Online Advertising for Beginners: A Step-by-Step Guide
You’re running a business, and every pound or dollar matters.
You hear about online advertising, see your competitors doing it, and feel you’re missing out. But you also hear horror stories of people pouring thousands into Google or Facebook with nothing to show.
The whole industry feels designed to confuse you. It’s a mess of acronyms, so-called “gurus,” and platforms that seem to change their rules every other Tuesday.
This isn't another guide that will tell you to “leverage synergies” or “unlock your brand's potential.”
This is a practical, real-world look at online advertising from the perspective of people who've seen it work and, more importantly, seen it fail spectacularly.
Our goal is simple: to give you a clear framework for using paid ads to make more money than you spend. That's it.
- Understand online advertising as a method to amplify your existing products or services, not a magical solution.
- Differentiate between marketing (the entire process) and advertising (the paid promotion part).
- Utilise ads to gather data, directly acquire customers, and build retargeting assets.
- Focus initial spending on Google Ads, social media ads, or video ads based on your business needs.
- Measure success through Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), avoiding vanity metrics.
What Online Advertising Is
Before spending a penny, you must understand the machine you're about to feed. Get this part wrong, and you're just gambling.
Online advertising is paying a platform (like Google, Meta, or LinkedIn) to show your message to a specific group of people. You are buying eyeballs. You are renting space in someone's attention stream.
It is not a magical tap that creates customers out of thin air. It is an amplifier. It takes what you already have—your product, offer, message—and shows it to more people faster than you could ever hope to do organically.
If what you have is great, ads will make it fly. If what you have is rubbish, ads will just help you fail faster.
The Core Difference: Advertising vs. Marketing
People use these terms interchangeably, but they aren't the same.
- Marketing is the entire process of understanding and satisfying customer needs. It includes market research, product development, pricing, branding, and customer service. Your website is marketing. Your logo is marketing. Your sales process is marketing.
- Advertising is just one component of marketing. It is the paid promotion part of the equation.
Thinking that advertising will solve a fundamental marketing problem (like a bad product or unclear pricing) is the first and most expensive mistake you can make.
Why You Can't Just “Boost Post” and Expect Results
Every business owner with a Facebook page has seen it. That tempting blue button under your latest post: “Boost Post.” It promises to get you more engagement and reach for just a few quid.
Boosting a post is like throwing a handful of flyers out of a moving car. Some people might see them, but were they the right people? Did they have any intention of buying? Probably not.
It’s a tool Meta created to make it easy for you to give them money. It lacks the sophisticated targeting, objective setting, and control of a proper ad campaign built in their Ads Manager.
It's a classic trap for the uninformed, and my first pet peeve. Real advertising requires intent, a specific audience, and a clear goal. The boost button offers none of these with any absolute precision.
The Only Three Reasons to Spend Money on Ads
People run ads for fuzzy reasons, like “building brand awareness.” For a small business, that’s a luxury you can't afford. You need a return, and you need it now.
There are only three justifiable reasons to spend your hard-earned cash on ads.
1. To Get Data, Fast
This is the most underrated reason. Organic growth and SEO are powerful, but they are slow. Knowing if your content strategy is working can take 6-12 months.
Ads let you buy speed.
Want to know if people are more interested in “Handmade Leather Wallets” or “Minimalist Card Holders”? You can spend months writing blog posts for both or run a £100 ad campaign for a week and get a definitive answer. Ads allow you to test headlines, product offers, images, and audiences to see what resonates before you invest significant time and resources.
2. To Directly Acquire Customers
This is the most obvious reason. You spend £1 to make £3 back. This is direct response advertising. The goal of the ad is to provoke an immediate action: a purchase, a form submission, or a phone call.
Every ad has a clear job to do. There's no ambiguity. The campaign is judged on a simple pass/fail basis: did it generate profitable new business? This is where 90% of small business ad spend should be focused.
3. To Build a Retargeting Asset
Someone visits your website. They browse a product page and add it to their cart, but don't buy. They leave. Are they gone forever?
Not if you're using a tracking pixel (like the Meta Pixel or Google Tag). By installing this small piece of code on your site, you can build an audience of people who have already shown interest in your work.
You can then run specific ads just to this warm audience. These are some of the highest-performing campaigns possible because you're no longer talking to strangers. You're reminding interested prospects that you exist. Spending a small portion of your budget to build this audience is a wise, long-term investment.
