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AdvertisingAdvertising

The advertising agency that tracks every pound

We're a PPC and paid social agency for UK businesses on Google, Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok. People write the messages, AI tests more versions than any team could, and you see what every pound of spend brings back.

See what's includedSee what's included
  • The right channels: Google, Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok
  • Ads for people already looking
  • Budget where it does the most good

Companies we've worked with

  • Mercer Consulting, Co.
  • Mercer Consulting, Co.

Before and after: typical ads vs ads written to sell

Google AdsGoogle Ads

A search ad that answers the search.

Someone with a burst pipe searches “emergency plumber”. The typical ad talks about quality and low prices. Ours promises what they actually need right now: someone at the door, fast.

  • Matches the search word for word.
  • A concrete promise.
  • Proof that others trust them.
MetaMeta

A social ad people stop scrolling for.

The typical ad shouts about a discount. Ours opens with a problem the buyer recognises and backs it up with what real customers did, which is far harder to scroll past.

  • Starts with their problem.
  • Proof from real customers.
  • A small next step.
LinkedInLinkedIn

A B2B ad that gives value before asking for a demo.

The typical B2B ad asks HR managers to book a demo straight away. Ours speaks to one role, shows a result from a similar firm and offers something useful with no demo needed.

  • Speaks to one role.
  • A result from a similar firm.
  • Value before a sales call.
TikTokTikTok

A video that feels like TikTok, not an advert.

The typical video is a polished commercial that gets skipped in a second. Ours opens with a hook people recognise, looks like everything else in the feed and gives a reason to try it now.

  • A hook in the first second.
  • Made for the feed.
  • A reason to act now.
GoogleTypical ad

emergency plumber manchester

Sponsored · Northern Plumbing 24/7

Plumber | Best Prices | Contact Us Today

We offer high-quality plumbing services. Professional and reliable. Call now!

Contact us

What goes wrong

  • Says nothing unique
  • Ignores “emergency”
  • No reason to pick them

CTR 2.1% · £41 per call

GoogleOur ad

emergency plumber manchester

Sponsored · Northern Plumbing 24/7

Emergency plumber in Manchester – with you in 60 min

Leaking right now? We're on call 24/7, with a fixed call-out fee and 4.8 on Google. Ring us, a real person answers.

Call now

What we changed

  • Matches the search
  • Concrete promise
  • G4.8 on Google

CTR 8.4% · £14 per call

The ad duelThe ad duel

Which ad won?

Match-ups of the kind we run every week. Pick the ad you think won the most clicks, sales or calls, and we'll explain why.

Round 1 of 5

Illustrative examples based on typical test results. Businesses are made up, figures rounded.

Free ad X-rayFree ad X-ray

Find out where your ad budget leaks, free

We go through your Google Ads, Meta and LinkedIn accounts and show you where money is wasted, what's working and what we'd change in the first 30 days. You get it in a meeting, not a sales pitch, and the list is yours to keep whether or not you ever hire us.

How it works

  1. 1You give us read-only accessWe only look. Nothing in your accounts is changed.
  2. 2We X-ray the accountsTracking, keywords, audiences, ads, budgets and landing pages.
  3. 3We walk you through the findings30 minutes, a prioritised list and an estimate of what each fix is worth.

Free, no obligation. We only need read-only access.

Typical findings
  • Wasted spendA large share of budget on keywords that have never produced a deal
  • TrackingConversion tracking counts every page view as a sale
  • FrequencyThe same ad shown 14 times to the same person
  • Quick winAds send people to the home page instead of the right offer

Paid search, paid social and the tools behind them

We advertise where your customers already are, and measure each step from the first click to the signed deal.

Search and Shopping

  • Google Ads
  • Microsoft Advertising
  • YouTube
  • Shopify

Paid social

  • Meta
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • TikTok
  • Snapchat
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit

Tracking and analytics

  • Google Analytics 4
  • Google Tag Manager
  • Looker Studio
  • Hotjar
  • HubSpot

Creative and AI

  • Figma
  • Adobe
  • OpenAI
  • Claude
  • Gemini
What good paid advertising looks likeWhat good paid advertising looks like

Every pound accounted for

Good paid advertising means tracking that shows deals, messages tested every week and budget that moves to whatever makes money. Here's how that can look in practice.

Illustrative example: an online outdoor kit shop

You see what every channel brings in, not just what it costs.

A shop owner checking the ad results on a laptop

Results by channelOctober

4.1×return on ad spend (ROAS)

up from 1.6× in March
ChannelSpendROAS
Google Ads£4.2k5.2×
Meta£3.1k3.8×
TikTok£1.2k2.9×
Pinterest£5002.1×

Tracking in place

  • Google Analytics 4Live
  • Google Tag ManagerLive
  • Meta Conversions APILive

People write the messages, AI helps us test more of them, and the results decide.

