Let's be blunt. If your plan to get more qualified leads in the UK is to run "brand awareness" campaigns, you might as well just set a pile of cash on fire. I see this all the time. Business owners, frustrated with a lack of leads, are told they need to "build their brand" and "get their name out there." So they go to Meta, select the "Brand Awareness" or "Reach" objective, and congratulate themselves on the thousands of impressions they're getting. It feels productive, but it's a trap.
Here is the uncomfortable truth about awareness campaigns. When you set your objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the algorithm a very specific 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 seeks out the users inside your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever buy anything from you. 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. I remember one luxury brand client who was thrilled to get 10 million views on a campaign. The problem? It drove almost no qualified leads and certainly didn't move the needle on sales. Awareness is a byproduct of having a great product that solves a real problem, not a prerequisite for making a sale.
The goal of this guide is to show you how to stop chasing vanity metrics and start building a top-of-funnel strategy that actually drives qualified leads and customers in the UK market. It's about being smarter, not just louder.
So, if not awareness, what's the actual problem?
If leads aren't coming in, the problem is almost never a lack of 'awareness'. It's usually one of two things, and often both: your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is rubbish, or your offer is weak. Get these two things right, and you won't need to 'build awareness' because your ads will be so painfully relevant that the right people won't be able to ignore them.
Forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire made. "Companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees in the UK" tells you nothing of value. It leads to generic ads that speak to no one. To stop burning cash, you must define your customer by their pain. You need to become an 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 ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state.
Once you've isolated that nightmare, you can find them. Where do they hang out online? What niche podcasts do they listen to on their commute from Manchester to London? What industry newsletters do they actually open? Are they members of a specific Facebook group for their industry? This intelligence is the blueprint for your entire targeting strategy. If you haven't done this work, you have no business spending a single pound on ads.
Then there's your offer. The number one reason I see campaigns fail is a weak offer. A lack of demand. I see founders chasing what they think are great ideas, building loads of features, spending years on developing the perfect product, only to struggle because nobody has an urgent need for it. A truly powerful offer has three parts:
1. A specific audience: You're not selling to 'businesses', you're selling to 'UK-based eComemrce brands turning over £1M-£5M who are struggling with stock management'. This makes your message incredibly relevant.
2. An urgent problem: They're not just 'looking for software', they're 'losing thousands a month in lost sales from stock-outs and over-ordering'. This emotional connection drives action.
3. A clear solution: You're not selling a vague service. You've productised it. It has a name, clear deliverables, and a defined timeline. This makes a complex service feel simple, tangible, and less risky for a buyer.
This brings us to the most common failure point in B2B advertising: the "Request a Demo" button. It's an arrogant Call to Action. It presumes your prospect, a busy decision maker, has nothing better to do than book a meeting to be sold to. It’s high-friction, low-value. Your offer’s only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value. For a SaaS founder, this is a proper free trial with no card details. Let them use the product and sell themselves. I've worked on many B2B SaaS campaigns, and the ones that fly are the ones with a frictionless, high-value offer. I remember one medical job matching SaaS where we took their cost per user acquisition from £100 down to just £7 by refining their offer and targeting. If you're a service business, you must bottle your expertise into a tool or asset. A free, automated audit. A valuable checklist. A short, interactive video module. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing.
How do I write a message they can't ignore?
Once you know your customer's nightmare and have a genuinely valuable offer, you can write copy that cuts through the noise. It’s not about features; it’s about consequences and transformation. Here are a few frameworks that work:
| Framework | Explanation & Example |
|---|---|
| Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) Best for high-touch services. |
You state the problem, poke the wound to make it hurt more, then present your service as the painkiller. Example (Fractional CFO): "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark? (Problem) Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round? (Agitate) Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth. (Solve)" |
| Before-After-Bridge (BAB) Best for B2B SaaS. |
You paint a picture of their current world (the Before), show them the ideal future (the After), and position your product as the bridge to get there. Example (FinOps Platform): "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. (Before) Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see where every dollar is going. (After) Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today. (Bridge)" |
| Attack Feature-Obsession Best for high-ticket physical products. |
Don't just state the spec; state its consequence. Answer the "so what?" question. Example (Lab Equipment): "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." |
This is how you make your ads feel less like ads and more like helpful advice from someone who genuinely understands their world. It’s about empathy, not just marketing.
