Free checklist and guide
Updated
A one-page Facebook ads checklist for trades, plus the full 82-page guide. What it costs, what it takes, and when not to bother.
New driveway in your street?
Start with the postcodes you actually want to work in, not a radius around the yard. Most trades do better with a tight area and a bigger budget behind it than a wide area spread thin.
Beyond location, keep the targeting simple. Homeowners in the right age range in the right postcodes is usually enough. The platform works out who responds once it has enough enquiries to learn from, and narrow interest targeting mostly gets in the way of that.
Your own job photos beat anything designed. People want to see work that looks like theirs, in streets that look like theirs. A before and after pair is the single most reliable thing to put in front of them.
The words should say what you do, where you do it, and what happens next. No slogans. One clear ask, such as sending a photo of the job for a rough price, gets far more replies than asking somebody to fill in a long form.
Run a few versions rather than one perfect one, and let the results tell you which photo and which line to keep.
Ads fail more often on follow-up than on targeting. Somebody who fills in a form on Facebook is half-interested at best, and they are contacting other trades in the same evening.
Reply within minutes, not days, even if it is a short message saying when you will call. Chase twice more over the following week. Most of the jobs that look lost come back at the second or third touch.
Three numbers are enough: how many enquiries came in, how many turned into quotes, and how many turned into jobs. Cost per enquiry only matters next to what a job is worth to you.
Give any change a week before judging it, and change one thing at a time. Turning ads off and on again every few days is the quickest way to waste a budget.
If you'd rather have it done for you, see websites and ads for car detailers. For what this looked like for a real business, read the AutoProtek case study, around £6,000 booked in four weeks.
Trades who've tried boosting posts or running ads and want them to bring real enquiries.