The opening eBook of the Paid Growth and Campaigns category. It assumes you've done the basic work on offer, website and search ranking, and shows you how to add paid ads as a controlled, measurable layer on top - without burning your first thousand pounds learning what a sensible test looks like.
Members ebook·7 chapters· 45 minute read
Chapter 2
Choosing the Right Ad Channel
How to pick between Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram ads, TikTok ads and LinkedIn ads, based on how your customers actually look for businesses like yours.
There are more ad platforms than any small business owner has time to learn. Google Ads. Facebook and Instagram ads. TikTok ads. LinkedIn ads. YouTube ads. Pinterest ads. Microsoft Ads on Bing. Local newspaper ads still exist. So do parish magazines and local radio. The question every owner asks is the wrong one: which is the best platform? The right question is much narrower: where do my actual customers go when they have the problem my offer solves?
The answer is almost never "all of them." For most small businesses, one channel earns its keep, one or two more might be worth a small test later and the rest are a distraction. Pouring three hundred pounds a month across four platforms gives you four campaigns that never collected enough data to be readable. Pouring the same three hundred pounds into one platform gives you one campaign you can actually decide on at the end of the month.
This chapter helps you pick that one platform. By the end you'll have a short list of one, maybe two, with a clear reason for each, and a clear list of the platforms you're explicitly choosing not to test this quarter.
The full chapter walks through the customer-search test, the strengths and limits of each major platform for small business and the channel choices we'd make for nine different small business shapes.
The customer-search test
Before you compare platforms, picture one of your real customers in the moment they realised they had the problem you solve. A leaking tap. A booking system that crashed. A skin condition they're embarrassed about. A wedding in eight months and no idea where to start. What did they do next? For most small business problems, the answer falls into one of three patterns. They typed the problem into Google. They asked a friend. They scrolled and stumbled across a video or post that named the problem better than they could.
Each pattern points to a different channel. Customers who type the problem into Google are reachable on Google Ads. Customers who ask a friend are mostly reachable through reviews, referrals and search ranking, not paid ads. Customers who stumble across a video are reachable on Facebook and Instagram or TikTok, depending on age and habit. The platform you pick should match the way your customers actually behave, not the platform you happen to use yourself.
Google Ads: the search-intent channel
Google Ads works best when there's a clear, searchable phrase your customer would type. "Emergency plumber Hackney." "Children's birthday cake Bristol." "Bookkeeper for self-employed builders." If you can think of three or four phrases a customer would actually type when they need what you sell, Google Ads is probably the right starting channel. The traffic is intent-rich - people who searched for what you do are usually closer to buying than people scrolling on social - and the campaign structure is fairly forgiving for a small business owner with an hour a week to give it.
Google Ads works less well when the customer doesn't know your kind of solution exists yet. If your offer solves a problem the customer hasn't named, no one is searching for it, and you'll spend money on either too-broad terms or empty search volume. The companion eBook Google Ads on a Small Budget goes deep on how to spot that situation before you fund the campaign.
Facebook and Instagram ads: the discovery channel
Facebook and Instagram ads work best when your customer doesn't know they have the problem yet, or hasn't named it as something to search for. Lifestyle products. Local services where the buyer is browsing before they're ready. Visual offers - food, design, fashion, fitness, home improvement. Anything where seeing it triggers wanting it. The platform's strength is interrupting the right person at the right moment with the right image, not capturing demand that already exists.
Facebook and Instagram ads work less well when the offer is purely functional and the customer would only buy when they actively need it. A locksmith doesn't usually win on Instagram. A wedding photographer often does. The companion eBook Facebook and Instagram Ads for Small Businesses goes deep on creative, audiences and offers.
TikTok ads: the attention channel
TikTok ads work best when your customer is under forty, your product photographs or films well and you have either the time or the willingness to make short videos that don't feel like ads. Beauty, food, fitness, fashion, hobbies, courses for younger learners. The cost per click can be very low, and the wrong video gets ignored cleanly without bleeding budget. The wrong creative on TikTok also fails harder than on any other platform - polished, agency-style ads underperform clumsy, native-feeling videos almost without exception.
TikTok ads work less well for older customer bases, for trades and professional services aimed at adults over fifty and for any business that can't or won't make video. If you read that and felt relieved, this isn't your channel right now and that's fine.
LinkedIn ads: the work-decision channel
LinkedIn ads work best when your customer is buying for their work, the buying decision involves a job title you can target on and the average sale is large enough to justify the click cost. Business-to-business services. Recruitment. Software for specific roles. Anything aimed at people while they're thinking about their job, not their evening. The companion eBook LinkedIn Marketing for Small Business-to-Business Firms covers organic and paid LinkedIn for those businesses.
LinkedIn ads work less well for everything else. Click costs are high - often three to five times the cost of Google Ads for the same kind of audience - and the platform punishes consumer-style offers with poor reach. If your customer isn't on LinkedIn during work hours thinking about work, this isn't your channel.
Pick one channel this quarter
Customers search for the problem by name: start with Google Ads
Customers browse and discover, visual offer, mostly under fifty: start with Facebook and Instagram ads
Customers under forty, video-friendly product, willing to film: TikTok ads can be worth a small test
Customers buying for work, decision involves a job title, sale over a thousand pounds: LinkedIn ads can be worth a small test
None of the above clearly fit: stay on search ranking, reviews and email for now
Why one channel beats four
A small business with three hundred pounds a month and one platform learns something useful inside ninety days. The same business with three hundred pounds a month spread across four platforms ends ninety days with four small piles of unreadable data and no decision possible on any of them. The platforms each need a minimum amount of spend, time and attention before they tell you the truth. Splitting the budget below that threshold doesn't reduce your risk - it guarantees you learn nothing.
Use low-cost channels intelligently is the recurring principle here. Picking one channel and going deep is using a low-cost channel intelligently. Spreading the budget thin across four platforms is using four channels expensively.
What to do this week
Write down five real customers from the last twelve months, by name or initials. For each, write one sentence about how they first found you, and one sentence about what you'd guess they typed, scrolled or asked the moment they realised they had the problem you solve. Then map each customer onto one of the four channels above. The pattern that comes up three or more times out of five is your starting channel for the next ninety days.
In the next chapter we set the budget for that channel - what to spend, how to split it, what counts as a real test and how to protect yourself from the first-month wipeout. The earlier eBook Marketing Budgets and Return on Investment is the wider context that informs the specific numbers we'll use.
The rest of this chapter walks through the practical steps, the templates and the checklists you need to put it into action. It includes worked examples, copy frameworks and the small decisions that make the difference between a plan that sits in a drive and one that gets used.
Inside you'll find a step-by-step playbook, a downloadable template, a checklist you can run this week and a short list of common mistakes to avoid before you start.
The full action plan, broken into weekly steps.
Ready-to-use scripts, templates and checklists.
Worked examples for different sized businesses.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
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