A woman scrolling on her phone outdoors

Ad testsClick-through rate

  • “Tested on Ben Nevis”3.9%Winner
  • Free 60-day returns6.1%Winner
  • Kit checklist video2.4%Scaling
  • “Up to 50% off”0.8%Paused

48variations tested in October

+36 on March

More revenue from the same budget, and a lower cost for every new customer.

A customer receiving a parcel from a courier

Revenue from adsPer month

£36.9kin October

+£21.2k on March

Cost per new customer

£21in October

−48% on March

The same applies whether you want sales, enquiries or booked meetings.

Ad calculatorAd calculator

What could paid advertising bring you?

Enter your own figures and see how many customers and how much revenue a monthly ad budget could bring in.

£
50050,000
£
120
%
1%20%
%
5%100%
£
2050,000

Your result

Every £1 of ad spend brings back

3.6 £

in revenue, on average

45
Sales or enquiries per month
14
New customers per month
£222
Cost per customer

Monthly revenue at different budgets

  1. £5,400£1,500
  2. £10,800£3,000
  3. £16,200£4,500
  4. £21,600£6,000

An estimate based on your own figures, not a promise. Real costs per click often rise as budgets grow.

Visitors = budget ÷ cost per click.

Sales or enquiries = visitors × the share who buy or enquire.

New customers = sales or enquiries × the share who become customers.

Revenue = new customers × order value. Return per £1 = revenue ÷ budget.

What's includedWhat's included

Everything our advertising agency handles

From the first audit to campaigns that scale, in the channels where your customers are.

  • Ad review

    Landing page for your ad sends.

    Read more
  • Google Ads

    Google Ads and SEM built around high-intent searches, qualified conversions and measurable revenue.

    Read more
  • Meta Ads

    Facebook and Instagram campaigns built around creative testing, clean signals and profitable scale.

    Read more
  • LinkedIn Ads

    B2B campaigns built around account targeting, buying committees and qualified pipeline.

    Read more
ProcessProcess

How we make paid advertising profitable

The same proven steps every time: measure first, then test, then scale what works.

  1. 01Week 1

    Ad X-ray and goals

    We review your accounts, find the leaks and agree the target: cost per customer, not cost per click.

  2. 02Weeks 1–2

    Tracking and structure

    We set up tracking that records sales and deals, and rebuild the account structure around your offers.

  3. 03Weeks 2–4

    Messages and tests

    People write the ads, AI helps us test more variations, and every ad gets a landing page that matches it.

  4. 04Ongoing

    Optimise and scale

    Each week we shift budget to what works, test something new and report deals, revenue and cost per customer.

What an advertising agency doesWhat an advertising agency does

What does an advertising agency do, and why do so many ad budgets leak?

A digital advertising agency plans, writes, runs and measures paid campaigns where your customers spend their time: Google search and Shopping, Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube. Google handles over nine in ten UK searches, so paid search is usually the first channel; paid social reaches people before they start looking.

The trouble is that most ad accounts are set up once and left to run. Budget drifts to keywords that never sell, the same ad is shown until people are sick of it, and reports count clicks instead of deals. We pair proven concepts with AI and human judgement: AI tests more variations than any team has time for, while people write the messages and decide what's worth scaling.

Whether you call it PPC, paid media, paid search, paid social or performance marketing, the aim is the same: more customers for every pound you spend, and a clear view of how you got them.

Run your own ads or hire a PPC agency?

Doing it in-house works up to a point. Once the budget grows, or results flatten, an outside pair of eyes usually pays for itself quickly.

Not sure? Start with a free ad X-ray
Doing it in-house
Fine for small, simple budgets
Easy to start, hard to master
Time taken from your day job
Hard to see what's really working
With us
Proven concepts from day one
Tracking that shows deals, not clicks
New variations tested every week
A fixed fee and accounts you own

Where is your ad budget going right now?

Book a free ad X-ray. We go through your accounts and show you where the money leaks, in 30 minutes.

  • No obligation
  • Read-only access
  • A list to keep
How it worksHow it works

Every campaign, tracked week by week

Accounts connected, every test logged, AI alerts when something shifts and numbers that show revenue. Illustrative figures.

Connect accounts and tracking

Tracking

Ad accounts, Analytics and your CRM in one place, so every sale can be traced back to an ad.

Google Ads, Meta, GA4…
Connecting
  • Google AdsConnected
  • MetaConnected
  • LinkedInConnected
  • TikTokConnected
  • Google Analytics 4Connected
  • Tag ManagerConnected
  • HubSpotConnected
  • Looker StudioSyncing
  • Tracking statusVerified
  • Connected sources9
  • Untracked spend0%
Connected via API

Follow every test

Tests

Which angles and ads drive revenue, channel by channel.

