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Meta or Google first?
Meta shows your ad to people who aren’t looking yet. Google Search shows it to people searching right now. That decides where your first dollar goes.
- Urgent jobs (burst pipe, no hot water, storm damage): Google wins. Nobody scrolls Instagram hoping to find an emergency plumber. Your free Google Business Profile and Google Search ads catch these people.
- Planned projects (renovations, builds, landscaping, decks, pools, solar): Meta earns its place. People browse ideas for months, and Meta puts your work in front of the right suburbs before they search.
- A mix of both: urgent-job money into Google, planned-project money into Meta.
Why boosted job photos don’t bring quotes
A finished deck on your Page gets likes from mates, other tradies and people three states away. Boosting it pays Meta to find more people who like photos. Boosting offers goals such as profile visits, website visits or messages. None of them is a quote request.
Build a Leads campaign in Ads Manager instead. Keep posting job photos for free: they become the gallery people check after they see your ad.
A form that filters
Meta’s instant forms fill in name, phone and email from the person’s profile. With no questions to answer, a lead takes two taps, so you get tyre-kickers: accidental taps, people “just getting prices”, jobs outside your area. And Meta’s AI learns from whoever submits. Junk in, more junk out.
- Choose Higher intent. It adds a review step where people confirm their details. More volume, Meta’s default, doesn’t.
- Ask three or four qualifying questions, as multiple choice: suburb, project type, budget range and timeframe (“Within 3 months / 3–6 months / 6–12 months / Just researching”).
- Use conditional answers, so each project type shows only the budget ranges that fit it.
- Say who you’re for in the form intro: your service area and your smallest job.
Fewer leads is the point. You’re paying to talk to people who can say yes. And “Just researching” isn’t junk. It’s next year’s work: keep them, with consent, and call the ready ones first.
Call back within the hour
A homeowner fills in your form on their phone at 8pm, and usually asks a couple of other tradies too. Whoever calls back first gets the first site visit.
- Get every lead to your phone within minutes, with an automatic reply straight away.
- Call back within the hour in work hours: at smoko, lunch and knock-off. If you can’t, someone else can: a partner, the office or a call-answering service.
- No answer? Call twice, then text with your business name and their job.
Pin the area you’ll actually drive
Inside any area, Meta finds the cheapest people first, often on the outer edge or in suburbs where your prices won’t land.
- Drop a pin on your base with a radius you’ll really drive. Meta allows 1 to 80 km.
- Exclude suburbs you won’t work in, and name your service area in the ad and the form.
- Covering two areas? Two pins in one ad set, not two ad sets. A small budget split in two learns half as fast.
Prove you’re licensed, local and real
Homeowners are wary of tradies they don’t know. A stock photo with no licence number and no business name gets scrolled past, or draws the cheapest-quote crowd.
- Your own jobs: before and after from the same spot, not retouched to look better than the result.
- Your face, on site, and the suburb you’re in.
- Real reviews, word for word, with the client’s permission.
- Your licence details in every ad. For building work, most states require them in your advertising, and online and social media ads count. Put them on the image or video and at the end of every primary text, because Meta mixes text versions.
- Switch off Advantage+ creative enhancements, so Meta can’t crop your “after” shot or move your licence line.
An offer, not “free quotes”
“Quality work, free quotes, no job too small” describes every tradie in your area. A trade offer is a specific job, a price guide, a timeframe and a reason to book now: “Merbau deck, up to 20 m²”, a real “from” price you’d actually quote, “booking site visits for February starts”. Any “only three slots left” must be true.
Judge it on jobs, not leads
Meta counts a lead the moment a form is sent. It never hears that the person didn’t answer, or became your best client of the year.
- Keep a lead log: source, suburb, job, call-back time and outcome for every lead.
- Judge ads on cost per site visit and cost per won job, not cost per lead alone. A dearer lead can be the better buy. It’s the same idea as an online store’s break-even ROAS: know what a result is worth before you decide what to pay for it.
- Send lead stages back to Meta if your job system can, so Meta can learn from leads that became jobs.
- Booked out? Lower the budget rather than switching off. A pause of 7 days or more can send the ad set back into learning.
Not a builder?
Our current trade plan is written for builders, renovators and landscapers. Plumbers, electricians and other trades can take the free 3-minute quiz too: any other business gets the plan for the closest type, built from the same answers. Licence rules differ by trade and state, so check your licensing body’s advertising rules.
This is general information, not legal advice.