Facebook Ads for Contractors: What's Working Now

2.9 billion monthly active users. 71% of adults in the US. Your ideal customer, homeowners aged 35-65 with disposable income, spends an average of 33 minutes per day scrolling.

Facebook advertising for contractors isn’t dead. But the tactics that worked in 2019 don’t work now.

Boosted posts to random audiences? Waste of money. Generic “call us for a free estimate” ads? Ignored. Sending cold traffic to your homepage? They bounce.

The contractors generating actual booked jobs from Facebook have adapted. Here’s what’s working.

The cost landscape

Facebook ad costs jumped 21% in 2025, but the platform still beats Google by 50-70% on cost per lead. The average construction/contractor CPL on Facebook runs $41.26 versus $165.67 on Google search. Facebook leads typically run $20-60 per lead for home services, significantly cheaper than Google Ads where HVAC clicks average $32.77.

But cheaper leads mean nothing if they don’t close.

The key metric isn’t cost per lead. It’s cost per booked job. A $40 Facebook lead that closes 15% of the time costs more per job than a $100 Google lead that closes 40% of the time. Profit Roofing Systems proved how big the gap can be: they spent $650 on Facebook ads, generated 50 leads, closed 20 customers, and produced $120,000 in revenue. That’s a 184x return on ad spend at $13 per lead. Not every campaign hits those numbers, but it shows what’s possible when targeting, creative, and follow-up all align.

Track through to revenue. Otherwise you’re optimizing for vanity metrics.

Lead ads vs. landing pages

Facebook Lead Ads convert 2-5x better than traditional ads that link to landing pages. These are the forms that pop up within the platform without sending users to your website.

The math is simple. Every extra click loses people. A user sees your ad, clicks, waits for your landing page to load, then has to fill out a form? Each step bleeds off prospects.

Lead Ads auto-populate name, email, and phone from the user’s Facebook profile. Two taps and they’ve submitted. Less friction means more completions.

The trade-off: Lead Ad leads are often lower intent than landing page leads. Someone who took 5 steps to submit a form wanted your service more than someone who tapped twice without thinking.

Test both. Some contractors find Lead Ads generate volume but lower close rates. Others find the volume more than compensates. Your market and your follow-up speed determine which wins.

Audiences that actually work

Retargeting website visitors

Your website visitors already know who you are. They’ve seen your services and prices. Retargeting them on Facebook is the highest-ROI audience you can run.

Install the Facebook Pixel. Create an audience of people who visited your site in the last 30 days. Run ads specifically to them. One contractor case study found that splitting cold versus warm audiences into separate campaigns improved ROI by 28%. Your retargeting creative and messaging should be completely different from your cold prospecting ads.

These ads should be different from cold ads. Don’t introduce yourself. They already know you. Address the reason they didn’t convert. “Still thinking about that new roof? Here’s what our customers say.” “Questions about pricing? We offer financing with payments starting at $99/month.”

Retargeting past website visitors generates 3-5x higher return on ad spend than cold audiences. You’re not convincing strangers. You’re reminding people who already expressed interest.

Retargeting past customers

Your best prospects are people who already hired you.

Build a Custom Audience from your customer list. Upload emails and phone numbers. Facebook matches them to profiles (usually 40-60% match rate).

Run ads promoting related services, maintenance agreements, or referral programs. “Thanks for choosing us for your AC install. Protect your investment with our $199/year maintenance plan.”

Past customers convert 3-8x better than cold prospects. They already trust you.

Lookalike audiences

Facebook’s algorithm can find people who look like your best customers.

Start with a Custom Audience of your highest-value customers. Create a 1% Lookalike, which targets the 1% of Facebook users most similar to that seed audience.

Lookalikes outperform interest-based targeting for most contractors. Facebook’s machine learning is better at finding patterns than you are at guessing which interests correlate with homeownership.

Start narrow (1% Lookalike) and expand only if you need more volume.

Geographic targeting

Home services are local. Set your radius tight.

Target your actual service area plus a small buffer. Exclude zip codes you don’t want. There’s no point paying for impressions in neighborhoods where you won’t send a truck.

Layer geography with homeowner targeting. Facebook’s “Homeowners” interest category isn’t perfect, but it filters out a chunk of renters.

Creative that converts

Video outperforms

Video ads generate 20-30% higher engagement than static images. They stop the scroll better and communicate more information faster.

You don’t need Hollywood production. Your phone camera and decent lighting work.

What works: before/after project shots, technician introductions, 30-second explainers of common problems, customer testimonial clips. Authenticity beats polish. A shaky video of a real job site outperforms a slick stock footage montage.

Keep videos under 60 seconds. Front-load the value because if the hook isn’t in the first 3 seconds, they’re gone.

