Paid Advertising

Paid ads are the fastest way to turn the tap on: done right, they bring back more than they cost and you can see exactly what each pound returns. The trouble is most budgets leak, wrong audience, weak creative, no tracking, or a landing page that doesn’t convert, so the money goes out and nothing comes back. We build and manage the whole thing across Meta, Google and Microsoft Ads: the creative that earns the click, the targeting that puts it in front of the right people, the page that turns that click into an enquiry, and the tracking that proves it worked.

Which platform should you actually advertise on?

The honest answer is “wherever your customers already are”, and that’s usually one or two platforms, not all of them. Google and Microsoft Ads catch people actively searching for what you do, high intent, ready to buy, ideal when there’s clear demand for your service. Meta (Facebook and Instagram) works the other way: it puts you in front of the right local people before they’ve started searching, which is perfect for things people don’t Google every day, like garden rooms or a new driveway. We pick the mix that fits your market and budget, rather than spreading you thin across every channel because we can.

What “managed” really means day to day

A campaign isn’t something you switch on and walk away from. Ad platforms spend your budget whether or not it’s working, so the difference between profit and waste is what happens after launch. We watch the numbers daily, pause the ads and audiences that aren’t converting, shift budget to the ones that are, refresh creative before it goes stale, and keep cost per lead heading the right way. When the numbers ask us to move, we move fast, for one client we researched, built and launched a fresh audience within 24 hours of their feedback when leads dipped.

Creative and copy that earn the click

Perfect targeting in front of a dull advert still burns money. The creative, the image or video, the headline, the first line of copy, is what makes someone stop scrolling and pay attention, so we treat it as part of the job, not an add-on. We write the ads, build the creative, and test different angles to learn what your market actually responds to. For trades and local businesses, real photos of real work usually beat stock imagery every time, because they build trust in the half-second you’ve got.

The landing page is half the battle

Most ad money is lost after the click, not before it. You can have the right audience and a brilliant ad, but if the page they land on is slow, confusing, or doesn’t make the next step obvious, the enquiry never happens, and you’ve paid for the click anyway. We build landing pages designed for one job: turning ad traffic into enquiries. Fast to load, clear on what you do and who for, with the proof and the contact form right where people need them. It’s the same conversion thinking behind every site we build.

Paid ads vs SEO vs referrals, an honest comparison

These three channels do different jobs, and the smart play is usually a mix rather than betting everything on one. Here’s the honest trade-off:

	Paid ads	SEO	Referrals
Speed	Fast, enquiries in days	Slow, months to build	Unpredictable, when they come
Cost	You pay per click, ongoing	Effort up front, cheap traffic later	Effectively free
Longevity	Stops the moment you stop paying	Keeps working without spend	Dries up if you don’t deliver
Control	High, you control spend and targeting	Medium, you influence, Google decides	Low, out of your hands
Best for	Turning the tap on now	Long-term, lower-cost growth	Topping up, never your only plan

We’ll tell you straight which to lead with for your situation. For most local businesses it’s ads for enquiries now while SEO builds underneath for later, but if your margins don’t support paid spend, we’ll say so rather than take the budget.

Who this is for

This is for established trades and local businesses that need enquiries coming in and can put a sensible number on what a new customer is worth, garden-room and conservatory firms, builders, electricians, plumbers, automotive specialists, renewables installers and growing local brands. If a single new job is worth a few hundred pounds or more, ads that bring back more than they cost pay for themselves quickly. If your margins are too tight for paid spend to work, we’ll point you at a better first move instead.

The mistakes that quietly waste ad budget

Most underperforming campaigns share the same handful of faults. They target too broad an audience, so the budget gets sprayed at people who’ll never buy. They run tired or generic creative that no one stops for. They have no proper conversion tracking, so nobody can tell which ads actually produce enquiries, only which get clicks. They send paid traffic to a slow or unfocused page that loses the enquiry after you’ve paid for the visit. And they get set up once and left alone while the budget quietly drains. We fix all five as standard, because getting these right is usually the fastest way to make existing spend pay.

Proof it works

We judge ads by enquiries and cost per lead, not clicks or impressions. For All Season Garden Rooms we generated over 100 leads in a single month at roughly £5 a lead, on a small daily budget, targeting only a small local area, results strong enough that the client is now expanding into wider areas. For MW Ground Screws, a genuinely niche market, our paid search delivered enquiries from high-intent buyers at around £9 a lead. See more numbers in our case studies.

Want to know exactly where your ad spend is leaking? Get your free marketing audit, it’s free and there’s no obligation. Or see how paid advertising works alongside digital marketing, web development and lead generation.