UK Guide: How To Find An Ad Expert That Drives ROI

I see this question a lot. You're a founder in the UK, you're spending money on ads, and you've got a nagging feeling it could be doing better. So you start looking for an "ad spend optimisation consultant." The problem is, most people who call themselves that are just glorified button-pushers. They'll tweak a few bids, change some ad copy, and send you a report full of meaningless metrics. It's a waste of time and money.

The truth is, finding someone genuinely good is hard. They're not just running ads; they're business partners who understand how to connect your product to a paying customer, profitably. They're rare. So, how do you find one in the UK and, more importantly, how do you know if they're the real deal? You need a playbook. You need to know what questions to ask, what to look for in their answers, and what red flags should have you running for the hills. This is that playbook.

First things first, what's your customer's actual nightmare?

Before you even think about hiring someone, you need to do some homework. I can't tell you how many discovery calls I've had where the founder can't clearly articulate who their customer is. They'll give me some generic demographic nonsense like "SMEs in the financial sector with 50-200 employees." That tells me absolutely nothing. It's a recipe for bland, ineffective advertising that speaks to no one.

A top-tier consultant won't let you get away with that. Their first questions won't be about your budget; they'll be about your customer's pain. You need to define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) not by who they are, but by the specific, urgent, and expensive problem they are facing. What is the career-threatening nightmare that keeps them up at night?

For example, we worked with a B2B SaaS client selling a recruitment tool. Their initial ICP was "HR managers at tech companies." Useless. After we dug in, we found their *real* ICP was the Head of Engineering who was terrified of losing their best developers because of a slow, frustrating hiring process. The nightmare wasn't 'needing a recruitment tool'; it was 'watching top talent walk out the door'. See the difference? One is a feature, the other is an urgent, expensive problem.

Once you've nailed that nightmare, you can figure out where these people live online. What niche podcasts do they listen to on their commute? Which industry newsletters do they *actually* open? What software tools (like HubSpot or Salesforce) are they already paying for? Are they in specific Facebook Groups or following certain influencers on LinkedIn?

Do this work first. A great consultant will help you refine it, but if you come to the table with nothing, you're not ready to spend a single pound on ads, let alone hire someone to manage them. You're just asking to burn cash.

What's the one number that will stop you from getting ripped off?

Right, let's talk about ROI. You want someone who can "demonstrably improve" it. But what does that even mean? Most founders are obsessed with the wrong metrics. They fixate on Cost Per Lead (CPL) or Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) from a single purchase. This is short-sighted and leads to terrible decisions.

The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a fantastic customer?" The answer is your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). This is the total profit you can expect to make from a single customer over the entire course of your relationship. If you don't know this number, you're flying blind.

Here’s how you calculate it, simplified:

• 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) / Revenue.
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

The formula is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's take a UK SaaS business as an example. Say their ARPA is £400, their gross margin is 80%, and their monthly churn is 5%.
LTV = (£400 * 0.80) / 0.05 = £320 / 0.05 = £6,400.

So, each customer is worth £6,400 in gross margin over their lifetime. Now we can talk about how much you can afford to spend to get one. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is typically 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £6,400 / 3 = £2,133 to acquire a single customer and still have a very healthy business model.

Suddenly, that £150 lead from Google Ads doesn't seem so expensive if you know your sales team converts 1 in 10 leads. It means your CAC is £1,500, which is well within your profitable range. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. Any consultant who doesn't start the conversation here doesn't understand business, they only understand ads.

Use this calculator to get a rough idea of your own LTV. Play around with the numbers and see how small changes in churn or margin can dramatically affect what you can afford to spend on ads.

So, how do you vet them? Start with the case studies.

Right, you know your customer's nightmare and you know your numbers. Now you can start talking to people. The first thing you should ask for is case studies. But don't just glance at them. You need to dissect them. Any agency can cherry-pick a winning campaign and write a fluffy story about it.

Here’s what to look for to seperate the pros from the amateurs:

1. Relevance to Your Business: This is the most obvious one. Have they worked with businesses like yours? Not just in the same industry, but with a similar business model, price point, and sales cycle. Getting results for a £20 t-shirt e-commerce brand is a completely different universe to getting leads for a £50k industrial product. I remember one campaign where we reduced the cost per lead by 84% for an environmental controls company on LinkedIn. That experience is directly relevant to other high-ticket B2B clients, but less so for a B2C app.

