Handyman Facebook Ads: Campaign Tips & Best Practices

What Are the Benefits of Facebook Ads for Handymen?

It’s fair to ask: Why spend on Facebook ads when I’ve been generating leads for free using referral marketing and other traditional methods? After all, businesses are big on cost-reduction strategies, including sticking with a free lead-generation channel that’s already working.

However, the lead generation capability of such free channels is eventually maxed out. The number of leads you generate decreases, then suddenly nosedives. Soon, the business fails to generate revenue and goes belly-up, contributing to the number of failed companies.

Would you love to wait to reach that point? Probably not. It's best to cultivate a digital marketing channel like Facebook ads that can take over lead generation when the leads from those free channels become insufficient. 

Facebook advertising is also a proven lead-generation channel. 

According to a survey by Service Direct, almost 31 percent of consumers patronize small businesses after watching a Facebook ad. The same survey shows that 32 percent of small businesses consult Facebook business pages when deciding which company to hire.

Here are other reasons to invest in Facebook advertising:

Local targeting for qualified leads

Facebook has robust local targeting features that let business owners direct their ads to specific neighborhoods or regions within their coverage area. It also supports hyper-targeting audiences by demographics, social media activity, and interests.

With this ultra-targeting ability, you can program your ads to appear only in the feeds of qualified leads in your area, who are more likely to convert. This increases your ad spend efficiency.

Showcasing services directly to homeowners

Visuals are one of the most compelling ways to prove your expertise, especially to homeowners let down by other handyman companies in the past. Visuals provide concrete evidence of what you’ve done for other customers.

Facebook Ad Manager supports various visuals, including images, videos, and infographics. This allows you to showcase past work or services, using clear visuals that catch the attention of Facebook users and force them to click on your ad.

Cost-effective marketing for small business owners

Facebook gives advertisers total control over their ad spend and lets them reach a large audience regardless of their budget size. This is in direct contrast to traditional advertising channels, where the size of the audience you reach depends heavily on your budget size.

Additionally, you can start as small as you wish, increasing the budget as your understanding of customers and revenue increases. 

Increased engagement and visibility

Customers who consistently see your company in their feed become familiar with it and may eventually book an appointment. They may even engage with the ads, amplifying your page’s reach to people outside your current followers.

What Are the Different Types of Facebook Ads to Consider?

Facebook lets advertisers run campaigns of various ad formats as long as they adhere to the platform’s specifications. Let’s run through them.

Simple image ads

These are ads composed of one static visual, such as before-and-after snapshots from a completed project. They are ideal for causing scrollers to pause and read your copy, especially when properly designed and accompanied by compelling text.

Facebook recommends that all image ads obey the following guidelines to look their best in feeds:

• Resolution: 1080 x 1080 pixels

• File size: 30MB

• File type: JPG or PNG

Image ads typically appear in various places on Facebook, depending on the image’s aspect ratio—the ratio of an image’s width to its height.

Pair your image ads with high-resolution visuals relevant to your services and a well-designed logo that reinforces your brand to boost conversions. Plus, keep the text to the barest minimum.

Video ads

Video ads are Facebook campaigns composed of moving images and sound. They could be standalone clips or a combination of multiple videos turned into a slide show.

Handyman business owners can use video ads to boost brand awareness since Meta, like other social media platforms, gives videos more reach than other content formats.

Facebook’s allowable specifications for video ads include the following:

• File type: GIF, MP4, MOV.

• Aspect ratio: 1:1 (if you're targeting mobile and desktop users) or 4:5 (if you're targeting mobile users only).

• Resolution: The minimum is 1080 x 1080 pixels.

• Time limit: 1 second to 241 minutes.

• File size: 4 GB.

Your video ads should be short and high-resolution to achieve the best results.

Carousel ads

These ads feature two or more videos or images, each with an independent headline, description, and link to a target destination—website, landing page, or application.

Handyman companies find them valuable because they can promote the multiple services they offer in a single campaign.

• Resolution: 1080 × 1080 pixels.

• Video file size: 4GB.

• Image file size: 30MB.

• File types: JPG or PNG for images and MP4, MOV, or GIF for videos.

• Card number: 2-10.

For carousel ads to convert, experts advise advertisers to use visuals related to each other and the landing page they link to. You should also follow Facebook’s carousel optimization tips.

Instant experience ads

These special ads comprising image and video cards load and switch into full-screen interactive web pages whenever mobile users interact with them. 

People can use the cards to complete free estimate-request forms, watch promotional videos, and book appointments.

For your instant experience ad to run, it must obey the following Meta guidelines:

• Image formats: JPG or PNG.

