How do you run Meta ads to reach local business owners?

B2B is the one place I still use manual targeting. For a free local newsletter I target location only. For business owners, I narrow it.

What targeting do you use for business owners?

• Business-owner interests.
• Age 35 and up (on one event campaign, 30 to 60).
• Marketplace placement removed, because the audience is business owners.
• One county or one city plus about a 10-mile radius.

How much do you spend?

Very little. For my AI consulting offer, the plan was five bucks a day in Williamson County, targeting business owners. For a paid local business event, $10 a day.

"Even better is if we figure out this model, because we will make money from the Meta ads for other people. That's the gold."

What should the ad look like?

For a B2B offer, a professional static can work, with a real frame around it so it feels like a legit brand:

1. One big headline. Don't repeat the product name over and over.
2. A list of three things they get, with no prices next to them.
3. Underneath, two prices: the regular price crossed out and a founding-member price.

Direct-address headlines work well here. On one business-audience account, a format pulled from a competitor's best ad, "[City] founders doing $1 million. Read this.", beat our softer, longer concepts.

"They're so niche that it doesn't matter how good it is. If you're hitting the right niche directly, they're gonna respond."

Where should the ad send people?

One funnel page. The plan was a greetform page with a 3 to 5 minute video of me explaining what I do at the top and four or five qualifying questions below it: name, email, website, revenue. A teammate suggested popping the form up partway through the video.

Can Meta ads fill a local business event?

As a supplement, yes. For one paid local business event, the ads ran alongside one-on-one outreach, which had already produced five confirmed attendees and eight to ten soft yeses. The lead event fired on the thank-you page redirect. My one warning: the event date was too tight. Meta's algorithm needs room to learn, and a week or so more would have helped.

What if the client just wants awareness?

Then test two ad styles. For a local gym that only wanted people within about five miles to know it existed, we planned one standard ad, nice b-roll with text on top, and one built on a positioning angle: other gyms are crowded and loud, this one is calm, simple, and open 24 hours.