Running Meta ads yourself: the trades playbook
Agencies in our database charge anywhere from a few hundred pounds to several thousand a month to run Meta ads. For a sole trader spending £300 a month on ads, a fee of the same size doubles the cost of every lead. This playbook is for the trade that wants to try it alone first, with one campaign, three ads and a routine that fits around the day job.
Who this is and is not for
It is for a trade with a working phone, a few decent photos of finished jobs, and the discipline to call leads back within ten minutes. Budget from £10 a day. Trades that suit it best are installation and repair work with a clear, visual outcome: driveways, fencing, guttering, garage doors, bathrooms, decorating.
It is not for a firm spending more than about £2,000 a month, where the time cost of managing it properly starts to exceed an agency fee, nor for considered-purchase trades like extensions or solar where the funnel needs qualification and nurturing that takes real expertise. For those, the high-ticket home improvement comparison is a better starting point.
Week 1: the foundations
Everything here is yours from day one. That is the point: if you later hire an agency, you add them as a partner and nothing has to be rebuilt, as explained in who owns the ad account.
- Create a Meta Business Portfolio (Business Manager) in the company name at business.facebook.com. Add a second admin, a partner or office manager, so one lost phone cannot lock you out.
- Inside it, create an ad account with your company card, set to GBP and your time zone.
- Create a dataset (pixel) and install it on your website. If you have no website, you can still run instant-form campaigns, but a simple site with your jobs, reviews and area helps conversion.
- Confirm your Facebook page and Instagram account are owned by the Business Portfolio. Fill in the page: services, area, phone, hours, 20 photos of finished work.
- Collect ten Google reviews if you have fewer than that. Homeowners who see your ad will search your name.
Week 2: one campaign, one ad set, three ads
Resist the urge to build something complicated. One campaign with the Leads objective. One ad set targeting your service area with Advantage+ audience left on and a radius you can actually serve. Age 28 and up if you want to skew towards homeowners, otherwise leave it broad. Daily budget £10 to £20.
Three ads in that ad set, each with the same offer but a different opening: a before-and-after image pair, a 15 to 30 second phone video of a job in progress with you talking, and a single strong photo with a short caption. Let Meta decide which gets the spend.
Write the copy like a text to a neighbour. Name the town. Say what you do, show that you did it recently nearby, and say what happens when they enquire: 'I'll call you back within the hour to arrange a free look.' Avoid 'free quote' as the only hook; everyone offers that.
Week 2: the lead form
A form with four questions will produce fewer leads than one with two. That is what you want. The trade-off is set out in lead quality versus lead volume, and for a sole trader with limited time to chase, quality wins.
| Form element | Setting | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Form type | Higher intent | Adds a review step; cuts accidental submissions |
| Intro | One line restating the offer and area | Filters out people outside your patch |
| Questions | Name, phone, postcode, plus one custom: 'What do you need doing?' (short answer) | Postcode lets you reject out-of-area leads fast; the free-text question reveals intent |
| Optional | 'When are you looking to get this done?' multiple choice | Separates this-month from someday |
| Thank you screen | Your phone number and 'call now if urgent' | Catches the hottest leads immediately |
| Notifications | Email plus the Meta Business Suite app on your phone | Speed of follow-up is the whole game |
Weeks 3 to 4: the follow-up routine
The ads are the easy half. Most self-run campaigns fail in the follow-up. Set a rule: every lead gets a call within ten minutes during working hours, and a text within two minutes if the call is missed. Have the text saved: 'Hi, it's Dave from Dave's Fencing, just tried to call about your enquiry. When's a good time?'
Missed-call text-back is a feature several agencies sell as part of their systems, including Lead Wave, Local Leads Accelerator and Trustmark Trades. You can replicate it manually for now; if volume grows, a cheap automation tool does it for you.
Keep a sheet with every lead: date, ad, postcode, contacted, quoted, booked, value. After four weeks you will know your lead-to-quote and quote-to-job rates, which no agency can give you in week one.
Weeks 5 to 6: read the numbers and decide
At £15 a day you will have spent around £600 by the end of week six. A worked example of what the sheet might show: 28 leads, 20 contacted, 11 quoted, 4 booked at an average of £1,400. Cost per lead about £21; cost per booked job £150; revenue £5,600 from £600 spent. Those are illustrative numbers to show the shape of the calculation, not a promise.
If your cost per booked job is comfortably below your gross margin on a typical job, scale the budget by 20 per cent a week and add one new ad every fortnight from fresh job footage. If cost per lead is fine but nobody books, the problem is follow-up or pricing, not the ads. If leads are scarce and expensive, change the creative before anything else; in most trade accounts the ad is the problem.
The weekly 30 minutes
- Monday: check spend, leads and cost per lead for the past seven days in Ads Manager. Note it on the sheet.
- Monday: pause any ad whose cost per lead has been more than double the best ad's for two weeks.
- Wednesday: film one 20-second clip on a job. No script. Say the town, say what you are doing, show the result.
- Friday: upload the clip as a new ad in the same ad set. Caption it with the free Meta tool.
- Monthly: write your own one-page report using the structure in what a good monthly report looks like. It keeps you honest and gives you something to hand an agency later.
When to hand it over
Three signals. Spend has passed £1,500 a month and you are managing it on the side of a full diary. You want to move into a considered-purchase trade where the funnel needs more than a form and a phone call. Or you simply hate it, and the Monday check keeps slipping.
At that point you arrive at an agency with a working account, twelve weeks of data, a known cost per booked job and a library of ads that have been tested on real homeowners. That makes you a far better client and a far harder one to overcharge. Our agency comparison is where to start that search.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a tradesperson spend to test Facebook ads?
From £10 to £20 a day for six weeks, so roughly £400 to £800 in total, is enough to produce a meaningful read on cost per booked job for most installation and repair trades.
Do I need a website to run Meta lead ads?
No. Instant forms work without one. A simple site with photos, reviews and your area improves trust and lets you install a pixel, but it is not a prerequisite.
What is the most common reason self-run trade campaigns fail?
Slow follow-up. Leads called within minutes convert; leads called the next day largely do not. The ads are rarely the main problem.
When should I hire an agency instead?
When spend passes roughly £1,500 a month, when you move into high-ticket work needing a qualified funnel, or when you can no longer give it the weekly half hour.