2. Depth, Not Just Headlines: A good case study goes beyond "We achieved a 1000% Return On Ad Spend". That's a great headline, and we've achieved it for clients like a subscription box company, but it tells you nothing about *how*. Look for the story. What was the problem? What was their hypothesis? What audiences did they test? What creative angles did they try? What failed? Yes, what *failed*. Honesty about the process shows genuine expertise. It's never a straight line to success.

3. Real Metrics: Are they talking about vanity metrics like "Reach" and "Impressions"? Or are they talking about what actually matters: Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), Lifetime Value (LTV), and qualified leads generated? For a B2B software client, we generated over 4,600 registrations at $2.38 each. That's a hard number that connects directly to a business goal. For another, we took a £100 CPA down to just £7. That's the kind of detail that matters. Anyone can get millions of views; we did it for a luxury brand launch. But that was the goal. For most businesses, views don't pay the bills.

4. UK-Specific Results: The UK market is different. Consumer behaviour is different, competition is different, and costs are different. Seeing results in pounds (£) is a good first sign. It shows they're not just a US agency with a .co.uk domain. They understand the nuances of advertising to a British audience. We've generated £107k in revenue for one UK client and helped another cleaning products company see a 633% return. That's tangible, local proof.

If their case studies are vague, full of jargon, or completely unrelated to your business, it's a major red flag. They should give you a clear idea of how they think and solve problems. A solid UK B2B ad agency should have a portfolio that demonstrates a clear path to ROI for businesses like yours.

What does the UK paid ads landscape even look like?

When you're looking to hire, it's helpful to understand who you're talking to. The market is broadly split into a few categories, each with its own pros and cons. It's not a simple case of 'big is better' or 'small is more agile'. It depends entirely on your needs, budget, and how you like to work.

Think of it as a spectrum. On one end, you have the solo freelancer, and on the other, the massive network agency. Most UK businesses will find their best fit somewhere in the middle. I've mapped out the typical journey below to help you identify what type of partner you might be looking for.

How to use the 'free consultation' as your secret weapon

Nearly every consultant or agency offers a "free consultation" or "free audit". Most businesses treat this as a sales pitch. That's a mistake. This is your single best opportunity to vet their expertise. You should go into this call with a clear objective: to walk away with at least one piece of actionable advice you can implement yourself, wether you hire them or not.

A bad consultation is all about them. They'll spend 30 minutes showing you a generic slide deck about their "process" and "proprietary methods". They'll talk about themselves, their awards, and their big clients. They'll ask you surface-level questions about your budget. This is a sales pitch. It's a waste of your time.

A good consultation is all about you. It should feel like a working session. A real expert will have looked at your website and maybe even your ads beforehand. They will ask you tough, specific questions about your LTV, your sales cycle, your ICP's nightmare—all the stuff we've already discussed. They will open up your ad account (with your permission) and look at the actual data. When we do these, we aim to find the biggest area of wasted spend or missed opportunity within the first 20 minutes.

Here’s what you should expect from a genuinely valuable session:

• They challenge your assumptions. They should question your targeting, your offer, and your landing page. If they just agree with everything you're doing, they're not an expert; they're a yes-man.
• They talk strategy, not just tactics. They should be connecting ad performance to your overall business goals. Are you optimising for cheap leads that never close, or for high-value customers that drive long-term profit?
• They give you specific, actionable advice. You should leave the call with a clear "if I do X, then Y should happen". For instance, "Your website is missing a clear call-to-action above the fold. I'd test adding a 'Schedule a Demo' button there and I'd expect your on-page conversion rate to increase." Or, "You're targeting a broad interest like 'small business owners' on Facebook. You should test layering that with users who are also admins of a Facebook Business Page to get a more qualified audience."

This is your chance to get a taste of what it's like to work with them. Are they sharp? Do they understand your business? Do you feel smarter after talking to them? If the answer to any of these is no, they're not the right fit. The process of understanding how to hire a paid ads consultant in the UK is less about their sales pitch and more about their ability to solve problems in real-time.

What should you actually be paying for leads in the UK?

This is a question I get all the time. "What's a good CPL?". The honest answer is "it depends". It depends on your industry, your LTV, the platform, and the quality of the lead. But that's not a very helpful answer, is it? While you should never treat these numbers as gospel, it's useful to have some benchmarks so you know if you're in the right ballpark.

