Facebook ads for tradesmen: worth it?

Facebook ads look easy. You boost a photo of a job you’re proud of, a few hundred people like it, and nobody rings. Or you run a lead ad, get thirty names in a week, and half of them don’t answer when you call back.

Facebook can still win work for a trade. But it works very differently from Google, and the trades it suits aren’t always the ones that try it. Here’s how it charges, from Meta’s own help pages, checked 2 October 2026, and how to tell whether it’ll pay for you.

How Facebook charges you

Facebook and Instagram ads are both run by Meta, and you can set them up in the same place, Meta Ads Manager. Meta’s help pages say you set “budgets, spending limits and payment thresholds to manage your expenses”.

The important bit is what you pay for. In Meta’s words: “Usually, you’re charged based on the number of impressions that your ad receives unless specified otherwise during ad creation.” An impression is your ad being shown. So by default you’re paying for people to see the ad, not for them to get in touch.

You can choose something else for some ads. Meta says “you can choose to be charged whenever someone clicks an ad link or watches a certain percentage of a video”, and that “the choices you have depend on what objective you choose”. A new ad account has to spend at least USD 10 being charged for impressions before it can switch.

Two more things to know before you set a budget:

• A daily budget isn’t a daily cap. Meta says that “on days when better advertising opportunities are available, Meta may spend up to 75% over your daily budget”. Over a week (Sunday to Saturday), it won’t spend more than seven times your daily budget. So a £10 a day budget could spend £17.50 on one day, and up to £70 in the week.
• How you’re billed. With automatic billing, Meta charges you when you reach your payment threshold, then again on your monthly bill date for anything left over.

Lead ads, or sending people to your website

There are two common ways a trade uses Facebook ads to get enquiries.

Lead ads: the form stays on Facebook

Meta calls these “lead ads with instant form”. The person taps your ad and a short form opens inside Facebook or Instagram, without them leaving the app.

Meta’s help pages say: “contact information, such as name, email address and phone number, may be prefilled for the person if they have already provided their information to Meta.” That makes the form very quick to send. It’s good for volume and not always good for quality: someone can send it with two taps while half-watching the telly, and have forgotten by the time you ring.

Meta offers different form types. The default is “More volume”, which is “designed to generate a larger number of leads”. The “Higher intent” form adds “an additional review screen that gives people a chance to confirm their information”. Meta says that if each lead needs following up or qualifying, “using a higher-intent instant form may make more sense for your business”. For a trade that has to price every job, that usually describes you.

Two more points from Meta’s own pages:

• Leads don’t stay forever. Meta says leads data “will be available for download for up to 90 days” from when the form was sent. If you don’t connect the form to something that sends the details straight to you, they can sit unseen.
• Speed matters. Meta’s own advice: “Run lead ads during times when you can quickly connect”, and “minimising the time that it takes to follow up with your leads can improve your lead quality.”

Sending people to your website

The other way is an ad that sends people to a page on your website. You may get fewer enquiries, because it’s more effort than a prefilled form. But the ones who do have seen your work, your prices and your reviews, and chosen to ring or send a message.

If you do this, send them to a page about the exact thing in the ad, not your home page, with your number as one tap. What that page needs is in what should be on a trade website.

	Lead ads	Ads to your website
Where the enquiry comes in	A form inside Facebook or Instagram	Your own page, as a call or a form
Effort for the customer	Very little (details may be prefilled)	More: they read, then get in touch
Number of enquiries	Can be more	Can be fewer
Watch out for	Names that don’t answer, leads not seen in time	A page that doesn’t make ringing easy

The big difference from Google search

On Google, the customer is looking for you. They’ve typed “roofer Swindon” because they’ve got a leak. On Facebook, you’re interrupting someone scrolling past their cousin’s holiday photos. They weren’t looking for a roofer, and most of them won’t need one this week.

