If your Facebook ads aren’t getting enquiries, it’s probably not your budget. It’s your strategy.
Most tradie businesses running Meta ads are making the same mistakes — and most of them are completely fixable without spending another dollar. I’ve spent a lot of time inside Ads Manager across trade businesses of all sizes, and the patterns are painfully consistent.
Here are 14 hot takes on tradie Meta ads. Some of them will sting butttt… all of them are true.
1. Copy-pasting a ChatGPT caption (emojis and all) is killing your enquiry rate
You can smell a ChatGPT caption from a mile away — and so can your potential customers. The wall of emojis, the “Are you looking for a trusted and reliable [trade] in [location]?” opener, the five bullet points, the “DM us today!” closer. It reads like a robot wrote it, because a robot did. Your customers aren’t stupid. If your ad copy sounds like every other tradie in a 50km radius, there is zero reason for them to choose you. Write like a human. Write like you
2. Stop placing ads on Instagram
Unless you’re a kitchen designer targeting women under 40 who save inspo posts, Instagram is not your friend. Most trade businesses serve an older demographic making considered, high-value purchasing decisions — and that audience is on Facebook, not scrolling curated carousels and Reels. Instagram placements will burn your budget and skew your data. Turn them off.
3. In fact, stop placing ads anywhere except the Facebook Home Feed
Marketplace, Messenger, Audience Network, Instagram Stories — none of them. The Facebook Home Feed is where your audience actually is, and it’s where your ad gets the most real estate and the most attention. Every other placement is a distraction. Go where your customer is actually going to engage with you and give you a lead.
4. Don’t show what you do — show how you can help
“We build sheds.” Okay. So do 47 other businesses within driving distance. “Finally, a shed big enough for the ute, the boat, and everything your wife keeps asking you to get out of the garage.” Now we’re talking. Features tell, benefits sell — and in trade, the benefit is almost always about solving a problem your customer is quietly stressed about. Find the stress. Speak to it.
5. Your ad creative is doing too much
All you need is one message, one offer and/or one action. That’s it. If your ad is trying to showcase your shed range, promote your free quote, mention your 10-year warranty, AND introduce your company — it’s doing nothing well. Pick one thing and say it clearly. You can run different ads for different messages. You cannot cram them all into one.
6. Adding a price or a “priced from” will help you more than you think
Tradies are terrified of putting prices in their ads. Don’t be. “Priced from $X” does two incredibly powerful things: it pre-qualifies your leads (the people who can’t afford you stop clicking, saving you time and cost-per-click) and it builds trust with the people who can. Hiding your pricing doesn’t make you look premium — it makes you look evasive. Be upfront.
7. Give people a freebie
A pricing guide, a checklist, a “what to ask your builder before you sign anything” PDF. Something useful and genuinely free, with no strings attached beyond an email address. This works because most people researching a trade job are in research mode — not buy mode — and a freebie meets them where they are. You stay top of mind when they’re ready to move forward. It also grows your list. Win-win.
8. If you’re spending less than $10,000 a month on ads, do it yourself
Agencies need a meaningful budget to generate meaningful results — and to justify their management fee. If you’re spending $500–$2,000 a month, a significant chunk of that is going to fees, not ads. At that spend level, you are better off learning the basics yourself, running your own campaigns, and keeping the money in your pocket. Meta Ads Manager is not as scary as it looks and thanks to the likes of Google Gemini, Claude or ChatGPT you can easily grapple Meta Ads yourself. The fundamentals aren’t complicated. You can do this!!!
9. Don’t run one ad and hope for the best
Create three variations and run them for at least a week — ideally two. Then look at the data: which one is getting enquiries, not just clicks? Kill the underperformers and make more versions of the winner. Repeat. This is called testing and it’s the only way to actually improve! One ad is a guess. Three ads is a strategy – and one you can repeat again and again for instant wins!!
10. Lock down your location targeting
This is the single most important setting in your entire campaign, and most tradies get it wrong. “New Zealand” is not a location target. Neither is “Canterbury.” If you service Rolleston, target Rolleston (and maybe Tai Tapu, Christchurch, Lincoln and Prebbleton). If you work within 30km of Christchurch CBD, set that radius. The tighter your location, the more relevant your ad is to the person seeing it — and the less you waste showing it to someone three hours away who won’t book you because you charge the extra km’s out of your local area.
11. Stop turning your ads off after three days
The Meta algorithm needs time to learn. In the first few days, it’s still figuring out who to show your ad to so, if you turn it off because it “isn’t working” on day two, you’ve just flushed your learning phase budget with nothing to show for it. Give campaigns a minimum of seven days before you make any judgements. Two weeks is better. Patience is part of the strategy.
12. You’re measuring the wrong thing
Clicks are vanity. Enquiries are sanity. If your Ads Manager is showing you reach, impressions, and link clicks — and you’re optimising based on those — you are flying blind. The only metric that matters for a trade business is: did someone contact you? Set up your lead tracking properly, whether that’s a form, a landing page conversion, or a phone call. Measure what actually grows your business.
13. You’re running ads before your page looks credible
Someone sees your ad, likes the look of it, and clicks through to your Facebook page. There are four posts from 2021, no reviews, and a profile photo that’s a blurry logo. They leave. Your ad did its job butttt your page didn’t. Before you spend a single dollar on ads, make sure your page looks like a real business that real people trust — recent posts, genuine reviews, photos of actual work. Ads drive traffic. Your page closes the deal.
14. Don’t link your ad to your homepage — build a dedicated landing page
Your homepage is for everyone. Your ad is for someone specific, with a specific problem, looking for a specific solution. When you send ad traffic to your homepage, you’re making them do the work of figuring out whether you can help them. A dedicated landing page — one that mirrors the message of the ad, speaks directly to that customer, and has one clear call to action — will convert at a dramatically higher rate. One ad that leads to one niche page with one purpose.
The good news? Most of these mistakes are easy to fix. You don’t need a bigger budget. You need a better strategy — and now you’ve got one.
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