ROAS by angle
Last 30 days
  • #1Free 60-day returns+34
  • #2“Tested on Ben Nevis”+21
  • #3Kit checklist video+12
  • #4Customer reviews carousel+8
  • #5“Up to 50% off”-6

AI flags what changes

AI

Alerts when costs jump, an ad wears out or budget should move.

Alerts this week
AI
  • CheckCost per click on “tents” up 40% since Monday
  • OpportunityMove £800 from display to the winning search campaign
  • GoodNew TikTok hook beats the old one by 2.3×

See the impact

Impact

Before and after: revenue, cost per customer and wasted spend.

Live
  • ROAS1.6×4.1×
  • Cost per customer£41£21
  • Wasted spend23%4%
  • Ad variations / month348
Related servicesRelated services

Services that work well with paid advertising

  • Web designLanding pages and a website that turn ad clicks into customers.
  • SEOLower your cost per customer over time with traffic you don't pay for.
  • Lead generationPersonal outreach to the accounts your ads are warming up.
FAQFAQ

Questions about hiring an advertising agency

Answers on channels, budgets, fees, AI, tracking and how we work.

It plans, builds and runs your paid campaigns on platforms like Google, Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok. That covers choosing channels, keyword and audience research, writing the ads, setting up conversion tracking, managing bids and budgets, testing new versions and reporting what the spend returned. A good agency is judged on sales, enquiries and cost per customer, not on clicks or impressions.

PPC (pay per click) is advertising where you pay when someone clicks your ad rather than when it is shown. The best-known example is Google Ads, where you bid to appear for searches such as “emergency plumber Leeds”. The term is also used loosely for Microsoft Ads and some social ads. Because every click has a price, PPC rewards tight targeting and pages that turn visits into customers.

Paid search shows your ad to people who are already searching for something, so it captures existing demand. Paid social, on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok, puts your ad in front of people based on who they are and what they're interested in, before they start looking. Most profitable accounts use search to catch buyers who are ready and social to create the next wave of demand.

The one your customers use when they're ready to buy. If people search for what you sell, start with Google Ads. If you sell to businesses and know the job titles you need, LinkedIn is often worth it. Consumer brands with products that look good on screen tend to do well on Meta and TikTok. We usually start with one or two channels and add more once the numbers hold up.

Facebook and Instagram ads both run through Meta Ads Manager, so one account covers both. Instead of targeting searches, you reach people based on interests, behaviour and similarity to your existing customers, which makes Meta well suited to showing a product to people who haven't started looking yet. Results depend mostly on the creative, so a steady supply of new ads to test matters more than clever targeting. Read more about our Meta ads management.

They do different jobs. Paid ads can bring results within days and stop when the budget stops; SEO takes months but keeps paying off. A common pattern is to use advertising for growth now while SEO builds up, then let organic traffic lower your overall cost per customer. Search term data from ads also shows which topics are worth investing in for SEO.

SEM (search engine marketing) is paid visibility in search engines, mainly Google and Bing. PPC describes the pricing model, paying per click, and is often used as a synonym for search ads. Paid media is the umbrella term for every channel you pay to appear in, including search, social, display and video. In practice they overlap, and the work behind them is very similar.

A creative agency develops campaign ideas and assets. A media agency plans and buys ad space, often at large scale and including TV, radio and outdoor. A PPC or performance agency like ours works in digital channels and does the hands-on part: writing ads, building and managing campaigns, testing, optimising and reporting what every pound brought back. Many smaller firms need the last one most.

Paid media is anything you pay to appear in, such as Google or social ads. Owned media is the channels you control: your website, email list and social profiles. Earned media is what others say about you, from press mentions to reviews and shares. Paid works best when it sends people to owned channels that convert, and it can help you earn reviews and word of mouth over time.

Yes, but it is measured differently from consumer advertising. B2B buying cycles are longer and several people are involved, so we track qualified leads, meetings and closed deals in your CRM rather than clicks. Google Ads captures people already searching for a supplier, while LinkedIn reaches specific roles and companies before they've started looking. Many B2B accounts need both.

Often very much so, because you can limit ads to the postcodes you cover and the hours you can take calls. A plumber in Leeds, a dental practice in Bristol or a restaurant in Glasgow doesn't need national reach, only the people nearby who need them now. That focus makes a modest budget go a long way, as long as the tracking shows which calls and bookings came from ads.

A review of your ad accounts where we show you where money is wasted, what's working and what we'd do in the first 30 days. You give us read-only access, we check tracking, keywords, audiences, ads, budgets and landing pages, and then talk you through a prioritised list in a 30-minute meeting. The list is yours to keep, whether or not we work together.