That changes everything about what works. Google search ads catch demand that’s already there. Facebook ads have to create it: a photo good enough to stop someone’s thumb, for a job they might have been putting off. We cover Google’s side, including Local Services Ads, in are Google Ads worth it for a trade.

When Facebook ads can work

Visual trades with strong before-and-afters

A green, mossy driveway next to the same drive clean. A tired kitchen next to the new one. A garden that’s been reclaimed from brambles. Pictures like that stop people scrolling, and they make people think about their own drive, kitchen or garden. Driveway and exterior cleaning, valeting, landscaping, fencing, kitchens, bathrooms and flooring all have this.

If your work doesn’t look very different afterwards (a rewire, a boiler service, a damp survey), it’s much harder.

A tight local area

Meta lets you choose where your ads are shown, including “a location radius” around a point. Set it to the area you genuinely want to work in. Meta does say “complete accuracy is not guaranteed with location targeting”, so expect some enquiries from just outside it.

Seasonal work people put off

Facebook suits jobs people know they should do but haven’t booked: a patio clean before summer, gutters before winter, a garden tidy in spring. A clear, dated offer (“booking April driveway cleans in Highworth now”) gives them a reason to act this week.

When Facebook ads waste money

Urgent trades

When the boiler’s packed up or the house needs clearing by Friday, people often search for someone and ring. They aren’t waiting for an advert to scroll past.

What we have seen

In the 60 days to 1 October 2026, 84 people got in touch with Wiltshire Junk Busters, a Swindon rubbish removal firm, and 64 of them rang. Read their case study.

In a trade like that, the work comes from being found when someone searches and answering when they ring. Facebook ads can’t put you in front of someone at the moment their drain blocks.

Enquiries nobody replies to in time

This is one of the quickest ways for Facebook ads to lose money. You’re on a job, the leads come in, and by the evening the people who sent them have moved on or booked someone else. You’ve paid for every one of them. If you can’t reply within the hour while you’re working, sort that out before you spend a penny. See how many jobs missed calls cost you.

Boosting posts for likes

The “Boost post” button is an easy way to spend money on Facebook. Likes and shares feel good but don’t pay. Judge every ad on enquiries and jobs, never on reach or likes.

Not counting

If you can’t say how many jobs the ads brought in last month, you can’t say whether they pay. Ask every new customer where they found you, and write it down.

Do the sum before you start

Use your own numbers. This example is made up:

• Monthly spend: £300
• Lead form enquiries: 30, so £10 each
• People who answered and got a price: 15
• Jobs won: 3, so £100 each
• Average job: £450, with £200 left after materials and labour

Each job costs £100 in ads and leaves £200, so the ads pay. Now the same month, but the leads are only called back the next evening, and just 1 job is won. That job cost £300 in ads and left £200: a loss, and nothing about the ad changed. The difference was the reply.

That’s why the measure that matters is cost per job won, not cost per lead. We go through how to set your ceiling in how much should a trade spend on getting work.

How we do it, and why it works

We start with what keeps working when you stop paying. Found is your Google listing set up and worked every week, a review asked for after every job, and a website built to be called. We never promise a position, because Google says there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.

Then Answered, which decides whether any ad pays: calls ring you as they always have, a missed call from a mobile gets a text back in your name, every form and message gets a reply in your name, anyone who goes quiet is followed up, and every quote is chased to a yes or a no. Then Counted: after each enquiry a text asks whether you won it and for how much, and once a month one page shows what came in, what you won and what it was worth. That’s how you’d know whether any ad pays.

We run Facebook and Instagram ads too, as well as Google ads. They come later, once you are happy with the rest: a flat monthly fee, with the ad spend paid by you straight to Meta on your own card, so you see every penny in your own account. Never a percentage of what you spend. Every lead form and Facebook message that comes in gets a reply in your name, the same as a call or a website form.

You pay nothing until you’ve won £500 of work through us. The free check shows who Google lists for your trade in your town and where you sit.