Paid marketing that reports cost per lead, not impressions
Paid media only works when it is built around the sales pipeline it feeds. I plan, launch and manage campaigns across Google and every major social platform, with conversion tracking configured before a dirham is spent, so performance is measured against real enquiries rather than clicks and reach.
What this covers
Google Ads & Performance Max
Search is the only channel where someone tells you what they want in their own words, which is why it is almost always where a budget should start. The work is less about writing ads than about controlling what you pay for: separating brand from category so you are not bidding against people looking for you by name, separating markets so the UAE is not lumped in with the UK, and building the negative keyword list that stops the other eighty per cent of the traffic. Performance Max will spend whatever you give it and reports back very little, so it goes in after the search campaigns have told us what converts, never before.
- Search, Shopping and Performance Max
- Negative keyword lists, built before launch and maintained after
- Brand and category separated, so you stop paying twice for your own name
- Conversion tracking server-side, so the reporting survives ad blockers
Meta Ads
On Meta nobody is looking for you, so the creative does the targeting. A well-shot video of one specific thing will find the people interested in that thing more reliably than any audience setting, which is why the production matters more here than the campaign structure. The trap is instant forms: they produce a lot of leads cheaply and a meaningful share of them are not real prospects. A cheap cost per lead on a Meta report can be a very expensive cost per meeting once the calls are made, and I would rather show you the second number.
- Facebook and Instagram, feed, Stories and Reels
- Creative produced rather than repurposed from a brochure
- Instant forms with a qualifying question, so volume does not drown quality
- Retargeting built on real site behaviour, not a catch-all pixel audience
TikTok Ads
TikTok punishes advertising that looks like advertising. Creative made for Meta and reposted here reliably underperforms, because the feed is judged against organic video made by people with no budget and a better instinct for the platform. It rewards volume and iteration: several rough cuts tested quickly beats one polished film, and the winner is rarely the one that looked best in the edit. Worth testing where the product is visual and the audience skews younger, and worth skipping where it is neither.
- Creative made for the platform, not adapted to it
- Several variants tested rather than one hero cut
- Spark Ads from organic posts that already earned attention
- Honest reporting on whether it is working for your product
Snapchat Ads
Snapchat is stronger in the UAE than its global share suggests, and it is routinely skipped by advertisers who assume it is a teenage app. Reach here is cheap and the formats are native: vertical video, AR lenses, and a feed people scroll quickly. It works for awareness and for products with a visual hook, and it does not work for considered B2B purchases. I will tell you which of those you have before any budget moves.
- Vertical video and story formats
- AR lenses where the product suits one
- Cheap reach for launches and awareness
- A clear answer on whether your product fits the platform
LinkedIn Advertising
LinkedIn costs several times what the other platforms do per click, and for the right audience it is still the cheapest way to reach them. Targeting by job title, company and seniority is something no other platform does properly, which makes it the right choice for commercial property, B2B services and recruitment, and the wrong one for most residential property. Budget accordingly: the same spend that buys a broad campaign elsewhere buys a narrow one here, and narrow is the point.
- Targeting by job title, company size and seniority
- Sponsored content and message ads
- Right for B2B and commercial property, usually wrong for residential
- Lead gen forms wired into the CRM rather than exported by hand
How paid marketing works in practice
Tracking goes in before the spend does
Most accounts I inherit are spending money they cannot account for. The pixel fires on every page load rather than on a real enquiry, form submissions are counted twice, and the platform is optimising towards a conversion that does not mean anything. Until that is fixed, every reported number is fiction and every optimisation decision is a guess.
So the first week is not campaign building. It is auditing what is currently tracked, defining what actually counts as a lead for your business, and wiring that up properly, including server-side tracking through the Conversions API where the browser alone is no longer reliable. Only once the measurement is honest does budget start moving.
Structure that a real budget can survive
Campaign structure decides how much of your money reaches the people worth reaching. That means separating markets rather than lumping the UAE in with the UK, separating intent so someone searching your development by name is not bidding against someone browsing the category, and setting exclusions before spend rather than after a wasted month.
For property and high-value services in particular, the qualifier belongs early. Putting a starting price in the ad and again above the fold on the landing page filters out traffic that was never going to convert. It lowers your click volume and raises your cost per click, and it is still the cheapest thing you can do to your cost per acquisition.
Reported against pipeline, not impressions
Reporting comes back as cost per lead, cost per qualified lead and cost per acquisition, tied to what your CRM says happened afterwards. Reach, impressions and engagement are diagnostic numbers, useful for working out why something is or is not working, and they are not the headline.
I run Google Ads including Performance Max, Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and LinkedIn. Which of those you should be on depends entirely on where your buyers are and what they are worth, and part of the job is telling you when a channel is not worth your budget rather than spreading it thinly across all five.
Frequently asked
- Which platforms do you manage?
- Google Search, Shopping, Display and Performance Max, Meta across Facebook and Instagram, plus TikTok, Snapchat and LinkedIn. I recommend the mix based on where your buyers actually are rather than running every channel by default.
- Do you handle the creative as well as the buying?
- Yes. Ad creative and copy come from the same person managing the spend, so there is no handoff between a media buyer and a separate designer.
- What does reporting look like?
- Cost per lead and cost per acquisition tied to real enquiries, not impressions and engagement. Tracking is configured before launch so the numbers mean something from the first week.
- Do you run Google Ads and Meta ads, or only one?
- Both, plus TikTok, Snapchat and LinkedIn where they fit. Which you should be on depends on where your buyers actually are and what a customer is worth to you. Part of my job is telling you when a platform is not worth your budget rather than spreading it thin across all five.
- Can you take over an existing ad account?
- Yes, and it is usually faster than starting fresh because the conversion history is worth keeping. I work inside your account with you as owner, so if we ever stop working together the data stays with you rather than leaving with me.
- Do you charge a percentage of ad spend?
- No. Percentage-of-spend pricing rewards a supplier for spending more of your money, which is the wrong incentive. Fees are fixed for the scope, so my income does not go up when your budget does.
- Can you run campaigns for off-plan property in Dubai?
- Yes, this is where most of my recent campaign work sits. Off-plan has its own pattern: the price qualifier belongs high in the ad and again on the landing page so unqualified traffic filters itself out before it costs you a click.
- What do I need to give you to start?
- Access to your ad accounts, your website or landing page, and an honest number for what a closed customer is worth. That last one matters most, because without it there is no way to say whether a cost per lead is good or bad.
- What is the minimum ad budget worth starting with?
- It depends on your cost per click and how many conversions a platform needs before it can optimise. Rather than quote a number that fits nobody, I work backwards from your average deal value and close rate, and tell you honestly if the budget you have is too thin to learn anything from. Sometimes the right advice is to fix the landing page first and start spending later.
- Do you need access to my ad accounts, or do you build new ones?
- I work inside your accounts, under your billing, with you as owner. That matters more than it sounds: agencies that build campaigns in their own account keep the conversion history when the relationship ends, and you start from zero with the next supplier. Your data should stay yours.
- How long before the numbers mean anything?
- Roughly two to four weeks for the platform to gather enough conversion data to optimise against, and six to eight before cost per acquisition is stable enough to make real decisions on. Anyone promising meaningful results in the first fortnight is describing luck rather than a process.
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