I Invested $10k In Ads To Grow This Newsletter - Here's What Happened

Let's explore the power of social ads to grow your consulting practice. What can you expect for your investment and how should you do it well?

Hi, I’m Rich. Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share systems and frameworks for scaling your consulting practice from $0 to $1m+ in revenue.

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Can You Attract Clients Via Social Ads?

Over the past fifteen years, I’ve dabbled with using social ads to grow my practice, but typically with terrible results. I’ve often set something up, let it run for a day or two, realised I’d lost $200 without any results, and quickly cancelled it, (while wondering how anyone achieves results doing this).

But given that it appears increasingly difficult to attract organic traffic, I figured social ads were something to explore at some point, especially as a top-of-the-funnel mechanism to attract initial awareness.

A while back, Rei, a former client from Intel, shared his great success using social ads to grow his newsletter. The results were impressive, so I figured I’d give it a shot to grow this newsletter.

Here are the results after almost two months:

Results From Running Ads

Before we began, this newsletter had attracted around 2k subscribers in just under two years. That’s better than most, but the pace of growth felt slow and was largely due to Substack referrals. At that rate, it would take me years to have the impact I want.

At the time of writing, April 12, 2025, I’ve spent £4,630 (+£3.3kish on the agency) to increase the number of subscribers by 3,168. I don’t know if that metric is good or bad, but it feels pretty good.

The performance of ads varied considerably.

In short, I’ve spent around £8k to attract 3168 new subscribers (direct). That’s around £2.50 per subscriber, which isn’t cheap, but it drives pretty direct results. Most importantly, it’s increased the speed of the results I want from this newsletter by around 3 years.

I’ve spent around £8k to speed up the growth and results of the newsletter by three years.

Aside - It would have been a lot more efficient to raise the monthly budget to £5k to £10k rather than £2k to £4k. It honestly doesn’t make sense to spend as much on the agency to manage the social ads as the social ads themselves. But there’s only so much money I’m comfortable investing in this.

(April 27 update - Now 6.8k subscribers)

What About Engagement And Open Rates?

The danger of running lots of ads is that you might attract people who aren’t a good audience. What happens if the open rates collapse?

Well, I kept an eye on that too.

The open rates have increased since we began running the ads in February.

Indeed, the number of views on posts is now 2x to 2.5x, which is as high as it used to be.

Part of that is that much of the past growth came from Substack. The problem is that a person might subscribe to 50+ newsletters but not read that many.

People who click on ads probably subscribe to far fewer newsletters, which means they might be a better audience than those who come via Substack recommendations.

Did Investing In Social Ads Increase Revenue?

There has been an increase in the number of queries, but not by much (yet).

But that’s to be expected—I wouldn’t sign up for coaching or take a course from someone whose newsletter I had just begun reading. It takes time to build trust.

If you’re new here, I don’t want you to ask for help today. I want you to take the time to know our systems-led approach, trust that we can help them achieve the desired results, and become familiar with how we tackle consulting problems.

We might start seeing an uptick 10 to 20 posts down the line, but these things take time. That said, revenue has increased by around $2k per month due to social ads - so I’m already on the way to recouping the investment.

Aside - it might’ve been possible to combine this with a paid newsletter - but I’m not a big believer in that business model.

Tough Lessons From Social Ads

A few big things to learn.

Lesson 1: Don’t Get Locked Out

This is actually the second time we tried the ads. Our initial effort lasted two days before Facebook told me I violated the rules and blocked my account. I appealed, but the appeal was denied, and I could not rerun any ads. I spent a month trying to chat with someone but couldn’t get anywhere.

Fortunately, Meta is a former client, and I could contact people I knew there who resolved the issue. I shudder to think how it works for people without any inside contacts.

The big problem is that Meta has many rules you can violate without knowing. In my case, I selected USD as the currency so I could easily measure the results. But because my business is in the UK, it raised a red flag, and that was it.

I can’t stress enough that you can do nothing to get back in once you're locked out.

Lesson 2: It Takes A Little Time (And Money)

One reason why my past experiments failed was because I was too quick to cancel them. I didn’t realise that social ad tools take time to how best to deliver the ads and to which audiences. This typically means spending $100 to $200 before the results come in.

I watched the cost per result begin at around $30 and gradually drop to around $1.50. I’d be curious how my past results would have fared if I had given them more time.

Lesson 3: You Need New Creative Over Time

After the initial 5 to 6 weeks, the cost per result began to creep up again. This is because the people most likely to click on the ads have already seen them, making them less effective over time.

After all, if you didn’t click on the ad the first time, are you more or less likely to click on it the second time? This means you might attract the lowest-hanging fruit right at the beginning, with the cost rising over time.

Lesson 4: Instagram And Meta Are The Most Cost-Effective Platforms

I would’ve thought LinkedIn was the best platform - but for my audience, Instagram and Meta were the way to go. Reddit and X would have been other options to explore. But for now, the feature set of these platforms makes them the best option.

Lesson 5: Don’t Be Too Clever

I initially thought the ads the agency would produce would be clever video ads with great production quality. I was shocked when they sent me this to review:

My initial reaction was, honestly, are you freakin’ kidding me?

That’s what I’m spending $2k a month on??

Then I remembered that they’re the experts I’m paying, and I’m not. I remembered how often, as a consultant, an organisation ignored my advice and made big mistakes. They paid for my expertise and then didn’t trust it. It’s a good experience to be on the other side of the fence.

So, I approved all but one ad and let them run with it.

Can you guess which ad was most effective from those below?

Ad 1

Ad 2

Ad 3

Ad 4

Ad 5

The answer is the last ad (ad 5 - by a country mile!)

The best ads on social media look like posts on social media.

That’s the critical lesson. If you want ads to succeed, they must look like posts. Keep it dead simple and stick to text.

Do Ads Drive Exponential Growth?

The interesting thing about running social ads is what happens if you stop them.

Will the unsubscribe rate cancel out the subscription rate and enter a decline?

i.e. does having a bigger audience increase the odds of attracting more traffic in the future?

The answer, I think, is yes - but I’m not sure.

If we turned off ads, future traffic would come from two sources: substack and search.

Has Traffic From Search Increased?

Traffic from search is clearly up from the non-ad months - but it’s unclear how many new subscribers that would drive. Over the long-term, plenty, but for now it probably won’t match the cancellation rate.

It’s hard to say whether this results from social ads or natural growth over time. I suspect it’s probably a combination of the two, but it’s unclear how Google ranks these posts.

Has Traffic From Substack Increased?

This chart is more interesting. Traffic from Substack has increased significantly since I began investing in social ads.

My best guess is that more views = more likes/engagement, which means it’s more likely to appear in others' feeds. I would suspect that if I turned off the ads, my subscribers from Substack would be around double what they used to be.

It also means that around 70% of the audience I have now found me through social ads - this means they (you) haven’t read much of my past work and aren’t familiar with what I’ve done for other clients.

Social Ads Can Speed Up The Success Of Your Consulting Practice - With A Catch!

The problem with the other five methods to attract clients is they take time. It takes months, even years, to attract a similar audience size. It’s earned in the sense you don’t pay for those subscribers - but once you factor in your time to achieve the same results, social ads start to look pretty good by comparison.

However, the primary benefit of the earned approach (aside from the cost) is that you get to put your ideas out there and see what resonates. Over time, you learn about your audience's needs and adjust your approach/services. Social ads don’t let you do that.

So, while social ads can help you attract an immediate audience, they’re probably better used once you’ve taken the organic route, figured out what works, and now want to drive results rapidly.

Good luck!

Richard Millington

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