Facebook and Instagram ads for local business.
Reach them before they go looking.
Nobody scrolling Facebook is searching for a plumber. Meta ads work the other way round: the right offer put in front of the right people first, and the creative is what decides it.
Nobody scrolling Facebook has a problem yet. There is no search term to bid on and no moment of intent to buy. You are paying for attention instead, and the only thing that holds it is what they see.
Which is why the ad itself is the whole jobTwo ways to make the video. Plus the ads that never stop.
Targeting is the easy half and it takes an afternoon. On Meta the creative is what decides whether an ad works, so this is the first thing we settle with you, not the last.
Video you film on your phone
You do the filming, we do the rest. We write the hook, send you a shot list of six or seven clips that take about half an hour to get, then cut them into several ads that run against each other. No crew, no shoot day, no studio to book.
Best for: your face, your crew, real finished jobsVideo with a presenter made by AI
We write the script and a presenter generated by AI delivers it. Nobody films anything, so five versions of an offer can be running by the end of the week. It reads well for explaining a price, a process or a guarantee, and it is the honest answer when nobody at the company wants to be on camera.
Best for: offers, and owners who hate the cameraStatic image and text ads
The layer that runs underneath both of them. A photo of finished work, a seasonal offer, a review with a real name on it, a before and after. Static costs almost nothing to make and it is often the ad still working when the videos have worn out, so we do not treat it as the cheap option.
Best for: always on, and the cheapest way to test an offerFrom nothing to an ad that pays.
A Meta account is won or lost before a single ad goes live. There is no search term to fall back on here, so the offer and the audience have to be right first.
Offer
What the ad actually asks for. Nobody is looking for you yet, so call us for a quote rarely works. We find the one thing worth interrupting somebody for: a free inspection, a seasonal price, a real deadline.
Audience
Who sees it. Your radius, your customer, and the two lists that beat everything else: people who already visited your site, and people who look like your best past customers.
Creative
The ads get made, several at once, filmed or presenter or static or a mix of all three. One version of one ad tells you nothing, so we never launch with one.
Launch
Live, then watched. The first two weeks are mostly cutting: the ads nobody watched past three seconds, the placements that eat budget, the audiences that clicked and never called.
Which ones fit a service business.
Meta will happily spend your money on all of them. For a local service business almost all of it belongs in the first two on this list.
Leads and calls
The objective built to make somebody contact you, either on a form inside Facebook or on a page on your own site. This is where a local budget belongs, and it is the only one we will open an account on.
Retargeting
Ads shown only to people who already visited your site or watched one of your videos. Small, cheap, and usually the best performing thing in the account once there is enough traffic to build the list from.
Engagement
Likes, comments and follows. It buys a number that looks like progress. Unless you are building something that genuinely needs an audience, it is not what a service business should be paying for.
Awareness and reach
Charged for putting your name in front of as many people as possible with nothing asked of them. We will not run it on a local budget, and we will tell you why before you have to ask.
Ads, and what they actually cost you.
A report exported straight out of Ads Manager hands you reach, impressions and a cost per thousand. None of those is the number you care about, which is how many people called.
So ours opens with leads and calls, then what each one cost, then which ad and which audience produced them. Every ad is on it and ranked, because on Meta the answer to a bad month is nearly always a new ad rather than a new setting.
See the search side →When Meta makes sense, and when it does not.
Meta is not the right first move for every business. Three things decide it, and we would rather work that out on the call than three invoices in.
These move together.
Before you book the call.
Will people know the presenter videos are made with AI?
Some will, and we would rather say so than hope nobody notices. An AI presenter is good at explaining an offer, a price or how a job works. When the ad is about you, your crew or a job you finished on Tuesday, a real face on a phone camera beats it every time.
Do I have to be on camera?
No. Two of the three ways we make these ads need nobody on camera at all. If filming is not for you, the AI presenter and the static ads carry the account between them.
Should I run Meta ads or Google Ads?
They do different jobs. Google catches somebody already typing your service. Meta reaches somebody who has not started looking yet, which takes longer to turn into a call and costs less to reach. Most local businesses start with Google and add Meta once there is an offer worth putting in front of a cold audience.
How much should I spend?
That is a conversation, not a number off a page. It depends on what a job is worth to you, how big your area is, and how many versions we need running to find the one that works. The call ends with a figure that fits your market, or with us saying Meta is not the right move yet.
Who owns the ad account and the ads we make?
You do, both. We work inside your Business Manager, and every video and image we make for you stays yours if we stop working together. Nothing we build is rented back to you.
What if the ads do not work?
You hear it from us first, in the monthly report, with what we are changing. Usually the answer on Meta is a new ad rather than a new setting. If the channel is wrong for your business we will say that too, and move the money somewhere it pays.
Find out if Meta
is worth it.
Book a call and we will look at what you could put in front of a cold audience, which of the three ways to make it fits you, and whether Meta beats putting the same money into search.
Not ready to talk? Send the form and we will come back to you by email.