UK Paid Ads: How To Actually Vet Ad Experts

Finding a decent paid media consultant in the UK feels like a proper nightmare, doesn't it? You're drowning in a sea of LinkedIn "gurus" promising the world, agencies with flashy websites that say nothing, and freelancers who seem to disappear after a week. You just want someone who gets your business, doesn't burn your cash, and actually delivers something you can take to the bank. It's a massive source of frustration for founders, and frankly, it's why a lot of businesses get burned and conclude that "paid ads don't work".

The truth is, they do work. You're just looking for the wrong things. Most business owners vet consultants based on their sales pitch, their location, or vague promises. This is a recipe for disaster. You need a better framework, a way to cut through the noise and identify genuine expertise. This is that framework. It's not about finding a "local" expert; it's about finding the *right* expert, and that's a completely different game.

So, you think you need a consultant down the road in London?

Let's get this one out of the way first, because it's the biggest mistake UK businesses make. You're based in Manchester, so you search for "paid ads consultant Manchester". Or you're in the capital and you think you need a London-based ads expert. It seems logical, right? Face-to-face meetings, local knowledge, all that nonsense.

It's completely pointless. We're in the UK, not the US. I can get from London to Birmingham faster than I can get across London at rush hour. In the age of Zoom and Slack, physical proximity is perhaps the least important factor in choosing a strategic partner. What you're actually doing is shrinking your talent pool from the entire country (or even the world) down to a tiny, arbitrary circle on a map. You're choosing convenience over competence.

Would you rather hire the best B2B SaaS ads consultant in the UK who happens to be in Edinburgh, or the fifth-best one who happens to have an office near Old Street? I've run campaigns for software companies from my office without ever shaking the founder's hand, and we've smashed their targets. For instance, one of our clients was a medical job matching SaaS, and we took their cost per user acquisition from £100 all the way down to just £7. That wasn't because we were local; it was because we understood their business model and the specific levers to pull on Meta and Google Ads for their niche.

Before you hire anyone, can you describe your customer's nightmare?

Here's a little test. If I asked you to describe your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), what would you say? If you start listing demographics like "females aged 25-40" or "SMEs in the tech sector," you're not ready to hire anyone. You're just going to waste their time and your money.

A great consultant won't care about that surface-level stuff initially. They will relentlessly dig for the customer's *pain*. The real, urgent, expensive problem that keeps them up at night. Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state. A good consultant knows this, a bad one will just load your vague demographics into Facebook's audience manager and hope for the best.

-> For a service business: Your customer's nightmare isn't 'needing a new accountant'. It's the sudden, cold-sweat fear that they've miscalculated their VAT and a massive bill from HMRC is about to land on their desk.

-> For a B2B SaaS product: Their nightmare isn't 'inefficient workflows'. It's the CTO watching her best three engineers hand in their notice in the same week because they're sick of fighting broken internal tools.

-> For an eCommerce brand: Their nightmare isn't 'wanting a new dress'. It's the panic of having a big event next weekend and feeling like they have absolutely nothing to wear that makes them feel confident.

Before you even think about talking to a consultant, you need to be able to articulate this pain with absolute clarity. Why? Because this is the raw material of all good advertising. It's what informs the ad copy, the creative, the offer, and the targeting. An expert can't work without it. When you're on that first call, if the consultant isn't asking you these kinds of deep, probing questions about your customer's motivations, they're a technician, not a strategist. And you need a strategist.

You need to know your numbers, starting with LTV

A strategist will also ask about your business metrics. The most important one? Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). If you don't know this number, you're flying blind, and any ad spend is just gambling. The question isn't "How cheap can I get a lead?" it's "How much can I profitably *afford* to spend to acquire a customer?" LTV gives you the answer.

It sounds complicated, but the basic formula is straightforward. It tells you what a customer is worth to you in profit over their entire relationship with your business.

Armed with this number, the conversation changes. Suddenly, a £100 cost per lead doesn't look so scary if you know one in ten of those leads becomes a customer worth thousands. This is the kind of strategic thinking a top-tier consultant brings to the table. If they're not asking about LTV, churn, and margins, they're planning on managing your ads in a vacuum, completely disconnected from your actual business goals. And that's a fast track to wasting a lot of money on paid ads.

How to properly analyse their case studies

Every consultant will have case studies. Most of them are useless vanity metrics. "Reached 10 Million People for Luxury Brand" - so what? Did any of them buy anything? "1000% Return On Ad Spend" - sounds great, but was that on £100 of ad spend? You need to perform an autopsy on their case studies, not just glance at the headlines.

Here’s what you should be asking:

1. What was the starting point? Was this a brand new ad account, or were they optimising a mature one? It's much easier to get impressive results on a broken account than to scale a successful one. A 50% reduction in CPL is less impressive if the starting CPL was £500 because of terrible management.

2. What was the *actual* business objective? Was it just about getting cheap leads, or was it about acquiring customers with a high LTV? I remember one campaign where we generated 4,622 registrations for a B2B software client at just $2.38 each. The number is impressive, but the real success was that the strategy focused on acquiring high-quality users, not just cheap clicks. The low cost per registration was a byproduct of a solid strategy that targeted the right audience, not the goal itself.

3. What went wrong? This is my favourite question. No campaign is a straight line to success. There are always failed ad sets, dud creatives, and targeting that just didn't work. A consultant who is honest about the testing process and the failures is one you can trust. Someone who only presents a perfect story is either lying or inexperienced.

