Meta ads when nobody is looking for you yet
Google finds people who already want what you sell. Facebook and Instagram interrupt people who do not. That difference decides everything about how the money should be spent.
- Google captures existing demand. Meta creates it. They are not alternatives and should not be judged by the same numbers.
- Meta suits businesses whose customers do not know they want it yet — aesthetics, extensions, kitchens, wedding venues — and suits emergency trades poorly.
- The creative carries almost all of the performance. A real before-and-after from a real job beats any amount of targeting sophistication.
- Expect a longer, less traceable path to the sale. People see the ad on Tuesday and search your name on Sunday, which reports as organic traffic.
- Minimum sensible budget is £1,000 a month in media. Below that the campaign never leaves the learning phase.
A woman in Cobham is not looking for a kitchen. She is on the sofa at half past nine, scrolling, half watching something else.
Then a photograph stops her thumb: a kitchen in a house that looks like hers, in a road that could be hers, with a wall taken out that she had never considered taking out. She does not click. She thinks about it on Wednesday. On Sunday she searches the company name.
That is the entire mechanism, and it is completely different from search. Nobody types kitchen I had not thought of.
Google finds the people already looking. Meta makes people look.
Which one does your business need?
The question is whether demand for what you sell already exists in a form somebody types.
It does for emergency plumbing, boiler repair, MOTs, emergency dentistry, locksmiths, a leaking roof after a storm. The need arrives suddenly and the person searches. Google, every time. Meta will not help, because you cannot predict on Tuesday whose boiler fails on Friday.
It does not for a new kitchen, an extension, a loft conversion, aesthetic treatment, a wedding venue, garden design. These are considered purchases people carry around for months before doing anything. Someone might spend a year thinking about a kitchen and search only in the last fortnight — and by then they are comparing three firms they already know of. Meta is how you become one of the three.
Why is the creative the whole campaign?
On search, the advert barely matters; intent does the work. On Meta the reverse is true. You are interrupting somebody who was not thinking about you, and the image is the only thing that decides whether the interruption is welcome.
What works is almost boringly consistent:
- Real work, photographed properly. Your actual finished jobs, in local houses. Stock photography is recognised instantly and dismissed just as fast.
- Before and after. The single most effective format in this entire category, and it costs you nothing but the discipline of taking the "before" shot when you arrive.
- Short video shot on a phone. Twenty seconds walking through a finished job, talking normally. Produced films perform worse — they read as advertising, which is what people are scrolling past.
- A face and a name. People buy a fitter, not a firm. The owner saying what he did and why is worth more than anything a studio produces.
- The town, in the copy. "This one is in Oxshott" outperforms "serving Surrey" because it is specific and because it is checkable.
Why will the reporting look worse than reality?
This is where most small businesses conclude Meta does not work, and they are frequently wrong.
The woman in Cobham never clicked the advert. She searched the company name six days later and enquired from the website. In your analytics that is organic traffic, or direct — a customer who apparently arrived from nowhere. Meta gets no credit and the campaign looks like it produced nothing.
Between mobile privacy changes, cookie consent and simple delay, a large share of the effect is invisible to the platform. So measure it the way it actually happens:
- Total enquiries across every channel, in the month before, during and after. If the total rose while the ads ran, the ads worked, whatever the dashboard says.
- Ask on the form and on the phone. "How did you hear about us" is unfashionable and remains the most accurate attribution available to a small business.
- Watch branded search volume. A rise in people searching your name is the clearest fingerprint of demand generation working.
What does it cost, and when should you not bother?
Meta Ads at £395 to set up and £349 a month, with a minimum of £1,000 in media. Below that the campaign never gathers enough conversions to stabilise, and you are paying to watch noise.
Do not start here. If you have no website worth arriving at, no photographs of your own work, and nobody answering the phone within the day, Meta will find all three problems and charge you for the discovery.
Which is why we do not sell paid media before month four. Site, listing, response. Then interrupt people.
Questions we get asked
Should a local business use Facebook ads or Google Ads?
Google first, if people already search for what you sell. Someone typing "emergency plumber Woking" has a problem right now and Google puts you in front of them. Meta is for demand that does not exist yet — a new kitchen, a treatment, a venue — where a striking image of finished work can create the thought in the first place.
What kind of business works best on Meta ads?
High-value, visual, considered purchases where the customer is not actively searching: kitchen and bathroom installers, aesthetics clinics, extensions and loft conversions, wedding venues, garden design. Emergency and urgent services work poorly, because the need arrives suddenly and the person searches rather than scrolls.
How much do Meta ads cost for a local business?
Budget at least £1,000 a month in media alongside management. Below roughly that level the campaign struggles to gather enough conversions to exit the learning phase, and results become too erratic to judge.
Why do my Facebook ads get clicks but no enquiries?
Usually because the ad promises something the landing page does not continue. Someone taps a photograph of a finished kitchen and arrives on a general homepage. The second common cause is asking for too much too early — a long form for a purchase somebody first thought about ninety seconds ago.
How do I know if Meta ads are working if the tracking is unclear?
Watch total enquiries across every channel before, during and after the campaign, rather than only the ones Meta claims. Add "how did you hear about us" to your form and your phone script. Meta-driven demand very often converts later as a branded search, which reports as organic traffic and makes the ads look worse than they are.