• Maximum file sizes: 30MB (image) and 4GB (video).

• Video time limit: 243 seconds, but Facebook advises you to stick to 15 seconds.

• Video format: GIF, MOV, or MP4 (preferably without captions).

• Resolution: 1080 x 1080 pixels (recommended).

Use an attractive image or video as a lead-in to achieve maximum conversions. Also, ensure all the ad elements—images, videos, and text—are interrelated. 

Collection ads

Collection ads, like instant experiences, feature multiple videos and photos. 

However, unlike instant experience ads, they always have one cover image or video, while the rest are arranged in a grid format below.

When clicked, collection ads automatically redirect to a full-screen, fast-loading landing page within the platform. Here, users can learn more about your offer or visit an external website.

• Video length: 15 seconds.

• Aspect ratio: 1.91:1 to 1:1.

• File types: JPG or PNG (images) or MOV, GIF, or MP4 (video).

• Primary text and headlines: 125 and 40 characters, respectively.

• Image resolution: 1080 x 1080 pixels.

To increase your collection ad’s conversion potential, use eye-catching cover images or videos and add a tracking URL to monitor performance.

What Are the Different Types of Ad Budgets for Handymen?

Ad budgets help handymen control the amount they spend for the duration of their campaign. They determine how your ad dollars are distributed.

However, you must understand the difference between campaigns and ad sets before we explore the various ad budgets.

Campaigns are a collection of ad sets created to achieve the same objective.

For example, if you need to promote a new service offering, you could create a campaign with ad sets for different audience segments to personalize the messaging for each one.

Now you’ve understood the difference, let's explore the various types of Facebook ad budgets.

Campaign budgets

This designates the total amount that should be spent across all ad sets belonging to a campaign. When you set it, Facebook will automatically activate campaign budget optimization by distributing your ad dollars between the respective ad sets based on their performance.

Campaign budgets can be used when the target audiences for each ad set are the same or similar, and the advertiser doesn’t mind which one gets the most.

Ad set budgets

This allows handymen to manually set the amount consumed by each ad set, giving them total control over how their ad dollars are distributed.

Ad set budgets work best for campaigns where the ad sets have different target market segments, audience sizes, or objectives.

Daily budgets

With daily budgets, advertisers set the average daily amount they wish to spend on an ad set for a week. Facebook will then spend 25 percent above or below it daily.

Example: Let's say you set a daily budget of $20 on an ad set. Facebook will be free to spend between $15 and $25 depending on extenuating circumstances, such as the number of people competing for your audience, and deliver results worth that amount.

Daily budgets work best for advertisers running a campaign without a specific end and start date.

Lifetime budgets

Lifetime budgets represent the amount an advertiser is willing to spend for the entire campaign. This gives Facebook the leeway to distribute the set amount across different days in a manner it feels will produce the best result.

For example, let's say you set a lifetime budget of $400 for a three-day campaign during the Christmas holidays. Facebook may spend $150 on the first day, $200 on the second day, and $50 on the third day.

Lifetime budgets are best used for short-term campaigns with defined end dates. For example, a lifetime budget would be appropriate for a three-day campaign promoting roofing services before a storm.

After picking an ad budget, you’ll have to choose a bidding strategy to instruct Facebook’s machine-learning algorithm on how to spend your ad dollars during auctions.

You can pick any of the five bidding strategies provided by Facebook:

• Highest value: Facebook will use the entire budget to display your ads to big-spending audiences. This means the algorithm will optimize for conversion value over quantity.

• Highest volume: Facebook will focus more on displaying your ads to as many people as possible, prioritizing conversion quantity over volume. This objective is ideal for start-up handyman businesses or those opening a new location.

• Cost per result: Facebook will try to keep your ad costs around the amount you’ve set, even when the auction becomes very competitive. For example, if your ad cost is $5, the algorithm will try to maintain that amount when bidding.

• Bid cap: This manual bidding strategy sets a hard cap that Facebook must use in auctions. This restricts the algorithm from adjusting your ad cost dynamically based on market conditions.

• ROAS (return on ad spend) goal: Facebook will try to maintain the ROAS limit you’ve set throughout the campaign.

What Facebook Ads Campaign Objectives Can You Choose?

Facebook ads campaign objectives are the outcomes you hope to achieve from a campaign. They usually depend on the customer action directly related to your current business objectives, such as generating more awareness, recording sales, etc.

There are six types of Facebook ad campaign objectives:

Engagement: Displays your ad to people who fit your ideal customer profile and are more likely to send a message, interact with your page, or take action on your website—submit an estimate request, join a newsletter, etc.

Awareness: Amplifies your ad’s reach to the most significant number of people possible who can remember your brand and take action when they need your services.

