# Case Study: What a Business's First Digital Campaign Actually Costs to Build | Crank Source: https://wearecrank.com/case-studies/speciality-chemicals-first-time-advertiser-2025 No audience sizing, no budget model, no content — and a first forecast that came in 47% short, from a business with no historical data to base it on. --- Speciality Chemicals — 2025, First-Time Advertiser # What a Business's First Digital Campaign Actually Costs to Build No audience sizing, no budget model, no content — and a first forecast that came in 47% short, from a business with no historical data to base it on. Challenge A business with no digital marketing history at all needed the audience sized, the budget derived from that sizing, and eleven content assets created — none of which existed — before a single campaign could run, and its own first forecast still came in 47 per cent short on volume. Approach Build deliberately rather than guess: separate five simultaneous product campaigns enough to see which ones the market actually wanted, read comparisons like unpaid-versus-paid engagement correctly rather than at face value, and connect marketing to sales before the next campaign rather than after it. Outcome Cost per enquiry ranged four-fold between five campaigns run side by side on the same platform to the same market — from £226 to £886 — turning one blended average into a clear case for which product was worth scaling and which was worth stopping. 01 ## Building the plumbing before running a single advert The business had never attempted digital marketing. Before any campaign could run, the audience had to be identified and sized, the budget derived from that sizing, and eleven content assets created — none of which existed at the start. This is the part of a first campaign that doesn't show up in any performance report, because there's no performance yet to report. 02 ## A first campaign's honest miss The forecast for the first campaign was 311 enquiries at £169 each. It produced 166 at £275 — 47 per cent below volume and 62 per cent above target cost. The forecast had no historical data behind it, because none existed. Setting an honest expectation for a first-time advertiser is what stops a successful market entry being recorded as a failure against a number that was always a guess. 03 ## Five campaigns competing with themselves Across five product campaigns run simultaneously on the same platform to the same market, cost per enquiry ranged from £226 to £886\. One campaign hit 123 per cent of its target; another reached 7 per cent before it was stopped, despite the message, creative and audience all being changed mid-flight. A £55,000 budget divided across five simultaneous campaigns over five months meant none of them produced a clear enough answer on its own — the closing recommendation was to run fewer campaigns for longer, so each could be learned from individually. 04 ## What was learned for the next one Unpaid company-page activity achieved a click-through rate of 3.57 per cent against 0.43 for paid — but reached 2,000 people against 275,361 for paid, and was read on a different device entirely. Read correctly, this doesn't mean unpaid activity performs better; it means it was reaching a self-selecting audience 137 times smaller. Offering both a direct quote request and a technical paper download in parallel gave sales a usable priority order between warm and hot interest, rather than one undifferentiated list — and the closing recommendation from a separate £53,000, five-month campaign was to join marketing and sales enablement together, because enquiries had been stopping dead at the handover throughout. ## What a genuine first campaign costs, before performance is even the question 311 @ £169 / 166 @ £275 First campaign, forecast vs. actual £226 – £886 Cost per enquiry, across five simultaneous product campaigns 137x Reach gap between paid and unpaid, despite unpaid's higher engagement 0 → 11 Content assets in place, before vs. after the first campaign Drawn from Crank's account work conducted in 2025 for this speciality chemicals business. Client not named. ## Want to know what this looks like in your own account? These findings came from asking straightforward questions before any budget moved. We're happy to do the same for yours. [ Talk to Wearecrank](https://wa.me/447457416922?text=Help%20my%20business)[Get in touch](/contact) [← Back to all case studies](/case-studies)