Boosting a post tells Facebook to show it to people likely to react to it — a like, a comment, a share. That is not the same thing as your customer. Your customer is a specific person, in a specific area, with a specific problem they need solved this week. Reaching that person takes an actual campaign, which is only slightly more setup work than boosting, and performs in a completely different league.
The starting structure that fills local calendars
Start deliberately narrow: one campaign, one ad set, one audience — people within roughly 15 kilometres of your business, in the age range that matches your actual customer base. One creative, showing one real result you have delivered. One call to action: book, call, or message, whichever channel you can respond to fastest, because a fast response is often what actually closes the job. Resist the urge to add more audiences or creatives until this narrow version is proven to work.
Why phone photos outperform designed graphics
A genuine photo of real work — a finished installation, a before-and-after, a plate leaving the kitchen — consistently outperforms a polished, agency-designed graphic. It reads as credible because it is credible: a real customer sees themselves in it far more easily than in stock photography or a branded template. Shoot it on your phone, and put the budget you would have spent on design into media spend instead.
The only number that matters at the start
Ignore reach, impressions, and link clicks in the first few weeks — none of them pay your bills. Watch cost per lead. If it lands under roughly $30 for a job worth $500, you have found a channel worth scaling further. If it climbs over $100, something in the creative or the targeting is wrong — both are fixable, and neither is a reason to abandon the channel entirely.
What to fix if cost per lead is too high
Check the audience radius first — too wide wastes spend on people who will never drive to you; too narrow starves the campaign of volume. Then check the creative: a result that is not specific enough, or a call to action that asks for too much too soon, both raise cost per lead. Change one variable at a time so you actually know what fixed it, rather than changing everything at once and guessing.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I budget to test this properly?
Enough to generate a handful of leads within the first week or two — for most local services that is a modest daily budget, not a large one. The goal of the test phase is signal, not scale.
Should I run ads on Instagram too?
Meta's placement system will typically distribute across Facebook and Instagram automatically within the same campaign. Let it optimise across both before manually restricting placements.
How long before I know if a campaign is working?
Give it at least a week and a meaningful number of leads before judging cost per lead — a handful of results in the first 48 hours is not yet a reliable signal either way.
A properly structured campaign, run on a modest budget, will consistently outperform boosted posts on a larger one. Get a free audit and we'll show you exactly where your current ad spend is leaking.