Facebook and Instagram ads for local businesses, in your own ad account

Do Facebook and Instagram ads work for a local service business?

They can, for the right kind of job. People scrolling Facebook or Instagram aren’t searching for you, so these ads work best for things people plan or can be prompted into: a kitchen remodel, a roof check before winter, a new dentist after a move, a quarterly pest plan, an open house.

They’re weak for emergencies. Someone with a burst pipe or a car that won’t start searches Google. For urgent services we usually start with Google Ads and Local Services Ads, and use Facebook and Instagram for planned work and offers.

Who should use Facebook ads?

Local businesses with three things in place:

• A clear offer: a free estimate, a seasonal check, a first-visit price, a consultation.
• A defined area: the towns or radius you actually serve.
• Someone to call leads back quickly. Leads that nobody calls back are ad money wasted.

If one of these is missing, we’ll tell you to fix it before you spend.

How much do Facebook ads cost?

You pay two separate bills. Meta charges your card for the ads themselves, through your own ad account, and you can raise, lower or pause that budget at any time. Our fee for running the ads is a fixed monthly amount, set before we start. It doesn’t grow with your ad budget, and there’s no charge per lead.

We suggest starting with at least $500 a month in ad spend, paid by you directly to Meta. We don’t publish our fees yet. We quote after the free snapshot, month to month, with 30 days’ notice and no setup fee.

Whose ad account and Page is it?

Yours. Your Facebook Page, Instagram account, ad account and business portfolio stay in your name, with your card on file. You add our business portfolio as a partner on your ad account and Page. Anyone with full control of your business portfolio can remove us at any time, under Settings, then Partners, in Meta Business Suite. Every lead from your forms belongs to you.

Lead forms or a landing page?

Both can work. A form inside Facebook or Instagram is quicker to fill in, so it can bring more leads, and some will be less serious. A page on your own website takes one more step, but it’s yours, and you can change it any time.

We add one or two questions that sort serious leads from casual ones, such as the town and the type of job. Then we judge both routes by booked jobs, not by the number of forms. See lead generation for how forms, call tracking and alerts fit together.

Why was my Facebook ad restricted?

Often because it falls in a special ad category. Meta requires advertisers to declare ads about housing, employment, financial products and services, or social issues, elections and politics. Financial products and services replaced the old credit category in January 2025.

Declared housing, employment and financial ads get limited targeting:

• all ages from 18 to 65+, and all genders
• no ZIP code targeting and no excluded areas, with a minimum radius around any location
• no lookalike audiences, and only approved interests

Which of our industries this touches:

• Real estate agents: listing and open-house ads are housing ads. Fair Housing rules also apply to the words and pictures. See our real estate page.
• Any business hiring: a job ad is an employment ad, whatever your trade.
• Financing offers: an ad built around payment plans or loans, such as a remodeler offering financing, may fall under financial products and services. We check before it runs.

What are the limits for dental practices and med spas?

Tighter than for other businesses. Meta’s Business Tools Terms bar sending it health information. Its ad standards bar ads that assert or imply a personal attribute, including a medical condition: “Do you have diabetes?” is Meta’s own example of what’s not allowed. Since September 2025, Meta has also been flagging custom audiences that suggest specific health conditions and blocking them from running ads.

So for dental practices and med spas, we:

• keep the Meta pixel off appointment, intake and patient-portal pages
• never upload patient lists to build audiences
• write ads about the treatment or the visit, never about the viewer’s body or condition
• keep treatment claims within what your dentist or medical director approves

If your practice is covered by HIPAA, HHS also has guidance on tracking tools (a 2024 court ruling set part of it aside), and your privacy officer has the final say.

How do you measure Facebook ads?

By qualified leads and booked jobs, not likes or reach.

• Leads: lead forms, calls and website forms from your ads.
• Cost per qualified lead, counted the way we agreed before the first ad ran.
• Booked jobs, if you tell us which leads turned into work.

Max, our reporting agent, sums it up on one page each month. You won’t get a promised lead count, cost per lead or return on ad spend from us, only an honest record of what happened.

Frequently asked questions