4. Can you walk me through the strategy? Why did you choose LinkedIn over Meta for that B2B campaign? What was the thinking behind the ad copy? How did you structure the retargeting funnel? You're not trying to catch them out; you're trying to understand their thought process. Do they have a clear, logical framework, or does it sound like they just got lucky? A great consultant can articulate their strategy clearly and concisely.

Don't be afraid to dig deep. A good case study should tell a story of a business problem that was solved, not just a list of impressive but context-free numbers. If they can't provide that context, their results might not be repeatable.

The "Free Audit" is your most important interview

Most decent consultants or agencies will offer a free consultation or account audit. This is not a sales call. This is the single most important part of your vetting process. In this 20-30 minute call, you should learn more about the potential of your own business than you have in the past six months. This is their chance to prove their expertise, not just talk about it.

Here’s a simple flowchart for how you should approach this phase. It’s a process of elimination.

What a BAD audit looks like:

• They spend most of the time talking about their agency and their awards.
• They give you generic, surface-level advice you could find on a blog: "Your CPC is a bit high," or "You should try video ads."
• They don't ask about your business goals, margins, or customer LTV.
• They pressure you to sign a contract on the spot.
• They guarantee results. This is the biggest red flag of all. No one can guarantee results in paid advertising. It's an instant sign of an amateur or a liar.

What a GOOD audit looks like:

• They spend most of the time asking *you* questions. They're trying to diagnose, not prescribe.
• They connect your ad account performance directly to your business metrics. For example, "I see your ROAS is 2x, but given your 80% margins, you could actually afford to be more aggressive here to scale volume."
• They offer at least one specific, actionable insight that makes you go "Ah, I'd never thought of that." It could be about a new audience to target, a different offer to test, or a flaw in your landing page.
• They talk about their process and testing methodology, not just past results.
• You leave the call feeling smarter about your own business, regardless of whether you decide to hire them. Their goal is to demonstrate value, not to close a sale.

Honestly, if someone asks us for client references after we've gone through our detailed case studies and provided a comprehensive free account audit, it's a bit of a red flag for us. It signals a lack of trust that probably won't lead to a good partnership. The audit is where the real proof is. This is why it's a critical part of the process for vetting a UK ad consultant.

So, how much should you actually pay a consultant in the UK?

This is the big question, isn't it? Pricing in the UK can feel all over the place. You've got cheap freelancers on Upwork, mid-tier agencies, and high-end consultants. The price often reflects the level of strategic input you're getting.

Here are the common models you'll see:

1. Monthly Retainer: This is the most common. You pay a fixed fee each month. In the UK, this can range from £500/month for a very junior freelancer managing a simple account, to £5,000+/month for a senior consultant or small agency providing in-depth strategy and management across multiple platforms. For a proper, experienced consultant working on a business with decent ad spend, you should expect to be in the £1,500 - £4,000 per month range.

2. Percentage of Ad Spend: This is common for larger accounts. The fee is typically 10-20% of the monthly ad spend. It aligns the consultant's interests with scaling your budget, but you need to make sure they're scaling profitably, not just spending more to earn more. This model usually works best for spend over £10,000/month.

3. Performance-Based: This sounds attractive but can be tricky. It might be a lower retainer plus a bonus for hitting certain targets (e.g., a certain ROAS or number of leads). Be very careful with how these targets are defined. It can sometimes incentivise a focus on short-term, low-quality metrics. It's rare to find a good consultant who will work purely on performance, as too many factors (your website, your offer, your sales team) are outside of their control.

The choice often comes down to the classic agency vs in-house debate, but hiring a consultant offers a middle ground with expert input without the overhead of a full-time employee. To help you get a better handle on what your total costs might look like, here's a simple calculator that combines ad spend and a typical UK management fee.

Putting it all together: Your Vetting Scorecard

Okay, you've done your research, you've had a few audit calls. How do you make a final decision? It can be tough to compare different personalities and proposals. That's why you should use a scorecard. It forces you to be objective and score each potential partner on the criteria that actually matter.

I've built a simple interactive one for you below. Use it after each audit call to score the consultant while the conversation is still fresh in your mind. It will help you see past a slick sales pitch and focus on the substance.

Why not just do it yourself?

After all this, you might be thinking it's just easier to learn it all yourself. You could. There are endless courses and blogs out there. But you have to ask yourself: is your time best spent becoming a second-rate ads manager, or is it best spent doing what you do best—running your business?

The advertising landscape changes constantly. New ad formats, algorithm updates, new platform features. A dedicated professional lives and breathes this stuff every single day. They're running dozens of tests across multiple accounts, learning what's working *right now*, not what worked six months ago. That's the expertise you're investing in. It's not just about setting up a campaign; it's about having a strategic partner who can navigate the complexity and deliver a return, freeing you up to focus on your product, your customers, and your team.

Finding the right consultant is hard work, there's no doubt about it. But it's one of the most important hires you'll make. Don't settle for local, don't fall for guarantees, and don't be swayed by a slick pitch. Use this framework to demand evidence of strategic thinking. Find a partner who challenges you, educates you, and is as obsessed with your business metrics as you are. That's how you stop wasting money and start getting customers.

If you’re tired of the search and want to see what a proper, strategy-first audit looks like, feel free to get in touch for a free consultation. We can walk through your account and give you some actionable advice you can use right away, with no obligation.