel like a solution that finally understands them. That's how you get resonance and a positive ROI.

Your offer needs to be built to solve an audience's pain

This brings us to what might be the single biggest reason why ad campaigns fail, even with the right audience and the right message: the offer is rubbish. An offer that's not offering enough value, or an offer that lacks an audience with a need for that value. It all comes back to a lack of demand.

I see so many founders and businesses chasing what they think are great ideas, building loads of features, spending months or years developing the 'perfect' product, only to struggle to get any traction because nobody actually wants it that badly. The ad can be perfect, but if what you're asking them to do on the other side of the click isn't compelling, they won't do it.

The number one thing you must do, tied directly to defining the nightmare, is to develop a high-value offer that has clear demand. What do successful offers look like?

1. They focus on a specific audience. This makes the offer and the ads highly relevant to that persona. A video production company doesn't just sell "corporate videos." A successful one sells a "Brand Film for Tech Startups Seeking Series A Funding." It's specific, and it speaks to a very clear goal. This makes their message incredibly powerful to that audience.

2. They solve an urgent problem. Following the example, they don't just sell a "brand film." They sell a solution to a deep frustration: being a talented firm that struggles to build a customer base and communicate its value. This emotional connection is what drives action.

3. They package the solution clearly. They've turned their complex service into a "1-Day Filming Process." It has a name, clear deliverables, and a defined timeline. This makes a complicated service feel simple, tangible, and less risky for a buyer to invest in. They've productised their service.

You need to look at your own business and ask: what is my offer? Is it a vague promise of "digital advertising services"? Or is it a "Local Lead Generation System for Dundee-Based Tradespeople that Guarantees 20+ Quotes in 30 Days"? One is a commodity; the other is an irresistible solution to a nightmare.

Delete the "Request a Demo" Button

Now we arrive at the most common failure point for offers, particularly in B2B. The "Request a Demo" button is perhaps the most arrogant and ineffective Call to Action ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, a busy decision-maker, has nothing better to do than book a 30-minute slot in their calendar to be sold to. 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 has to solve a small, real problem for free to earn you the right to talk about solving the whole thing.

If you're a SaaS company, your advantage is massive. The gold standard is a free trial (no credit card details required) or a freemium plan. Let them use the actual product. Let them feel the transformation. When the product itself 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. For one software client, focusing on a seamless free trial offer allowed us to generate over 5,000 trials at just $7 each using Meta Ads. People who experienced the product's value firsthand were far more likely to convert than people who were just pitched in a demo.

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 website audit that shows them their top 3 keyword opportunities.
-> For a data analytics platform, it could be a free 'Data Health Check' that flags the top issues in their database.
-> For a corporate training company, it could be a free 15-minute interactive video module on 'Handling Difficult Conversations' for new managers.
-> For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, it's a 20-minute strategy session where we audit their failing ad campaigns completely free of charge. We solve a real problem (diagnosing the issue) for free.

Think about your business in Dundee. What small, valuable 'win' can you give a prospect for free that directly relates to the bigger nightmare you solve? That becomes your offer. Replace "Request a Demo" with "Get Your Free [Valuable Thing]" and watch your conversion rates climb.

How to Calculate Your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

This brings me to the numbers. You mentioned struggling to generate a positive return on investment. The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead go?" but rather "How high a Cost Per Lead can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer lies in its counterpart: Lifetime Value (LTV). Most businesses have no idea what a customer is actually worth to them, so they panic when a lead costs more than a few quid.

Calculating your LTV is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. It tells you exactly how much you can and should be spending on advertising. Here's a simple way to calculate it for a subscription or recurring revenue business:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month? Let's say it's £200.
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after accounting for the cost of servicing them? Let's say it's 75%.
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month, on average? This is crucial. Let's say it's 5%.

Now, the calculation is straightforward:

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

Using our example:

LTV = (£200 * 0.75) / 0.05
LTV = £150 / 0.05
LTV = £3,000

In this example, each new customer is worth £3,000 in gross margin to your business over their entire lifetime. Now you have the truth.

