Ask ten contractors about Facebook ads and you'll get five who swear by them and five who say they got nothing but people asking "how much" and disappearing. Both are telling the truth. Facebook works very well for some jobs and badly for others, and the difference is almost always in the setup, not the platform.
Facebook is for the job they're thinking about, not the emergency
Google catches people searching. Facebook reaches people before they search. That's the whole distinction. Nobody with water pouring through a ceiling is scrolling Instagram, so Facebook is a weak channel for emergency repair. But the homeowner who has been talking about redoing the kitchen for a year, or knows the roof is on its last legs, or wants a patio before summer? They're scrolling right now, and a good ad with a real before-and-after will stop them.
Pick the job accordingly: remodels, roof replacements, HVAC system replacements, water heaters, pools and outdoor living, additions, windows. Planned, higher ticket, visual.
Creative: your real projects beat everything
The ad that works is almost never the polished one. It's a photo or a short phone video of your actual work, ideally with a before next to the after, and a plain headline about the result. "Kitchen in Keller, done in 3 weeks" outperforms "Transform Your Home Today" every time, because the homeowner can see it's real and local. Stock photos and agency graphics signal "big company that will send a salesman." Your crew's phone signals "these guys actually do the work."
Rotate creative every couple of weeks. The same ad shown to the same neighborhood for two months gets ignored and gets expensive.
The offer: make it specific and make it cost something
"Free estimate" is table stakes; everyone offers it. What stops the scroll is a specific reason to act now: "Roof inspection before storm season, with a written report." "Bathroom remodel consultation with a 3D design." "Water heater replacement with same-week install." The offer should cost you a little effort so it filters for people who are serious, and it should be something you'd actually be glad to deliver.
The form: this is where junk leads come from
Facebook's instant forms pre-fill name, phone and email. If that's all you ask, you'll get people who tapped twice while half watching TV. Add three questions: what's the project, what's the timeline, what's the budget range. Your lead volume will drop and your lead quality will roughly double. You're not paying for people who'd never buy anyway.
Better still for higher-ticket work: send the click to a short page on your site with the same questions and a photo of the crew. Slightly fewer leads, noticeably more serious ones.
Follow-up: the part that decides everything
A Facebook lead is a person who was interrupted mid-scroll. They are not waiting by the phone. If you call them tomorrow afternoon, they've forgotten they filled it out and you sound like a telemarketer. If you call within five minutes, you're the business that was quick and the conversation is easy. We cover the math in Speed to lead; the short version is that same-hour contact is the single biggest lever on whether Facebook ads pay.
Build the follow-up before you launch: an instant text when the lead comes in, a call within minutes from someone whose job it is to call, and a few texts over the following week for the ones who didn't answer. If nobody in your business can do that during the workday, that's exactly what our setters do.
Targeting: smaller than you think
Target the neighborhoods you actually want to work in, not the whole metro. A 10-to-15-mile radius around your best zip codes, homeowners, age 30 and up. Let Facebook's system do the rest; over-narrowing with interests usually just raises your costs. For storm work, target the affected neighborhoods the day after the storm with an inspection offer. Nothing else in marketing produces leads that fast.
How to judge it
Don't judge Facebook on leads or cost per lead; a cheap lead that never answers the phone is worth zero. Judge it on booked estimates and signed jobs, tracked back to the ad. Give it 30 days with real follow-up before you decide. If a planned, visual, higher-ticket job with real-project creative and five-minute follow-up doesn't produce booked estimates in a month, something specific is wrong and it's findable. That's what we look at in the Facebook and Instagram ads work, and it's why the ads never run without the follow-up underneath.