How much should a qualified lead actually cost me?
This is where most businesses get it wrong. They obsess over getting the cheapest possible cost per lead (CPL), without understanding what a customer is actually worth to them. The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer is in its counterpart: Lifetime Value (LTV).
Let's do some quick maths. You need three numbers:
1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month? Let's say it's £500.
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? Let's say it's 80%.
3. 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. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single customer and still run a very profitable business. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a customer, you can afford to pay up to £333 for that qualified lead. Suddenly, that £50 CPL from a LinkedIn campaign targeting a specific decision maker doesn't seem so 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, unqualified leads.
Of course, costs vary. In my experience running campaigns in the UK and other developed countries, you can expect CPCs between £0.50 and £1.50. For a simple lead gen offer (like an ebook download), with a 10-30% landing page conversion rate, your cost per lead might be anywhere from £1.60 to £15. For something more involved like a B2B demo request or an eCommerce sale, where conversion rates are lower (maybe 2-5%), costs will be much higher. The point isn't to hit a magic number, but to understand your own numbers so you can invest with confidence.
So how do I structure my campaigns to find these people?
Right, now we get to the practical bit. You need to structure your campaigns for conversions, not awareness. This means telling the ad platforms to find people who are likely to take a specific action (sign up, buy, book a call). Here’s how I’d approach it for the main platforms.
Meta (Facebook/Instagram)
This is where most people get burned by awareness campaigns. For Meta, you need to think in terms of a funnel and prioritise your audiences based on how close they are to converting. A lot of people I see are testing audiences that just dont align with their goals. Here’s a typical prioritisation I would use for an eCommerce client, but the logic applies to any buisness.
| Funnel Stage | Audience Type | Priority & Notes |
|---|---|---|
| BoFu (Bottom of Funnel) Warmest Audience |
Retargeting: -> Added to Cart (last 7-14 days) -> Initiated Checkout (last 7-14 days) -> Previous Customers (for upsells) |
Your highest priority. These people are on the verge of buying. Use direct, urgency-driven ads. "Forgot something?" or "Complete your purchase". If your budget is small, start here. |
| MoFu (Middle of Funnel) Warmish Audience |
Retargeting: -> Website Visitors (last 30-90 days) -> Video Viewers (50%+) -> Social Media Engagers |
These people know you but aren't ready to buy yet. Show them testimonials, case studies, different product angles. Build trust and keep your brand top of mind. |
| ToFu (Top of Funnel) Cold Audience |
Lookalike Audiences: -> 1% Lookalike of Purchasers -> 1% Lookalike of Add to Carts Detailed Targeting: -> Highly specific interests/behaviours |
This is your prospecting. NEVER use the 'Awareness' objective. Use the 'Sales' or 'Leads' objective. Start with a Lookalike of your best customers. If you don't have enough data, use very specific interest targeting based on your ICP research. I remember one B2B software client where we generated 4,622 registrations at just $2.38 each by targeting cold but highly relevant audiences with a conversion objective. |
For a new account, you'll start at the top (ToFu) with detailed targeting to gather data. As soon as you have 100+ purchases or leads, you create a Lookalike audience. As soon as you have website traffic, you start your MoFu and BoFu retargeting campaigns. It's a system, not a one-off campaign.
Google Ads
Google is different. Here, you're capturing intent. People are actively searching for a solution to their problem. Your job is to show up with the most relevant answer. This is where you pre-qualify your audience with keywords. You want to target keywords that express specific user intent, not broad informational queries.
For example, if you sell an outreach tool, don't just bid on "lead generation". It's too broad. You'll get people looking for articles, courses, and agencies. Instead, focus on keywords that show they are looking for a tool like yours: "software for lead generation", "contact info finding tool", "apollo.io alternatives". These searchers are already pre-qualified. They know what they want, and they're comparing options. I've seen this work wonders for B2B SaaS clients. I remember one campaign for a software client that generated 3,543 users at just £0.96 per user by focusing entirely on high-intent search terms.
