Facebook and Instagram Ads for Local Businesses: What to Do Before You Spend Anything

Most local businesses try ads the same way: they press "Boost post" on a photo that did well, spend a bit of money, get some likes and decide ads don't work for them. Ads weren't the problem. The setup was.

Before you spend anything, get these five things right.

1. Know who you actually want

"Everyone in my city" is not an audience. Think about your best job from last year. Who was the customer, where did they live, what did they need and why did they choose you? That's who the ads are for. Everyone else is money spent on people who were never going to call.

2. Know what a job is worth to you

You don't need a spreadsheet for this, just a rough idea. If an average job earns you a certain amount and one in a few enquiries turns into a job, you can work out how much you can afford to pay for one enquiry and still come out ahead. Without that, you can't tell whether an ad is working or just busy.

3. Send people somewhere that can take the enquiry

This is the one that sinks most campaigns. An ad sends someone to your Facebook page, or to a homepage with no clear next step, and they leave. You paid for the click and got nothing.

• Send ad traffic to a page about the exact service in the ad.
• Make the next step obvious: call, message or request a quote.
• Make sure the enquiry lands somewhere you'll see it within the hour.

4. Make the ad look like your work, not like an ad

Real photos of real jobs beat polished stock images for local trades almost every time. Say what you do, where you do it and what the customer should do next. Short, plain and specific.

5. Start small and let the numbers decide

Don't put a big budget into the first version. Run a small amount, see which ads bring enquiries, turn off the ones that don't and put more behind the ones that do. The first weeks are for learning what works in your area, not for scaling.

What "working" looks like

Ignore likes and reach. The only numbers that matter for a local business are how many enquiries came in, what each one cost and how many turned into paid work. If you can't see those three, you can't tell whether the ads are doing anything.

That's why I only run ads alongside a site built to take the enquiry and a dashboard that catches it. Ads on their own are a leaky bucket. Ads plugged into the rest of the system are a steady supply of work you control.