Meta Ads case study: £25, five days, and a five-star review.
One campaign, every number from the client’s own account. No rounding up, no cherry-picking the good week.
How to read the labels on this page
- The Meta Ads figures in the headline and the case study (£25 of spend, five days, 500+ saves, 10 new followers) come from the client’s own ad account, the 5.0 rating from Fiverr, and each review quoted is in the client’s own words. Nothing else on this page is a client figure.
- ESTIMATED A worked example with its assumptions written out, to show how I forecast. Not a client result, and not a promise.
- BENCHMARK A published industry average, named with its source and year. Never my result, and never a forecast for your account.
The campaign, start to finish.
An independent artist in the UK wanted more saves and followers on Spotify, and had a small budget to test with.
Great communication and very helpful throughout the process. Took the time to explain everything clearly and set up the campaign professionally. Focused on quality results rather than just numbers. Highly recommended.UK client · Independent artist · Meta Ads project
What was done
Audience narrowed to listeners of three comparable artists, single country, single placement set. One creative angle tested first, a second added only once the first had data. Checked daily, adjusted twice, losing variants switched off.
What came back
500+ saves and 10 new followers from £25 of spend across five days, delivered with a written breakdown of what ran and what each part cost. Rated 5.0 on Fiverr.
Spend, run time, saves and followers from the client’s own Meta Ads account; the rating from Fiverr.
Two more projects, in the clients’ own words.
One SEO project in the UK and one Google Ads project in the US, quoted word for word, with nothing added.
SEO project, United Kingdom
I’m very happy with the SEO service I received. The work was professional, well organised, and clearly focused on improving my website’s visibility in Google. Communication was excellent throughout the project, and I started seeing positive improvements in my rankings and organic traffic. I would definitely recommend this SEO service to other UK businesses looking to improve their online presence.UK client · SEO project · sent by the client
Wording, sent by the client · no figures published yet
Google Ads project, United States
I’m really pleased with the Google Ads service I received. The campaigns were set up professionally and managed carefully, with a clear focus on reaching the right audience and generating quality enquiries. Communication was excellent, and I appreciated the regular updates and attention to detail. I’ve seen a noticeable improvement in the quality of leads coming through Google Ads and would definitely recommend this service to other businesses.US client · Google Ads project · sent by the client
Wording, sent by the client · no figures published yet
Figures appear only when the client agrees in writing, after seeing exactly what would be published. That is the permission rule for every client name and figure on this site.
How every result is measured and reported.
A result only counts if you can check it, so every figure I report comes from an account in your name, or from you.
Where the numbers come from
Spend, clicks, conversions and cost per result come from your own Meta Ads or Google Ads account, website behaviour from GA4 and, for SEO, search clicks, impressions and positions from Search Console. Sales that close later, by phone or in person, come from you: I cannot see your till.
The weekly written report
Every week, in plain English: what ran, what it cost, what came in, the cost per result and what changes next week. For SEO: what moved, what traffic did and which enquiries arrived. Bad weeks are reported exactly like good ones.
Attribution, and its limits
Meta, Google Ads and GA4 each count conversions by their own rules, so two platforms can claim one enquiry, and all three can miss a phone call unless calls are tracked. I report each figure as the platform shows it, flag where they disagree, and check the total against the enquiries you actually received.
Your accounts, your data
Everything runs in accounts in your name: your Business Manager (now called a business portfolio in Meta’s help centre), Google Ads account, GA4 property and Search Console. You add me yourself, through partner access on the ad accounts, and I never ask for your password. If we stop working together, the history stays with you.
The process page shows where the report fits in the four steps, and working with UK and US clients covers hours, currency and access.
What we estimate before we start, and how.
Before any money moves, we run your numbers through a short chain of sums, shown here for Google Ads and SEO. Inputs marked “assumed” are round figures for illustration; the fees are my published prices. Neither example is a client result or a promise: promising leads or sales is one of the four things I won’t say.