AI helps us analyse accounts, spot patterns and produce more ad variations to test than a team could write by hand. People write the core messages, choose what to test and decide where the budget goes. We use the platforms' own automation, such as smart bidding, when the tracking is good enough to feed it, but nothing runs on autopilot without someone checking it.

People do, with AI as a sparring partner. We start from what your customers actually care about, using reviews, sales calls and search terms, and write several different angles. The results then decide which angles get more budget. You approve new messages before they go live, so nothing appears under your name that you haven't seen.

On sales, enquiries, deals and cost per customer, not on clicks and impressions. We set up tracking in Google Analytics 4 and in each ad platform, and connect it to your CRM when the sale happens later, for example when a lead becomes a signed contract weeks afterwards. Clicks and click-through rate are still useful, but only to diagnose problems.

You do. We work inside accounts registered to your business, with your own billing details, and you keep admin access throughout. That means all data, history, audiences and campaigns stay with you if you ever stop working with us. We'd be wary of any agency that runs your ads in an account it owns.

Yes. We start with an ad X-ray of the accounts you have, keep what works and rebuild what doesn't. Account history, conversion data and audiences are valuable, so we rarely start from scratch. If you're moving from another agency, we help you make sure you have admin access to everything before the handover.

A kick-off meeting about goals, customers and margins, access to your ad accounts and analytics, and someone who can answer questions and approve new messages. If you have photos, videos or customer stories, we'll use them; if not, we can produce material. After the first month, most clients spend around an hour a month with us on the review.

It depends on the budget. Each test needs enough impressions and conversions to give a reliable answer, so a smaller budget means fewer variations at a time. We change one thing per test, such as the message, the image or the offer, so we know what made the difference. Bigger accounts can run several tests in parallel across campaigns.

You get access to a live report that updates continuously, and once a month we go through the results with you: what was tested, what it delivered and what happens next. If something important changes in between, such as a jump in costs or a tracking issue, we get in touch straight away rather than waiting for the monthly meeting.

It depends on your market, your channel and what a customer is worth to you. A first test can run on a modest monthly budget, but to get reliable numbers you need enough spend for a steady flow of conversions every week. We work backwards from your margins and the cost per click in your market, and suggest a starting level in the first meeting.

We charge a fixed monthly fee for strategy, management and reporting. Your ad spend is paid directly to Google, Meta, LinkedIn and the other platforms on your own card or invoice, so we don't earn more just because you spend more. That keeps our advice honest: if cutting a campaign is the right call, we'll tell you.

Search ads can bring enquiries within days of going live. Social channels usually need a few weeks of testing before we know which messages work. Smart bidding also needs a learning period with enough conversion data. Most accounts are clearly better within the first two to three months, and we show you the trend every month so you can judge for yourself.

No. We work on a rolling monthly basis. If the results aren't there, you shouldn't be tied in. In practice the first month goes on tracking, structure and the first tests, so we suggest judging the work after two or three months, but the decision is always yours.

ROAS (return on ad spend) is the revenue your ads bring in divided by what you spent on them. A ROAS of 4 means £4 in revenue for every £1 of ad spend. What's good depends entirely on your margins: a high-margin service can be profitable at a low ROAS, while a low-margin shop needs a high one. We'd rather work out profit per customer than chase a generic number.

We start where demand already exists, usually Google search, and set aside a smaller share to test paid social. Each month we move money towards whatever delivers the lowest cost per customer at the quality you need. The split is never fixed; it follows the results, the season and how much each channel can absorb before costs rise.

It depends on the channel and the goal. Search ads are usually charged per click, while social and video campaigns are often charged per thousand impressions (CPM). Some platforms also offer payment per lead or per view. We choose the model that suits what the campaign has to achieve, and judge everything on cost per customer in the end.

Yes. Under UK rules, the ICO expects consent for non-essential cookies, including advertising ones, and rejecting must be as easy as accepting. We set up Google Consent Mode and server-side events where they fit, so you respect visitors' choices and still get as complete a picture as possible of what your ads bring in.

We collect only what's needed, follow the consent visitors give and use the platforms' privacy-safe methods for matching customers, such as hashed data. If you upload customer lists for audiences, we check that you have a lawful basis and that your privacy notice covers it. You remain the data controller, and we work within your policies.

Yes. We run campaigns in English, Swedish and Norwegian, and adapt the messages, channels and targeting to each market rather than translating one ad. If you sell into several countries, we structure the accounts so each market has its own budget, bidding and reporting, and you can see which country brings the best customers.

Let's get startedLet's get started

Ready to grow?

Let's talk about your project.

Trusted by 110+ businesses to grow online.

  • Mercer Consulting, Co.
  • Mercer Consulting, Co.
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