Based on campaigns we've run for various UK and international clients, here are some rough CPL/CPA ranges you might see in the UK market. I've focused on service-based businesses and SaaS, as that seems most relevant to many UK founders.

As you can see, the ranges are huge. A lead for a home cleaning service might cost £5, as we've seen, because it's a relatively low-commitment decision. A qualified lead for a B2B SaaS product, on the other hand, can easily cost over £200, because the sales cycle is long and the deal values are high. Someone advertising for an "electrician near me" is an urgent, high-intent search, so you might pay £40-£60 for that lead, but they are very likely to convert.

The key isn't to chase the lowest CPL. The key is to understand the value of that lead. If your LTV is £10,000, paying £200 for a lead that has a 1 in 10 chance of closing is a fantastic deal. If you're only focused on getting £5 leads, you might be filling your pipeline with time-wasters who will never buy. An expert consultant will help you focus on attracting the right type of customer, even if it means a higher upfront CPL. This is a crucial part of a proper UK startup's guide to hiring ad experts; they need to understand the economics of your business, not just the ad platform.

What are the final red flags to watch out for?

You’ve done your homework, you’ve reviewed their case studies, and you’ve had a strong consultation. You're close to making a decision. Before you sign anything, run through this final checklist of red flags. If your potential consultant ticks any of these boxes, you should seriously reconsider.

• Guarantees and Promises: This is the biggest one. Anyone who guarantees results like "we'll double your revenue in 3 months" is either lying or naive. Paid advertising is a dynamic system. No one can predict the future. Real experts talk in terms of probabilities, processes, and testing, not certainties.
• Jargon Overload: If they try to impress you with a constant stream of acronyms (ROAS, CPA, CTR, CPL, LTV) without explaining what they mean for *your* business, they're hiding a lack of strategic depth. Clarity is the hallmark of an expert.
• One-Size-Fits-All Strategy: If they immediately recommend the exact same strategy they used for their last client without deeply understanding your business, they're lazy. Your business is unique. Your customer is unique. Your strategy should be too.
• Long, Inflexible Contracts: A confident agency doesn't need to lock you into a 12-month contract. They should be confident enough in their ability to deliver results to work on a shorter-term or rolling basis, perhaps after an initial 3-month commitment to allow for testing and optimisation.
• Lack of Curiosity: Did they ask more questions than you did? A great partner is intensely curious. If they weren't digging into your business model, sales process, and customer feedback, they're not interested in being a partner; they're interested in being a vendor.
• The Account Manager Bait-and-Switch: You have a great call with a senior, experienced strategist, but once you sign, your account is handed off to a junior employee who is just following a checklist. Always ask who, specifically, will be working on your account day-to-day and what their experience is.

Finding the right person is one of the most important decisions you'll make. It’s worth being picky. Getting it right can transform your growth trajectory. Getting it wrong can set you back thousands of pounds and months of wasted time.

Your actionable plan for finding the right UK consultant

We've covered a lot of ground. It can feel overwhelming, so let's boil it down to a clear, actionable process. The goal is to move from uncertainty to a confident hiring decision. This isn't about finding the 'best' agency in the UK; it's about finding the best agency *for you*.

I've put my main recommendations into a table below. Think of this as your vetting checklist. Use it to compare different consultants or agencies you're talking to. It forces you to look beyond the sales pitch and evaluate them based on the criteria that actually lead to a succesful partnership and, ultimately, a better return on your investment.

Ultimately, this all comes down to trust. You need to trust that the person managing your ad spend is a true expert who cares about your business's success as much as you do. Doing this due diligence is how you build that trust before you've spent a penny with them.

If you've gone through this process and you're still struggling, it might be because you're trying to do it all alone. A good consultant doesn't just manage ads; they provide a strategic sounding board, push back on bad ideas, and bring a wealth of experience from other campaigns. That's the real value. It's not about saving you time on the tactical work; it's about helping you avoid the costly strategic mistakes that can kill a business.

If you’re a UK founder and you’d like a second pair of expert eyes on your ad campaigns, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session. It's not a sales pitch. We'll get straight into your ad account, find your biggest opportunities, and give you actionable advice you can take away and use. If we think we can genuinely help, we'll tell you how. If not, we'll tell you that too.