The Main Arenas: Where to Spend Your First £1,000
The digital world is vast. You could advertise on TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit, or other platforms. But when starting, you need to focus your fire where it will have the most impact. That means choosing between capturing existing demand and creating new demand.
Search Intent: Capturing People Ready to Buy (Google Ads)
When your boiler breaks in the middle of a Dallas winter, you don't scroll through Instagram hoping to see an ad for a plumber. You go to Google and type “emergency plumber near me.”
That is search intent. The user has a problem, and they are actively looking for a solution right now.
For those searches, Google Ads (specifically search ads) lets you place your business at the top of the results page. It is the most powerful form of advertising for companies that solve an immediate and known problem.
- Example: A local plumber in Dallas bids on the keyword “emergency plumber Dallas.” When a user searches for that term, the plumber's ad appears. They only pay if the user clicks the ad.
- Key Concepts: You bid on Keywords (the search terms). Your success depends on your Ad Auction bid and your Quality Score (how relevant Google thinks your ad and landing page are).
- Who it's for: Service businesses (plumbers, lawyers, cleaners), urgent-need products, and any business where customers know what they're looking for.
Social Discovery: Finding People Who Should Buy (Meta & LinkedIn Ads)
No one wakes up in the morning and goes to Google to search for “artisan, reclaimed-wood coffee table with hairpin legs.” They don't know it exists yet.
Your job is to show it to them. This is where social media advertising shines. Platforms like Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and LinkedIn don't sell based on keywords; they sell based on people. You target users based on their demographics, interests, job titles, and online behaviours.
- Example (Meta): A UK-based bespoke furniture maker targets users on Instagram aged 30-55 who have shown an interest in Grand Designs, interior design magazines, and competing high-end furniture brands. They use a beautiful carousel ad to showcase their latest collection.
- Example (LinkedIn): A B2B software company wants to sell its project management tool. They run ads targeting “Project Managers” at companies with 50-200 employees in the “Information Technology” sector, offering them a free guide to “Improving Team Productivity.”
- Key Concepts: You build an Audience based on detailed targeting. You can also create Lookalike Audiences to find new people similar to your existing customers.
- Who it's for: Businesses with visually appealing products (e-commerce, fashion, food), innovative products people don't know to search for, and B2B companies targeting specific professional niches.
Video's Dominance: Showing, Not Just Telling (YouTube Ads)
Some products are hard to explain with just text and images. Their value is in their function, their ease of use, or their beautiful design in motion.
Video advertising on platforms like YouTube lets you demonstrate your product's value proposition in seconds. Think of the famous early Dollar Shave Club ads. They didn't just tell you their razors were cheap; they showed you a new, irreverent brand ethos in 90 seconds.
- Example: A company selling a premium, weatherproof camera backpack runs a 30-second in-stream ad. They target viewers of popular channels dedicated to landscape photography and camera gear reviews, showing the backpack in action in a rugged environment.
- Key Formats: In-stream ads run before, during, or after other videos. In-feed ads appear as recommended videos in search results and on the homepage.
- Who it's for: Businesses with strong “how-to” or demonstration elements, complex products that need explaining, or brands that want to build a strong personality.
A Quick Word on the Others (Display, Native, etc.)
You'll hear about other ad types. Display ads are the banner ads you see on websites. Native ads are disguised to look like regular content.
For a small business that is starting, you can safely ignore these. They are generally better for large-scale brand awareness campaigns and have a much lower direct return on investment than search or social. Focus on the big three first.
The Non-Negotiable Blueprint for Any Ad Campaign
A successful campaign isn't about luck. It's about a methodical process. If you skip these five steps, your money is on fire.
Step 1: Define Your One Goal (And Be Brutal About It)
What action do you want someone to take after clicking your ad? Not “engage with my brand.” Not “increase awareness.” A real, tangible action.
- Buy a specific product.
- Fill out a contact form.
- Download a PDF guide.
- Schedule a consultation call.
Pick ONE per campaign. Every element of your ad and landing page must be ruthlessly dedicated to achieving that one goal. If it doesn't serve the goal, remove it.
Step 2: Know Exactly Who You're Talking To
“Men aged 25-45” is not an audience. It's a census category.
Who are you trying to reach?
- What specific problem keeps them up at night?
- What other brands do they buy from?
- What blogs or magazines do they read?
- What language do they use to describe their problems?
- What's their most significant objection to buying a solution like yours?
The more specific you are, the better your ad will perform. An ad that tries to talk to everyone ends up resonating with no one.
