Who this is for
Two kinds of UK business usually get in touch. The first has never run Facebook or Instagram ads properly — maybe a boosted post here and there, no pixel, no idea what came of it. The second has been running ads for months, spends real money every week, and still can’t say which campaign produced which enquiry.
Both problems have the same root. If the tracking isn’t right, everything downstream is guesswork — the targeting, the creative decisions, the scaling calls. So that’s where the work starts, every time.
What happens in the first month
Week one — foundations
Before a single pound goes out, the measurement has to be real. I audit your Business Manager, check who owns what, and install the Meta pixel alongside the Conversions API so events still register when browser tracking is blocked. Conversion events get defined around outcomes that matter to your business — an enquiry, a booking, a sale — rather than page views that flatter the report.
- Business Manager and asset ownership audit
- Pixel and Conversions API installed and verified with test events
- Domain verification and Aggregated Event Measurement configured
- Conversion events mapped to real business outcomes
Week two — campaign build
A clean structure beats a clever one. Usually that means a small number of cold audiences, one warm retargeting layer, and three to five genuinely different creative angles — not five colour variations of the same image.
- Campaign, ad set and audience structure built inside your ad account
- Cold interest and broad audiences plus lookalikes where you have enough data
- Retargeting for site visitors, video viewers and engagers
- Three to five creative angles written and produced, including copy
Week three — testing
Test budget goes live and gets checked daily. Ad sets that aren’t moving get switched off early rather than left running out of hope. This is the part most agencies skip because it’s unglamorous and it’s exactly where the money is saved.
Week four — first report and scale plan
What worked gets more budget, carefully. You get the first full written report and we agree the plan for month two together.
What’s included every month after that
- Day-to-day campaign, ad set and creative management
- New creative angles tested monthly so ad fatigue doesn’t quietly erode performance
- Audience exclusions and retargeting windows kept current
- Budget reallocation based on cost per result, not on click volume
- A weekly written report: spend, results, cost per result, and what changes next week
- WhatsApp access during UK working hours for anything urgent
What budget you actually need
Meta’s system needs conversion data before it can optimise, and that data costs money to generate. Starve it and you get a month of noise rather than a month of learning.
| Type of business | Realistic test budget |
|---|
| Local service business | £20–£40 per day for the first month |
| Clinic or high-value service | £30–£60 per day |
| E-commerce | £40–£100+ per day, more if the catalogue is broad |
These are starting points for a four-week test, not a promise. If your budget sits below the range for your sector, I’ll say so on the first call rather than take a retainer that can’t produce a fair test.
What I need from you
- Partner access to your Meta Business Manager — never your password
- Your offer, your pricing, and what one customer is worth over time
- Any photos, video or brand assets you already have; I can produce creative if you have none
- Someone who replies to enquiries quickly — slow responses waste good leads faster than bad targeting does
Things that commonly go wrong
- Boosting posts instead of running campaigns. The boost button optimises for engagement, not customers. It is the single most expensive habit in small business advertising.
- Too many ad sets on too little budget. Splitting £20 a day across six ad sets means none of them ever exit the learning phase.
- Changing things daily. Every meaningful edit restarts learning. Discipline beats fiddling.
- No retargeting. The cheapest audience you have is people who already visited and didn’t buy.
- Sending traffic to a slow page. If the landing page takes five seconds on mobile, the ad account gets blamed for a website problem. That’s what the landing page service exists for.
Honest note: I can’t promise you a number of leads or a specific cost per lead before we start, and neither can anyone else. What I can promise is a clean setup, disciplined testing, a report each week you can actually read, and an early conversation if the numbers aren’t going to work.
