Paid Ads
Paid media is the fastest way to find out whether your offer works, and the fastest way to burn money finding out. We run ads aimed at people who are ready to move, landing on pages built to catch them, measured on what they turn into rather than on how many of them saw it.
Here's the Dive Brief
before you Take the Plunge
Everyone has a story about the month they spent on ads and got nothing back. Usually the ads themselves were fine. What was missing was everything around them: the wrong audience, an offer that did not land, or a landing page that quietly undid the click.
Paid is the only channel where you can be wrong at speed and at scale, which is exactly why it deserves doing properly. It is also the only channel that tells you the truth quickly. Two weeks of spend will teach you more about your messaging than two months of opinions in a meeting room.
So we start with who is actually ready to buy rather than who is theoretically interested, and we point the budget at them. Search for the people already looking. Social for the people who should be. Retargeting for the ones who nearly did and then got distracted by their own lives, because almost nobody buys on the first visit and pretending otherwise gets expensive.
Then the part most shops skip entirely: where the click lands. An ad can only ever be as good as the page behind it, so that page is part of the work rather than somebody else’s problem. Sending traffic somewhere hopeful and then blaming the platform is a business model, but it is not ours.
Reporting is leads and cost per lead. Impressions are a number that only ever goes up, which is what makes them such comfortable reading. Remember, don’t dive in without Pink Fins.
Why Pink Fins for Paid Ads
Pink Fins Brand Management is a boutique brand firm that runs paid media, which matters more than it sounds: the people writing your ads are the people who worked out your positioning, so the ad, the landing page and everything else you publish are making the same argument. Most paid shops inherit a message from somewhere upstream and optimise around it. We would rather fix a weak message than pay to distribute it faster.
Paid Ads FAQ
What budget is worth starting with?
Enough to learn something. Below a certain point you are not running a campaign, you are buying a rounding error and a lot of uncertainty, and we would rather tell you that than take the retainer. On the call we will give you a real floor for your market.
Which platforms do you run?
Google and Meta for most clients, LinkedIn where the buyer genuinely lives there, and we will say no to the rest unless there is a reason. Being on every platform is not a strategy, it is a way of spending the same budget five times less effectively.
Is ad spend included in what I pay you?
No, and be careful with anyone who blurs that line. You pay the platforms directly and you keep the accounts, so the data and the history stay yours if we ever part ways. We charge for the work, not for the privilege of passing your money through.
How fast do we see results?
Faster than anything else we do. First data inside a week, and a reasonable read on whether the offer and the audience are right inside two to three. Getting it profitable rather than merely working usually takes a quarter of testing.
Do you build the landing pages?
Yes. It is the single biggest lever in paid media and the one most often left alone. If your existing page converts we will leave it and say so. If it does not, no amount of clever bidding will rescue it.
What if the ads do not work?
We tell you, and we tell you early, because paid shows its hand fast enough that there is no excuse for a quiet quarter. Sometimes the answer is a different audience or a different offer. Occasionally the honest answer is that paid is the wrong lever for you right now.
Ready to Make Waves?
One 30-minute call. Tell us what you sell and who buys it, and we will tell you whether paid is the right lever right now and roughly what it would take to find out.