A healthy and sustainable business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £1,000 to acquire a single customer (£3,000 / 3). Let's say your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a paying customer. That means you can afford to pay up to £100 per qualified lead (£1,000 / 10). Suddenly, that £75 lead from LinkedIn doesn't seem so expensive, does it? In fact, for one of our B2B software clients, we generated leads from decision-makers on LinkedIn for as little as $22. When you know your numbers, you can see that paying for quality is a bargain.

This is the math that will free you from the tyranny of cheap leads. You stop optimising for the lowest CPL and start optimising for the highest quality leads that turn into customers with the highest LTV. It's a fundamental shift that separates businesses that scale from those that stagnate.

How to get targeting right and prioritise audiences to target

Finally, let's bring it all together into a practical structure for your ad campaigns, particularly on a platform like Meta. Once you have your 'nightmare' definition, your compelling offer, and your LTV calculation, you need a methodical way to test audiences. A lot of people just throw a bunch of random interests into an ad set and hope for the best. That's not a strategy.

I usually prioritise audiences in a logical order, based on how 'warm' they are. The further along in the buying journey an audience (or a lookalike of them) is, the better it will usually perform. This gives you a clear testing roadmap.

Here’s a typical hierarchy for an eCommerce business, but the logic applies to almost any niche:

Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Finding New People:

This is your cold traffic. Your goal here is to introduce your solution to people experiencing the nightmare who have never heard of you before.

• 1. Detailed Targeting: This is where your 'nightmare' research pays off. Instead of broad interests like "business", you target niche interests, behaviours, or job titles that strongly correlate with your ICP. For example, targeting people who follow specific industry leaders, use competitor software, or are members of niche groups. I usually group these into themes.
• 2. Lookalike Audiences: Once you have data, this becomes your most powerful tool. You ask Meta to find people who 'look like' your best customers. You should test these in order of value:
  • Lookalike of highest value customers (if you can identify them)
  • Lookalike of all previous customers
  • Lookalike of people who initiated checkout
  • Lookalike of people who added to cart
  • Lookalike of website visitors
• 3. Broad Targeting: This should only be used once your Meta Pixel has seasoned with thousands of conversion events. At that point, you can sometimes trust the algorithm to find the right people with minimal targeting inputs. Don't start here.

Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - Re-engaging Interest:

These are people who have shown some interest but haven't taken a key action yet. They've visited your website or watched a video. Your goal is to bring them back.

• Website visitors (e.g., last 30 days), excluding anyone who has already converted.
• People who viewed a specific product or landing page.
• People who watched a significant portion of your video ads (e.g., 50%+).
• People who engaged with your Facebook or Instagram page.

Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - Closing the Deal:

These are your hottest prospects. They are on the verge of converting but abandoned the process for some reason. The goal here is to overcome their final objections and get them over the line.

• People who added a product to their cart but didn't buy (last 7-14 days).
• People who initiated the checkout process but didn't complete it.

Your strategy for expanding in Dundee should be to build seperate, long-term campaigns for each stage of this funnel. Start with ToFu, using your 'nightmare' research for detailed targeting. As you generate traffic and conversions, you build up your MoFu and BoFu audiences and activate those campaigns. You systematically test new audiences at the top of the funnel, turning off the ones that don't perform (e.g., after they've spent 2-3x your target CPA without a conversion) and scaling the winners. This creates a predictable, scalable machine for customer acquisition, rather than a lottery.

So, what's the plan?

I know this is a lot to take in, but breaking out of the "no audience, no ROI" cycle requires a fundamental change in approach. It's not about finding a magic bullet interest to target; it's about building a robust strategy from the ground up, starting with a deep, empathetic understanding of your customer's biggest problem.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Implementing this isn't just a tweak; it's a complete overhaul of how you approach advertising. It requires discipline and a willingness to do the hard strategic work before you launch the ads. This is often where businesses decide they need expert help. It’s not just about knowing which buttons to click in Ads Manager; it’s about having the experience to define the nightmare, craft the offer, calculate the economics, and build the system that turns ad spend into predictable profit.

If you'd like to go through this process for your specific business in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation strategy consultation where we can dive into your situation and map out a concrete plan of action. It might be exactly what you need to finally crack market expansion in Dundee and start seeing a real return on your investment.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh