The UK Founder's Guide to Paid Acquisition: Platforms, Strategies, and Benchmarks

Right then. You're a UK founder. You've built something you believe in, poured your life into it, and now you need to get it in front of the right people. So you dive into the world of paid acquisition, and within about five minutes, you're drowning in a sea of conflicting advice, three-letter acronyms, and gurus promising you the moon on a stick for a tenner a day. It's a proper headache.

One "expert" tells you TikTok is the future, another swears by Google Performance Max, and a third tells you that if you're not on LinkedIn, you're basically invisible. The truth is, most of this advice is rubbish because it starts in the wrong place. It starts with the platform, the tactics, the buttons to click. That's like an architect starting a blueprint by choosing the colour of the curtains. It's completely backwards.

This guide is going to fix that. We're not going to talk about secret hacks or silver bullets. We're going to give you a straightforward, no-nonsense framework for building a paid acquisition strategy from the ground up. A strategy based on your own business's numbers, a deep understanding of your customer, and a logical process that turns ad spend from a gamble into a predictable growth engine. Let's get started.

Why is My 'Ideal Customer Profile' so Bloody Useless?

Before you spend a single quid on an ad, you have to get this right. I've seen more startup cash set on fire because of a weak Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) than for any other reason. Most marketing fails because it's aimed at a ridiculously generic profile. "Our target audience is SMEs in the financial sector with 50-200 employees". That tells you absolutely nothing useful. It's a sterile description that leads to boring, generic ads that nobody clicks on because they don't feel seen.

You need to get rid of this thinking. Your ICP isn't a set of demographics. It's a problem state. A nightmare. You need to become an obsessive expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, and maybe even career-threatening problem. What's the one thing that keeps them awake at 3 AM?

Let's make this real. Your client isn't just a 'Head of Sales'. She's a leader who's terrified of missing her quarterly target because her team is wasting half their day on manual data entry instead of selling. That's her nightmare. She's not lying awake thinking "I need a CRM integration tool". She's lying awake thinking "I'm going to lose my best salespeople if I don't fix this broken process".

Or for a service business, maybe a fractional CFO. You don't sell "outsourced accounting". Your client is a founder in Shoreditch who just raised a seed round and is suddenly petrified of running out of cash before he can show any real traction to his investors. He doesn't know what a proper cash flow forecast even looks like. That's his nightmare. He's not looking for a bookkeeper; he's looking for certainty and a good night's sleep.

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. This deep understanding of your customer's pain is the first step in any successful strategy for expanding into a new market like Dundee or beyond.

You can 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 Much Can I Actually Afford to Spend, Then?

This is the second question that trips up every founder. They get obsessed with getting the lowest Cost Per Lead (CPL) possible. They celebrate a £10 lead from Facebook without asking if that lead is any good. This is a fast track to failure. 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 found in its counterpart: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Knowing this number is non-negotiable. It’s the single most important metric for any paid acquisition campaign because it tells you exactly what a customer is worth to you in profit over their entire relationship with your business. Without it, you're just guessing. This calculation is the cornerstone of building an ad budget that doesn't just spend money, but actually makes it.

Let's break it down into simple terms. You need three pieces of information:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? (Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold). Be honest here.
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

The calculation is straightforward:

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

For example, let's say you run a B2B SaaS company:

• ARPA = £200/month
• Gross Margin = 85% (common for software)
• Monthly Churn = 5%

LTV = (£200 * 0.85) / 0.05

LTV = £170 / 0.05 = £3,400

There it is. In this example, each customer you acquire is worth £3,400 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. This number changes everything. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is typically 3:1. This means you want to spend no more than a third of your LTV to acquire a customer. So, in this case, you can afford to spend up to £1,133 (£3,400 / 3) to acquire a single new customer.

Now, 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 £113 per qualified lead (£1,133 / 10). Suddenly that £75 lead from a highly-targeted LinkedIn campaign doesn't look so expensive, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks intelligent, aggressive growth. It frees you from the tyranny of cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to compete, even with a small budget. For many UK founders, getting this right is the first step in a successful paid ads ROI strategy.

Why is No One Responding to My 'Amazing' Offer?

Right, so you've defined your customer's nightmare and you know what they're worth. Now we get to the most common failure point in all of B2B advertising: the offer. I've lost count of the number of promising startups I've seen pour money down the drain because their Call to Action was "Request a Demo".

The "Request a Demo" button is possibly the most arrogant CTA ever invented. It presumes that your prospect, a busy decision-maker, has absolutely nothing better to do than book a 45-minute slot in their diary to be sold to. It screams "I want to take up your time to tell you how great I am." It's high-friction, low-value, and instantly positions you as just another commodity vendor they have to deal with.

Your offer has one job and one job only: to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment—that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. It has to be something that helps them solve a small part of their nightmare, right now, for free. This is how you earn trust. This is how you stand out. The entire point of running ads on a small budget is to use paid ads to validate your offer before you build out a whole sales team.

If you're a SaaS founder, this is your superpower. The gold standard is a free trial with no credit card required. Or a freemium plan. Let them actually use the product. Let them experience the transformation first-hand. When the software itself proves its value, the sale becomes a simple formality. You aren't generating "Marketing Qualified Leads" for a sales team to chase for weeks; you are creating "Product Qualified Leads" who are already convinced and asking you how to pay. I remember one B2B SaaS client who offered lifetime deal sales and generated $30k from it, pulling people in with a high-value, low-risk offer.

If you don't run a SaaS company, you're not off the hook. You have to bottle your expertise into a tool, a piece of content, or an asset that provides instant value.

• For a marketing agency: A free, automated SEO audit that instantly shows them their top 3 keyword opportunities and where their competitors are beating them.
• For a data analytics consultancy: A free 'Data Health Check' tool that they can connect to their database which flags the top 5 inconsistencies or issues.
• For a corporate training company: A free 15-minute interactive video module on 'How to Handle Difficult Conversations with Underperforming Staff' for new managers.
• For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy: A 20-minute strategy session where we audit their failing ad account, live on a call, and give them actionable advice, completely free.

You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve their whole, expensive nightmare. Ditch the demo request and start offering real value upfront.

The Big Lie: Why 'Brand Awareness' Campaigns are a Trap for Founders

This might be the most controversial advice I give, but it's also one of the most important for businesses that need to see a return on their ad spend. Here is the uncomfortable truth about awareness campaigns on platforms like Meta. When you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are telling the algorithm: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, being ruthlessly efficient, does exactly that. It finds users inside your targeting parameters who are the least likely to click, engage, or buy anything. Why? Because their attention is cheap. No one else is bidding for them. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst, most passive audience for your product.

For a startup or small business, awareness is a byproduct of sales, not a prerequisite. It comes from having a product that solves a real problem so well that customers talk about it. So, the first step in our playbook is to stop all awareness spending immediately and re-focus every penny on conversion-optimised campaigns. But even that won't work if the fundamental building blocks are broken. Many businesses get good traffic that just doesn't convert into actual sales, and fixing that starts with your offer and your landing page, not your ad settings.

Hunter vs. Farmer: The Only Strategic Choice That Matters

Okay, so you've defined your customer's nightmare, you know what a customer is worth, and you have an irresistible, low-friction offer. *Now* we can finally talk about platforms. The choice isn't about which one is "best" in a vacuum; it's about choosing the right battlefield based on your customer's state of mind. I call this the "Searcher vs. The Scroller" or the "Hunter vs. Farmer" framework.

The Hunter (High Intent)

Platform: Google Ads (Search & Performance Max)

Who they are: These people are problem-aware and solution-aware. They know they have a 'nightmare' and they are actively typing queries into Google to find a fix *right now*. Their intent is incredibly high. They are pre-qualified by their own actions.

How to win: You win here by targeting keywords that signal commercial intent. Don't waste money on broad, informational queries. For an outreach tool, you wouldn't target "what is cold email". You target "best software for lead generation" or "apollo.io alternatives". Your ad needs to match their query and promise a direct path to solving their problem, leading to a landing page that delivers on that promise with your high-value, low-friction offer. I remember one software client who acquired 3,543 users at just £0.96 per user with a campaign on Google Ads, because we perfectly matched our ads to high-intent searches.

The Farmer (Low Intent / Passive)

Platforms: Meta (Facebook/Instagram), LinkedIn

Who they are: These people are not actively looking for a solution. You are interrupting their day while they browse their feed. Your ad must be powerful enough to stop their scroll and make them realise they have a problem you can solve. This requires a much deeper understanding of their 'nightmare' because you have to articulate it for them.

How to win: The platform choice here depends entirely on how you can identify your ICP.

• LinkedIn Ads: This is your scalpel. Use it when your ICP is defined by their professional attributes: job title, industry, company size, seniority. It's more expensive, but you can target the exact Head of Engineering you need to reach. The creative needs to speak directly to their professional pain. For one software client, we achieved a cost per lead of just $22 targeting B2B decision-makers on LinkedIn. This is the precision you pay for.
• Meta Ads: This is your net. Use it when your ICP is defined by interests, behaviors, or broader B2B demographics like "small business owner". It's cheaper to reach people, but the targeting is less precise. You can build powerful campaigns using lookalike audiences from your best customers or retargeting website visitors. For one B2B software client, we generated 4,622 registrations at just $2.38 each on Meta. It proves that with the right strategy, Meta can be an absolute powerhouse for B2B.

The mistake most people make is treating these platforms the same. You can't run the same ad on Google and Facebook and expect it to work. One is capturing existing demand; the other is creating it by highlighting a pain point. This is the fundamental choice at the heart of the Google Ads vs Meta Ads for B2B debate.

A Message They Can't Ignore: Writing Ads That Actually Work

Once you know their nightmare and have a genuinely valuable offer, writing the ad copy becomes much easier. You're not trying to be clever or win a creative award. You are simply connecting their pain to your solution in the most direct way possible. There are a few tried-and-tested frameworks for this.

For a high-touch service business, use Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).

1. Problem: State their nightmare directly, using the language they would use.
2. Agitate: Pour salt in the wound. Remind them of the consequences of not solving this problem.
3. Solve: Introduce your offer as the clear, simple, and direct solution.

Example for a local electrician:
(P) "Another flickering light giving you a headache? Worried that dodgy wiring from the 70s is a disaster waiting to happen?"
(A) "Don't wait for a small annoyance to become a costly emergency, or worse, a serious safety risk for your family."
(S) "Get a full, certified electrical safety check for your home for a fixed price of £99. We'll identify any issues and give you a clear, no-obligation plan to fix them. Book online in 60 seconds."

For a B2B SaaS product, use Before-After-Bridge (BAB).

1. Before: Describe their current world, full of frustration and inefficiency.
2. After: Paint a picture of the new world your product makes possible.
3. Bridge: Position your product as the bridge that gets them from Before to After.

Example for a project management tool:
(B) "Your team is drowning in spreadsheets, email chains, and missed deadlines. Important updates get lost, and nobody is ever sure who is doing what."
(A) "Imagine a single dashboard where every project is on track, every team member is aligned, and you have complete clarity on your business's progress."
(B) "Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start your free 14-day trial today and see for yourself."

The copy is not about listing features. Nobody cares that your software uses a "proprietary AI algorithm." They care that it stops them from having to work until 10 PM every night. Speak to the consequence, not the feature. This is a crucial distinction we cover in our guide on running your first paid ads campaign.

What Results Should I Realistically Expect in the UK?

This is a tough one because "normal" can vary wildly. A lead for a local cleaning service might cost £5, while a qualified lead for an enterprise software product could be over £200. It all comes back to your LTV calculation—what you can *afford* is more important than what's "normal."

However, based on our experience running hundreds of campaigns for UK businesses, here are some very rough ballpark figures to manage your expectations. We're talking about the cost to get a conversion—a lead, a signup, or a purchase.

As you can see, the costs can vary massively. Getting someone to give you their email for a newsletter in a developing country can be incredibly cheap. Getting someone in the UK to pull out their credit card and buy a £50 product is a completely different challenge and costs a lot more. I remember one of our best performing consumer service campaigns was for a home cleaning company which got a cost of £5/lead, which is fantastic for the UK. On the other hand, we have a B2B SaaS client where a $7 cost per *trial* is considered a great result, because their LTV is so high. This is the core of understanding which UK marketing channels are right for you; it's about matching affordable acquisition costs with the right audience.

The main takeaway is to not panic if your initial cost per purchase is £20. If you're selling a £100 product with a 60% margin and a good repeat purchase rate, you're printing money. It's all relative to your LTV.

The UK Founder's Paid Acquisition Action Plan

I know this is a lot to take in, but breaking it down into a logical sequence of actions makes it manageable. Trying to do everything at once is a recipe for failure. Here's how I'd structure the first three months to build a solid foundation for paid acquisition. Print this out. Stick it on your wall. Don't move to the next step until you've nailed the one before it.

When to Stop Tinkering and Get Expert Help

As you can probably tell, effective paid advertising is a systematic process, not a lottery ticket. It requires a strategic foundation built on deep customer understanding and solid economics. It can be a lot to manage on top of running your business, and mistakes in the early stages can be costly and demoralising. For a UK founder, deciding between a DIY approach and getting professional help is a major step, and knowing how to vet and hire a paid media freelancer or agency is a skill in itself.

An expert partner doesn't just bring technical skills; they bring a strategic framework like this one, honed across dozens of businesses. They've made the expensive mistakes so you don't have to. They can compress that 90-day learning curve into a much shorter timeframe and help you avoid the common pitfalls that sink most self-managed campaigns. It's about buying speed and expertise. The decision between managing an agency effectively and going it alone often comes down to the value you place on your own time.

If you've read this far and feel that you'd rather spend your time building your product than becoming a part-time ad expert, then we should probably talk. We offer a completely free, no-obligation strategy session where we can look at what you're doing now and give you some clear, actionable advice on how to implement this playbook for your specific business. No hard sell, just a taste of the expertise you need to make your budget work harder.

Hope this helps!