ESTIMATED worked example · not a client result
Google Ads: from budget to customers
Formula: budget ÷ cost per click × click-to-enquiry rate × close rate = new customers.
- Monthly ad budget (assumed)£900
- Average cost per click (assumed)£3.00
- Clicks: £900 ÷ £3.00300
- Click-to-enquiry rate (assumed)5%
- Enquiries: 300 × 5%15
- Close rate (assumed)20%
- New customers: 15 × 20%3
- Average sale value (assumed)£1,500
- Sales: 3 × £1,500£4,500
- Cost per customer with my fee: (£900 + £299) ÷ 3about £400
The last line adds my fee at £299 a month, the Basic level, where my monthly prices start. Every service, Google Ads included, uses the same three prices: Basic £299, Standard £449 and Professional £649 a month, charged per service, with the ad budget paid separately. What each level covers for Google Ads is agreed in writing before you pay. The test is whether one sale leaves you more than about £400 of profit, just over a quarter of a £1,500 sale, or about £450 on Standard and £516 on Professional. If not, the plan loses money.
What would make it wrong: dearer clicks (at £4.50, the same £900 buys 200 clicks, 10 enquiries and 2 customers), a weaker landing page, tracking that counts page views as enquiries, slow replies, and the first weeks, while the account is still learning.
Next step: put in your own budget, click cost and close rate. If the sums don’t work, I tell you before we start.
ESTIMATED worked example · not a client result
SEO: from searches to customers
Formula: searches × click-through share × visit-to-enquiry rate × close rate = new customers.
- Monthly searches for the target keywords (assumed)2,000
- Share who click through once you rank near the top (assumed)10%
- Visits: 2,000 × 10%200
- Visit-to-enquiry rate (assumed)4%
- Enquiries: 200 × 4%8
- Close rate (assumed)25%
- New customers a month: 8 × 25%2
- Sales a month at a £1,500 average sale (assumed)£3,000
- Months before the rankings arrive (assumed)6
- Fees paid by then: 6 × £299£1,794
- Profit per sale (assumed)£500
- Monthly profit after the fee: 2 × £500 − £299£701
- Months to win back the fees: £1,794 ÷ £701about 2.6
SEO pays back slowly, so the fees paid before rankings arrive are the real cost of entry. £299 is where SEO packages start; a bigger site or a competitive niche sits on a higher package and pays back more slowly. The SEO timeline gives two to four months for local terms in a smaller town and four to eight for competitive city terms, so six is a planning figure, not a date.
What would make it wrong: keyword volumes are rounded estimates, the pages may rank lower or later, AI Overviews and the map pack take clicks first, and your page and your replies decide how many visits become customers.
Next step: see what each package includes. If the payback doesn’t add up for your site, I say so before we start.
BENCHMARK For comparison, LocaliQ’s 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks (updated 1 June 2026) give averages across industries of $5.42 per click, an 8.18% Google Ads conversion rate and $66.69 per lead. They come from LocaliQ customers’ Google Ads and Microsoft Ads campaigns, are in dollars with no UK figure, and are not my results. My example assumes a lower conversion rate on purpose.
Would you rather I ran the sums? Send me your real figures on WhatsApp or through the contact page. It costs you nothing to hear the answer.
Why results fail, and what I check first.
Most can be spotted on paper, before any work begins.
- The offer. If the price, the promise or the reason to act now is weak, better targeting only finds more people to say no.
- Tracking. If a page view counts as a conversion, every cost per lead in the report is fiction, and every decision built on it is a guess.
- The landing page. A slow page, a vague message or no clear next step on a phone wastes clicks that were already paid for.
- A budget too small to learn. If it buys too few clicks to tell a winning ad from luck, the test ends before it has said anything.
- The market. Some auctions cost more per customer than your margin allows, and some areas have too few searches. Then I say so, and suggest a different route, or none at all.
Where else this applies.
Same treatment, your account.
Start with a message: what you sell, where, and what a customer is worth to you. Your results would come from your own accounts, reported every week.