Can Meta ads bring in leads for a local service business?

Most of my Meta ads are for free local newsletters. I also get asked about service businesses, like a senior living placement company. My answer is usually yes, with conditions.

Why can Meta work for a niche service?

Meta has gotten really good over roughly the last 12 months at one thing: if your creative clearly speaks to the person you want, Meta can find them for you. You don't have to build the audience by hand.

It won't be cheap if the target is very niche and very valuable. For the senior placement business, I suggested an ad that asks the adult child directly: do your parents live in our county, and do you need to find a place for them to live? We help you do that for free. Jump on a Zoom with me. That's direct enough to work.

What should the ad look like?

"the best ad style right now is you or [name] in the corner, like green screen, ... you speak what I just said, ... and then the background is, whatever you think an interesting video would stop people scrolling is"

• The owner in the corner of the frame, talking.
• A background video interesting enough to stop the scroll.
• On-screen text that says the same thing the owner is saying.

What does a lead cost?

There's no standard price. Meta is an auction: you tell it what you want to spend per day and it finds what it can. For a service business I'd guess $10 to $20 a lead, and it depends a lot on quality.

Nobody knows lead quality in advance. You learn it with volume. Say you've gotten 200 leads, reached 60 of them, and moved forward with 30. Now you know your numbers.

How do you know if the math works?

Run the funnel backward. My illustration, not a real result:

Step	Rate	Cost so far
Click	$10 each	$10
Fills out the form	1 in 3	$30
Shows up to the call	1 in 3	$90
Becomes a client	1 in 2	$180

Run those numbers loosely and it's a few hundred dollars per client, somewhere around $200 to $500. If a client is worth five grand, it's worth it.

Where should the ad send people?

For an expensive service, not to a pricing page or your main site. When I planned ads selling a high-priced local media service to insurance agents, the plan was a short video of me explaining why it's valuable, a lead magnet built for that audience so we get their email, and a call booking as the main goal.

Should I use Meta or Google?

It depends on your model. Meta puts you in front of people who aren't looking for you. Google reaches people actively searching for your service. Roofing, plumbing and insurance get searched, so Google belongs in the mix there. Local newsletters don't; nobody searches for one. More on the trades in adding a marketing agency to a local media brand.

Start small and treat it as a test. How I size and judge a first test is in how much to spend testing a new offer.