LinkedIn Ads
If you're in B2B in the UK, LinkedIn is often your best bet for precise targeting, but it's expensive. This is why knowing your LTV is so important – it gives you the confidence to spend £20-£50 on a lead if you know they're the right person. The power of LinkedIn is its targeting. You can target by:
-> Job Title (e.g. 'Chief Financial Officer')
-> Company Size (e.g. '51-200 employees')
-> Industry (e.g. 'Financial Services')
-> Specific Companies (You can upload a list of target accounts)
Here, you combine your ICP research with the platform's tools to get your ad in front of the exact decision-makers you need to reach. For one B2B client in the environmental controls space, we reduced their cost per lead by 84% by moving from broad targeting to a highly specific LinkedIn strategy combined with some Meta retargeting. We've also seen great success getting a $22 CPL for B2B decision makers for a software client, which was an amazing result given their high LTV.
Putting it all together: Your Action Plan
This has been a lot of information, so let's boil it down to a clear set of recommendations. This is the main advice I have for you if you're struggling to get qualified leads in the UK.
| Area of Focus | Actionable Recommendation | Why It Works |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Campaign Objective | Immediately stop all "Brand Awareness" or "Reach" campaigns. Switch every single campaign to a conversion-based objective ("Sales", "Leads", "Appointments"). | This tells the ad platforms to find users who are likely to take the action you actually care about, not just the cheapest users to show an ad to. It's the single biggest lever you can pull for lead quality. |
| 2. Your Offer | Audit your main call-to-action. If it's "Request a Demo," replace it with a high-value, low-friction offer. A free trial, a freemium plan, a free tool, a valuable download. | You solve a small problem for free to earn trust and prove your value. This makes the prospect sell themselves, dramatically increasing lead quality and conversion rates. |
| 3. Customer Definition | Redefine your Ideal Customer Profile based on their deepest, most urgent pain point, not just their demographics. Write it down in detail. | This allows you to write copy that resonates on an emotional level and to choose targeting options that are far more specific and effective than broad demographics. |
| 4. Financials | Calculate your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Use this to determine the maximum you can afford to pay for a customer (CAC) and a qualified lead (CPL). | This frees you from the trap of chasing cheap, low-quality leads. It gives you the confidence to invest what's necessary to acquire high-value customers on platforms like LinkedIn and Google Search. |
| 5. Testing & Structure | Implement a proper funnel structure in your ad accounts (ToFu, MoFu, BoFu). Start by testing your highest-intent audiences first (e.g., BoFu retargeting, high-intent search). | This ensures you're spending your budget efficiently, capturing the lowest-hanging fruit first before scaling out to colder, more expensive audiences. It’s a systematic approach to growth. |
When to consider getting expert help
You can do all of this yourself. It takes time, a lot of testing, and you'll inevitably waste some money along the way while you learn. That's just part of the process. However, the online advertising landscape is complex and changes constantly. Getting it wrong doesn't just waste your ad spend; it wastes your time and can lead to you concluding that "paid ads don't work for my business," when the reality is the strategy was just flawed.
Working with a specialist can help you bypass the expensive learning curve. An expert has already made the mistakes, run the tests, and seen what works (and what doesn't) across dozens of accounts in various industries. They can look at your business and almost immediately spot the key leverage points—whether it's a weak offer, a poorly defined ICP, or a messy ad account structure. It’s not about magic; it’s about experience and pattern recognition.
If you're spending a decent amount on ads already and not seeing the qualified leads you need, or if you're a founder who knows their time is better spent working on the product or with customers rather than inside an ad manager, that's usually the point where getting professional help makes sense. The goal isn't just to get better results, but to get them faster and more predictably.
If you'd like an expert pair of eyes on your current strategy to see where the biggest opportunities are, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We'll have a look at your campaigns and give you some honest, actionable advice you can implement right away. Feel free to get in touch for a chat.
