An East London restaurant group with three sites was spending £900 a month on boosted posts and seeing no measurable uplift in bookings.

Boosted posts are not ads. They push content to people who already follow the page, occasionally reaching a slightly wider audience, but with no targeting control and no conversion objective. The restaurant had thousands of Instagram followers and almost no mechanism to turn them into bookings.

A proper Facebook Ads account replaced the boosted posts: conversion-objective campaigns targeting people within 3 miles of each restaurant, lookalike audiences based on past bookers, retargeting for website visitors who had not converted. The creative shifted from food photography to time-limited offers tied to specific reservation slots. Month three produced 187 new bookings attributed directly to the campaigns. The ad spend stayed at £900.

187 new bookings in month three. £900 monthly spend. Average booking value of £45 per head.
3.8bn
Monthly active users across Meta platforms globally
Meta Q4 2024
45m+
UK adults reachable via Facebook and Instagram ads
Meta Ads Manager 2024
9.3x
Average ROAS for optimised Meta campaigns in retail and hospitality
Meta Business Insights 2024
Plain English

The difference between social media management and paid social advertising

Organic social media, posting content, building a following, managing comments, is brand maintenance. It keeps your existing audience warm. Paid social is different: it puts your business in front of people who have never heard of you, who match the profile of your best customers, at the moment when they are most likely to respond. For a London restaurant, that is reaching people within 2 miles who follow food accounts and have no dinner plans for Saturday. For a London accountancy, it is reaching business owners in the right postcodes who have recently engaged with content about tax planning. The targeting capability of Meta and LinkedIn advertising is the most powerful direct marketing tool most London SMEs are not using correctly.

The best marketing does not feel like marketing. It feels like the right message appearing at exactly the right time.

Seth Godin
Permission Marketing, 1999
Paid social advertising at its best is permission marketing at scale. You show up for people who are already predisposed to be interested. The targeting data available through Meta and LinkedIn means you can reach the right 5,000 people in London rather than the wrong 500,000. Relevance is the return on that precision.
STAT
Over 45 million UK adults are reachable via Meta advertising. London alone accounts for over 6 million of that audience. Businesses running boosted posts instead of properly structured ad campaigns are paying Meta rates for a fraction of the targeting capability they could be using.
Source: Meta Ads Manager UK audience data 2024

Why London businesses invest in paid social advertising

6m+
London adults reachable via Meta advertising
Meta Ads Manager 2024
£0.80
Average cost per click on Facebook in the UK
Wordstream 2024
77%
Of UK consumers have discovered a business on social media
Sprout Social 2024

For London consumer businesses, paid social fills the gap that Google Ads cannot. Google captures people who are already searching. Meta reaches people before they search, building the mental availability that makes your business the one they think of when they do. The two channels work best together: paid social builds reach and retargeting lists, Google Ads converts the high-intent buyers.

Industries we run paid social for in London

Restaurants and hospitality Health, beauty, and wellness E-commerce and retail Professional services (LinkedIn) Property and home services Fitness and leisure Events and entertainment

Paid social services
for London businesses

Social advertising that builds your audience and converts them, rather than boosting posts into the void.

Facebook and Instagram ads

Conversion-objective campaigns on Meta targeting London audiences by location, interest, behaviour, and lookalike profile. We set up proper conversion tracking, build audience segments, and manage creative testing so we know what produces leads and what does not.

LinkedIn advertising

Lead generation campaigns targeting London business owners, directors, and decision-makers by job title, company size, and industry. LinkedIn costs more per click than Meta but the lead quality for B2B is significantly higher. We manage sponsored content, message ads, and lead gen forms.

Retargeting campaigns

Campaigns that follow up with people who visited your website but did not convert. London website visitors are expensive to acquire. Retargeting converts more of them into enquiries by staying visible after they leave. We build segmented retargeting audiences for each stage of your sales funnel.

Audience strategy and targeting

We build lookalike audiences from your existing customers, interest-based audiences from your target profile, and custom audiences from your email list and website traffic. The targeting determines the cost per lead more than the ad creative does.

Creative strategy and ad copy

We write the ad copy and brief the creative direction for your campaigns. Social ads need to stop a scroll, not just look professional. We test multiple angles, hooks, and formats to find what your London audience responds to.

Monthly reporting

Monthly reporting on reach, clicks, leads generated, cost per lead, and return on ad spend. Every number tied to business outcomes, not social metrics. We also report on what we tested, what we found, and what we are changing next month.

Questions from London businesses about paid social

What is paid social advertising?
Paid social is advertising on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn where you pay to show content to a targeted audience. Unlike Google Ads, which targets people who are already searching for what you sell, paid social reaches people who match the profile of your ideal customer before they start searching. It is particularly effective for building awareness, generating leads, and retargeting website visitors.
How much does Facebook advertising cost in London?
Facebook and Instagram ad costs vary by audience, industry, and campaign objective. For London businesses, typical cost per thousand impressions (CPM) ranges from £5 to £20. A starting budget of £500 to £1,000 per month in ad spend gives enough data to optimise. Our management fee is charged separately.
Which social platform should my London business advertise on?
It depends on who you are trying to reach. Facebook and Instagram reach the widest consumer audience and work best for B2C businesses: restaurants, retail, health, beauty, home services. LinkedIn is the right choice for professional services targeting business owners, directors, or procurement managers. We recommend starting where your customers already spend time.
How do you measure the success of paid social campaigns?
We measure success by cost per lead, cost per acquisition, and return on ad spend. Not followers, likes, or reach. Every campaign has conversion tracking set up from day one so we know exactly how many enquiries or sales each ad produced and what each one cost.
Can paid social work for B2B businesses in London?
Yes, particularly on LinkedIn. LinkedIn advertising allows you to target by company size, job title, seniority, and industry. For London professional services firms, accountancies, consultancies, and technology companies, LinkedIn lead gen campaigns consistently produce high-quality pipeline. The cost per lead is higher than Facebook, but the lead quality is significantly better for B2B.

Ready to turn your social audience into customers?

Get a free paid social audit for your London business. We will review your current social spend, identify what is wasting budget, and show you what a properly structured campaign would look like.