Why it matters
Nobody opens Facebook looking for a plumber. Your ad has to stop someone mid-scroll and make them think, “my driveway looks like that.” If it doesn’t, nothing else in the account matters much.
Creative also shapes who sees your ads. With broad targeting, Meta leans heavily on the ad itself to figure out who to show it to. A video of a crew clearing out a packed garage tends to find people with packed garages. That makes your photos and video one of the biggest levers you have.
Local service businesses have a real advantage here: your work is visual, and it’s real. A stained driveway turned clean, a tidy new furnace install, a yard after its first spring cleanup. Homeowners trust that far more than glossy stock photos of people who clearly don’t live nearby.
How we do it
- Start with what you already have. We go through your past job photos, phone camera roll and any video, and pull out what’s usable. Most owners have more good material than they think.
- Give your crew a simple shot list. We send a short list of what to capture on jobs: a wide before shot, the same angle after, a quick clip of the work in progress, and a crew member saying hello. Phone footage is fine as long as it’s steady and well lit.
- Build ads around a few angles. We write ads around the different reasons people hire you: the visual transformation, convenience, trust in a local crew, or seasonal timing like gutter cleaning before fall. Each angle gets its own ad so we can see which one connects.
- Format for every placement. We size creative for Feeds, Stories and Reels, with vertical video where it fits best. We put the strongest moment in the first few seconds and add captions, since plenty of people scroll with the sound off.
- Write copy that sounds like you. The text stays plain: what you do, where you do it, and what to do next. A clear call to action like “Get a free quote” beats clever wordplay.
- Refresh before it wears out. When the same people see the same ad too often, results slip. That’s called creative fatigue. We watch frequency (how many times the average person has seen an ad) and rotate new photos and video in before things go stale.
Ideas that fit local trades
- A pressure washing company showing a split-screen before and after of a grimy patio
- A junk removal crew in a quick time-lapse emptying a basement
- An HVAC tech explaining, in one sentence, why a filter matters
- A landscaper walking through a finished backyard
- A cleaning company showing a kitchen from messy to spotless
What you get
- A shot list built for your trade, for you and your crew to use on jobs
- A starter set of ads across several angles, like before and after, work in progress and crew intros
- Versions sized for Feeds, Stories and Reels, with captions added
- Headlines and ad copy written in your voice
- An ongoing refresh plan based on frequency and results
- Notes in your monthly report on which ads are working and what we’re making next
Common mistakes we fix
- Stock photos. Generic smiling-family images look like every other ad and prove nothing about your work.
- Flyer-style graphics. An image crammed with text, a logo and a list of ten services is hard to read on a phone. One clear photo and a short headline usually do more.
- Running the same ad for months. Results slowly slide as fatigue sets in, and many owners don’t notice until the phone gets quiet.
- Claims you can’t back up. “Best in town” or a price you can’t always honor sets the wrong expectations and can run into Meta’s ad policies.
- Ignoring vertical video. Horizontal clips get cropped awkwardly in Reels and Stories, which wastes some of the best spots on the platform.