Step 3: Stop Overthinking the Budget
This question paralyses New advertisers: “How much should I spend?”
Start here: What is the maximum amount of money you will lose to acquire data?
Your first £200-£500 isn't about getting a huge return. It's about learning. You're paying for information about what works. Set a small daily budget (£10-£20) and let it run for a few weeks. This is your testing phase. You can confidently increase the budget once you find a combination of audience, ad, and offer.
Step 4: The Ad Itself (Copy + Creative)
The ad has two jobs: stop the right person from scrolling and give them a compelling reason to click.
- Headline: This is 80% of the work. It must grab your target audience. You can do this by calling them out directly (“Attention, Small Business Owners”) or by highlighting their main pain point (“Tired of Wasting Money on Ads?”).
- Body Copy: Keep it simple. Use a classic formula like Problem-Agitate-Solve. State the problem, explain why it's so frustrating, and then present your product as the clear and straightforward solution.
- Creative (Image/Video): The goal of the creative is to stop the scroll. It needs to stand out. Simple, clear product shots or authentic-looking images often outperform overly polished, corporate stock photos. It should be visually consistent with your brand.
Step 5: The Destination Matters More Than the Journey (The Landing Page)
This is my biggest pet peeve and where most campaigns die. You can have the best ad in the world, but you've wasted your click if it sends people to a slow, confusing, or untrustworthy page.
Never, ever send ad traffic to your homepage.
Your homepage is a digital brochure with a dozen different options. It's not designed for a single action. You must send traffic to a dedicated landing page that directly continues the ad.
A good landing page has:
- A headline that matches the ad's headline.
- A clear and unmissable call-to-action (CTA).
- Minimal distractions—no navigation menu, no footer links, nothing to do but the one thing you want them to do.
- Social proof, like testimonials or reviews.
- A design that is clean, professional, and builds trust.
If your website design is the problem, your ads will never be profitable. It's critical to ensure your ads align with a page that converts. Getting this right is a core part of effective digital marketing services.
How to Know if It's Working (Without a Data Science Degree)
Ad platforms will drown you in data. Impressions, reach, click-through rate, cost per click, frequency… It's mostly noise.
You only need to care about two or three key metrics to know whether you're making or losing money. This approach avoids my second pet peeve: obsessing over complex attribution when simple profit is what matters.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
This is the king of all metrics. It answers the simple question: “For every dollar I put in, how many dollars did I get back?”
The formula is brutally simple:
ROAS=Total Ad SpendRevenue Generated from Ads
If you spent £100 on ads and generated £400 in sales, your ROAS is 4x (or 400%). A standard benchmark for a healthy campaign is a 4:1 ROAS, but this varies widely by industry and profit margin.
The Runner-Up: Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
What if you're not selling a product directly, but generating leads? That's where CPA comes in. It tells you how much it costs to get one customer or qualified lead.
The formula is:
CPA=Number of Conversions (Leads/Sales)Total Ad Spend
If you spent £500 and got 10 new client leads, your CPA is £50. The key is to know your maximum allowable CPA. If you know that 1 in 5 leads turns into a £1,000 client, you can pay up to £200 per lead and still break even. Knowing this number is your secret weapon.
The Vanity Metrics to (Mostly) Ignore
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who saw and clicked your ad.
- Cost Per Click (CPC): What you pay for each click.
- Impressions: How many times was your ad shown?
These are not measures of success. They are diagnostic tools. Your ad creative or copy isn't compelling if your CTR is low. If your CPC is very high, your targeting might be too competitive. Use them to troubleshoot a campaign that isn't profitable, but never judge a campaign's success by them. Low-CTR campaigns are wildly profitable, and high-CTR campaigns lose a fortune.
The Three Guaranteed Ways to Waste Your Money
Want to ensure your online advertising efforts fail? Just follow these three simple steps.
Mistake #1: Sending Traffic to Your Homepage
We've covered this, but it bears repeating. Your homepage is a general-purpose tool. An ad is a special-purpose tool. Sending highly targeted, expensive traffic to an unfocused page is like hiring a master salesperson and telling them to stand in the lobby and greet people. It's a criminal waste of potential. Always use a dedicated landing page.
Mistake #2: Setting It and Forgetting It
An ad campaign is not a crockpot. You can't just set it up and return to a perfectly cooked meal in a month. Ad performance degrades over time as audiences become fatigued by seeing the same creative.