Carousel for services

Carousel ads let you show multiple images in a swipeable format. Use them to display different services, show a project step-by-step, or feature multiple customer reviews.

Each card needs its own hook. Don’t just repeat your logo four times. Give each slot a reason to keep swiping.

The copy formula

Home service ad copy that works follows a pattern:

Hook: Lead with the problem or a surprising fact. “Your AC is costing you $200/month more than it should.”

Agitate: Brief expansion on the problem. “Old units work harder, use more electricity, and break down when you need them most.”

Solve: What you offer. “Our $99 efficiency inspection identifies exactly what’s costing you money.”

Proof: Social proof or specifics. “Over 500 homeowners in [city] last year.”

CTA: Clear next step. “Tap below to schedule yours.”

Keep it short. Facebook truncates long copy on mobile. Every word needs to earn its place.

Timing and frequency

Day and time

Run ads when homeowners are scrolling, not when they’re at work.

Early morning (6-8am), lunch breaks (12-1pm), and evenings (7-10pm) typically see higher engagement. Weekends often outperform weekdays for home improvement decisions.

Test your specific market. The data will tell you when your audience converts.

Frequency caps

Seeing the same ad 12 times doesn’t make someone more likely to convert. It makes them hate you.

Set frequency caps to limit how often the same person sees your ad. 3-5 impressions per week is a reasonable starting point.

If your retargeting audience is small, refresh creative every 2-3 weeks to combat ad fatigue.

Tracking what matters

Conversion setup

Install the Facebook Pixel and configure conversions for actual lead actions. Form submissions. Phone calls. Appointment bookings.

Don’t optimize for clicks or landing page views. Facebook will happily find you a million people who click and then leave. Optimize for the action that actually matters to your business.

Offline conversion tracking

Many home service leads call or convert offline. Upload your CRM data back to Facebook to close the loop.

Match booked jobs back to the ads that generated them. This tells Facebook’s algorithm what a real customer looks like, improving future targeting.

Without offline conversion tracking, you’re flying half-blind.

Attribution windows

Facebook’s default 7-day click, 1-day view attribution makes sense for most home service campaigns. Don’t extend it too long or you’ll take credit for conversions that would have happened anyway.

Compare Facebook-reported conversions against your actual CRM data. There’s often a gap. Trust your numbers, not the platform’s.

Read more about marketing attribution for home services.

Budget and bidding

Start small, scale what works

$20-50/day is enough to test. Run for at least 7-10 days before making decisions. Facebook’s algorithm needs data to optimize.

Once you identify a winning audience-creative combination, scale gradually. Increase budget by 20% every few days rather than doubling overnight.

Automatic vs. manual bidding

For most contractors, Facebook’s automatic bidding works fine. Manual bid strategies require significant volume and expertise to beat the algorithm.

Set a cost cap if you have a clear max cost per lead. Facebook will try to stay under that threshold while maximizing volume.

Account structure

Don’t run 15 ad sets at $10/day each. Facebook’s algorithm needs consolidated data to learn.

Start with 2-3 ad sets (different audiences) and 3-4 ads per set. Kill what doesn’t work. Scale what does.

Common mistakes

Sending traffic to your homepage. No one wants to figure out where to click next. Send them to a landing page built for conversion, or use Lead Ads.

Targeting too broad. “Everyone in a 50-mile radius” wastes money on renters, apartment dwellers, and people outside your service area. Layer targeting.

Giving up too early. One week of data isn’t enough. Facebook needs time to learn who converts.

Ignoring mobile. 98% of Facebook users access via mobile. If your landing page isn’t fast and mobile-friendly, you’re paying for bounces.

No follow-up system. A Facebook lead is colder than a Google search lead. They weren’t actively looking for you. Speed to lead matters even more. Respond in minutes, not hours.

Read more about speed to lead and the 5-minute rule.

The integration piece

Facebook works best when integrated with your other marketing.

Someone sees a Google Ad, visits your site, doesn’t convert. Three days later they see your Facebook retargeting ad while scrolling. That second touch tips them over.

Someone sees your Facebook ad, visits your site, browses your services page. If you can identify that visitor and follow up directly, you’ve closed the loop before they forget your name. Leakbusters Roofing built an in-house AI ad system after wasting $65K on agencies. They now generate 205 leads per month by integrating their Facebook campaigns with GoHighLevel and JobNimbus so every lead flows directly into their CRM with full attribution. The lesson: your ad platform and your follow-up system need to talk to each other.

The contractors winning on Facebook aren’t treating it as a standalone channel. They’re using it as part of a system that captures demand across platforms and follows up before leads go cold.

Read more about website visitor identification.