Work out whether paid social can sell what you sell.
Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok suit some businesses and flatter almost none of the rest. askBizly will tell you if yours is a fit, what to test first, and what it should cost to run.
Free to use. Ask as much as you like.
Before I suggest anything — what would a good month look like, and what can you pay for a lead?
That’s workable. Here’s how:
- Understand your business, customers and objectivesWhat you sell, who buys, and where you want to get to
- Create your growth strategyWhere the £2.5k goes, and in what order
- Fix what’s holding you backThe changes you can make yourself
- Connect you with a partnerOnly if you need a specialist
AI built on real human expertise
askBizly applies the judgement of people who have grown businesses, led marketing teams and hired agencies — more than twenty years of it. Their criteria shape what it asks and how it answers.
A growth plan built for your business
Not a template. It asks what you sell, where you want to get to and what you have to spend, then sets out what to do, in what order, and what it should cost.
Partners aligned to your objectives
If you want help executing, askBizly briefs partners against the plan you just built — and says why each one fits. It is free to you; partners pay only when an introduction becomes work.
Start here
What’s going wrong with your paid social?
Pick the Meta, LinkedIn or TikTok problem that sounds like yours.
When paid social works, and when it quietly does not
Paid search and paid social are often discussed as two versions of the same thing, and they are not. In search, somebody has already decided they want what you sell and is looking for a supplier. In social, nobody asked. You are interrupting, and you have a second or two to make the interruption welcome.
That difference decides whether the channel suits you. If your product can be understood and desired quickly — it looks good, it solves an obvious irritation, it has a clear before and after — interruption works, and Meta will reach an enormous audience cheaply. If your sale needs explaining, comparing and trusting, interruption mostly buys you attention you cannot use.
It also explains why creative matters more here than targeting. The platforms have become very good at finding responsive audiences on their own; what they cannot do is make a dull advert interesting. A business with no usable photography or video is not ready to spend, whatever the targeting options promise.
askBizly will work through what you sell and how people decide to buy it, tell you whether paid social is a fit, and point you at the platform and the test worth running first.
How it works
Work out whether paid social can sell what you sell.
Describe the product, the platform and the results. askBizly says whether the channel fits, which ads to run, and what the test should cost.
Understand your business and your paid social goals
Your goals for paid social, what you’re doing now and what you’ve got to work with — in your own words, one question at a time.
Work out what’s holding your paid social back
What you tell it — and any proposal, report or figures you share — is assessed against clear paid social criteria, with what’s known kept apart from what’s assumed.
Create your paid social strategy
An action plan, a budget, a review or a brief for paid social — with its evidence, assumptions and limits shown.
Help you execute
Do it yourself, go back to your supplier with better questions, or look at paid social partners — you decide.
Fix the problem
Four ways askBizly can help with paid social
Get a plan for Meta, LinkedIn or TikTok ads, a realistic test budget, a review of your agency or creative, or a brief for the right paid social partner.
Diagnosis
If the product does not interrupt, paid social will not save it.
askBizly works out whether Meta, LinkedIn or TikTok can sell what you sell — then whether the problem is the audience, the creative, the landing page or the offer.
- Platform fit decided before you scale spend
- Creative judged the way a stranger would see it
- When to stop and put the budget into search
Budget
Know what a paid social test should cost before you launch.
askBizly separates media from management and creative, and shows what a UK test needs to learn anything on Meta, LinkedIn or TikTok — including when LinkedIn clicks will blow the budget.
- Media, creative and management kept apart
- Minimum test budgets per platform
- What your monthly figure can actually buy
Review
Check a paid social agency, proposal or the ads you already run.
Share the scope, creative or results. askBizly looks at whether the audience matches the product, whether reporting ties to sales, and whether the fee matches the work.
- Vanity metrics separated from actual sales
- Creative and targeting judged together
- Questions to put before you scale
Partners
A clear paid social brief, then only agencies who fit.
If you need someone to run Meta, LinkedIn or TikTok, askBizly turns the platform, budget and offer into a brief and looks for partners whose records fit. Nobody is contacted until you say so.
- You see the brief before anyone does
- You approve the brief first
- No obligation to hire
Paid social questions people ask first
They work well when what you sell can be understood and wanted in a few seconds — visual products, local services, events, anything with an obvious before and after. They work badly for complex or high-value purchases where the buyer needs to research, because you are interrupting somebody who was not thinking about you. The deciding factor is usually whether your offer can be explained in one image or a short video.
LinkedIn is considerably more expensive: UK clicks commonly run £5 to £12 against roughly £0.50 to £2 on Meta, and lead form submissions often cost £40 to £150. That can still be excellent value if your average contract is worth thousands and you are targeting a narrow job title at specific companies. It is very poor value if you are selling something inexpensive or your audience is broad. The maths, not the platform, decides it.
Allow around £1,000 to £1,500 over four to six weeks on Meta as a genuine test, which is enough to run a few creative variations and gather meaningful data. LinkedIn needs more, usually £2,000 to £3,000, because clicks cost more. Testing on £200 will not tell you whether the channel works — it will only tell you that one advert did not, which you would have guessed anyway.
Meta is the default when the offer is visual and the buyer is a consumer or a small business owner scrolling in the evening. LinkedIn is the default when you sell to a named job title at a company, and you can afford £5 to £12 a click. TikTok works when the product can be demonstrated in the first second and the audience is already on the app. Most small businesses should pick one and test it properly rather than splitting a thin budget three ways.
Usually the creative looks like an advert, the landing page does not match the promise, or the offer needs more trust than a scroll can give it. Targeting is less often the fault than people think, because Meta finds buyers if the ad earns the click. Check the first three seconds of the video or the first line of the image, then the page they land on. If those two do not match, no amount of audience tweaking will save the campaign.
Run it yourself for a Meta test if you can make the creative and you have a few hours a week — the Ads Manager is learnable, and you will understand the numbers afterwards. Hire an agency when you are spending enough that creative testing and weekly optimisation are a job, or when LinkedIn or TikTok need a specialist. A cheap social retainer on a £500 budget usually costs more than it returns, because there is not enough spend to learn from.
Yes. The advice is free for business owners and always will be. askBizly is paid by the partners it introduces, and only when you choose to be introduced. Nothing is sent to anyone and nobody contacts you until you say so.
Stop guessing. Start growing.
Describe the product and the ads. Free, with no agency contacting you unless you ask.