You need to check in. In the first week, check daily. After that, check weekly. Look at your primary metric (ROAS or CPA). Is it holding steady? Are costs creeping up? Be prepared to pause underperforming ads, test new creative, and refine your audience targeting.
Mistake #3: Blaming the Ad Platform Before Your Offer
“Facebook Ads don't work for my business.”
I hear this constantly. 99% of the time, it's not Facebook's fault. It's the offer's fault. This is my third and final pet peeve. People spend all their time tweaking ad copy and targeting, but never stop to ask a more fundamental question: “Is the thing I'm selling compelling?”
If your ads get clicks but no one buys, the ad did its job. The problem lies on the landing page.
- Is your price too high?
- Is the value proposition unclear?
- Is there a weak or non-existent guarantee?
- Is your shipping too expensive?
Test your offer before you blame your ads. Try offering a bonus, free shipping, or a stronger money-back guarantee. A better offer can make a failing campaign profitable overnight.
Your First Campaign Doesn't Need to Be Perfect, It Just Needs to Start
You will not create the world's most profitable ad campaign on your first try. It’s not going to happen.
The goal of your first campaign is not to get rich. The goal is to get data.
Launch something. Spend a little. See what people click on. See what they ignore. See if they buy. Your first campaign is the start of a conversation with your market. The feedback you get, in the form of data, is worth far more than the initial ad spend.
Don't let perfection be the enemy of progress. Get started, get data, and get better.
FAQs about Online Advertising
What is the difference between online advertising and SEO?
Online advertising involves paying for placement (PPC, social ads), guaranteeing immediate visibility. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of earning free, organic traffic from search engines, which takes more time and effort.
How much should a small business spend on online ads?
Start with an amount you're comfortable losing to acquire data, typically between £200 and £500 for a first test campaign. After that, your budget should be based on performance. If you have a profitable campaign (positive ROAS), you should spend as much as possible.
Which platform is best for beginners?
Businesses that are solving a known problem should start with Google Search Ads. For companies with visual products or needing to generate new demand, start with Meta (Facebook/Instagram) ads.
How long does it take to see results from online advertising?
You can see traffic and data within hours of launching a campaign. Determining profitability might take weeks of testing and optimisation to find a winning combination of audience, creative, and offer.
What is a “good” click-through rate (CTR)?
It varies enormously by platform and industry. A Google Search ad might see a 5-10% CTR, while a Facebook ad might be 1-2%. It's a diagnostic metric, not a goal in itself. Focus on CPA and ROAS instead.
What is remarketing/retargeting?
It's showing ads specifically to people who have already visited your website or interacted with your brand. It's highly effective because the audience is already familiar with you.
Do I need a big social media following to run ads?
No. Your ad account is separate from your organic page presence. While a professional-looking page helps with trust, you don't need thousands of followers to run successful ad campaigns.
Can I do online advertising myself?
Yes, the platforms are designed for self-service. However, there is a steep learning curve. Many business owners start to learn the basics and then hire an agency or freelancer to scale their efforts once they have a proven concept.
What's a more critical skill: copywriting or design for ads?
Both are crucial, but for different reasons. Good design (creative) stops the scroll and gets attention. Good copywriting gets the click and persuades the user. You can't have one without the other for a truly great ad.
What is a Meta Pixel?
The Meta Pixel is a piece of code you place on your website. It allows Meta (Facebook/Instagram) to track conversions, build retargeting audiences of your website visitors, and find new users similar to your existing customers (lookalike audiences). It is essential for serious advertising on their platform.
Is online advertising better for B2B or B2C businesses?
It works exceptionally well for both, but the platforms and strategies differ. B2C often finds success on visual platforms like Meta and TikTok. B2B thrives on platforms with professional targeting, like LinkedIn and through problem-solving ads on Google Search.
What is a Quality Score in Google Ads?
Quality Score is Google's rating (from 1-10) of the quality and relevance of your keywords and PPC ads. It's based on your ad's CTR, keyword relevance, and landing page quality. A higher Quality Score can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.
Ready to Stop Guessing?
Running a business is hard enough without becoming a full-time digital advertising expert. This guide gives you the framework, but execution is everything. If you're tired of wasting money and want your ads to be a predictable source of growth, not a source of stress, it might be time for some help.
At Inkbot Design, we handle the complexities of digital marketing so you can focus on running your business. We build campaigns based on profit, not vanity metrics.
If you're ready for an effective advertising strategy, request a free quote today. We'll give you an honest assessment of what's possible.