Traffic: Drive traffic to any digital medium you choose, such as your Facebook page, website, Instagram handle, etc.

Leads: Generates leads through call bookings, form signups, and direct messages.

App promotion: Coaxes Facebook users to take the desired action on your application.

Sales: Find and target your ads at people needing your services and more likely to book an appointment immediately.

Facebook Advertising Tips & Best Practices for Handymen

To get the most bang for every buck invested in your Facebook advertising campaign, you must learn some best practices. Doing so sets you up for success and increases the chances of achieving your desired outcome.

Here’s a breakdown of Facebook advertising tips:

Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

Find tips for running a successful Facebook advertising campaign for electrical services.

1. Target local audiences

For local businesses like handyman companies, most of their ideal clients live close to their operational headquarters. Besides, no one calls an electrical company miles away when there’s one just a block from their house that can fix the issue before nightfall.

That’s why using local awareness Facebook ads to target people residing in your local service area makes sense. When setting up the campaign, this will place your ads in the feeds of people at least a mile away from your local coverage area or the zip code, counties, or town you specified.

However, remember to exclude non-residents just traveling through or visiting the neighborhood.

2. Use eye-catching visuals

According to a report from Forrester, a popular customer research and analysis organization, people are increasingly cautious of advertisements. They use ad-blocking software, tune out or scroll past whenever an ad appears on their screen, and search for alternative information sources during buying research, etc.

But it’s not all bad news. Advertisers can counter this trend by designing their advertisements to closely resemble organic content on the platform they’re using to advertise. 

So, to generate results from advertising on a visual-heavy platform like Facebook, your ads must incorporate visuals so users don’t react negatively to them. This way, your ads will capture attention, hold it, and hopefully convince users to take action.

When using visuals, ensure they are uniquely and directly related to your services. This automatically invalidates stock or AI-generated photos and videos, as well as Google screenshots.

Instead, display high-quality images or videos of your employees, past projects, customer testimonials, etc. All videos should have eye-catching thumbnails and be set to play without sound until the user unmutes them.

3. Write compelling ad copy

Visuals capture users’ attention, but the copy convinces them to take the desired action.

For your copy to do its job, it must answer the following questions people often ask when reading an advertisement:

• What service are you offering?

• What differentiates you from others?

• Why must I act now?

• What should I do next?

To answer these questions correctly, research your target audience via customer interviews, discussions with customer-facing employees, community forums, and social media platforms. Find out their pain points and the words they use to describe them. Then, use what you found to create a strategy focusing on the customer rather than your business.

Here are other tips for creating Facebook advertising copy:

• Stick to Facebook’s character-count restrictions. If you must say more, encourage users to download an e-book or redirect them to a landing page, website, or social media handle.

• Use an active voice instead of a passive one.

• Sentences and paragraphs must be short. No Facebook user has the time to read through several blocks of text.

4. Perform A/B testing

A/B testing is an experiment that involves sending two versions of an ad set or campaign to two audience segments after changing variables such as visuals, text length, audience segment, placements, etc.

A/B testing can be used to identify which ad variant performs best—generates the most conversions at a low cost—and measure an element's impact on a campaign.

To create an A/B test, set a hypothesis about the elements you wish to vary. For example, you may hypothesize, “An ad with image X will outperform another with image Y.”

Once you’ve hypothesized, the next step is to create the campaigns or ad sets from scratch or duplicate an existing one. Then, vary the element you wish to test and use the same budget for both variants to eliminate bias.

After the experiment, check your email or Facebook Ad Manager for the performance results. You can run more tests to have a more significant data set to work with or immediately use the high-performing variant for your campaign.

The results of A/B tests can be used for other marketing channels, such as search engine optimization (SEO), direct mail, email marketing, etc.

5. Track performance

After launching your campaign, you will receive performance tracking. This is how you will know what to improve upon, which campaigns to pause, and how to optimize for revenue.

Performance tracking is a ladder with two steps. The first rung is choosing the right tool, and the second is determining the metrics to track.

If you’re looking for software, consider investing in ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro – Ads. This program tracks the revenue generated by each campaign and displays the result using a full-funnel dashboard.

The software also integrates with other tools used by handyman businesses, reducing the potential for errors caused by manual data transfer and the costs caused by subscribing to multiple tools.

Lastly, the tool has an Ads Optimizer that uses existing conversion data from ServiceTitan and Google Ads to display your ads to audiences most likely to convert into buyers.

Proximo Marketing, a marketing agency for service companies, once ran a campaign for a plumbing company with the tool and saw lead quality increase from 44 percent to 60 percent in a month. This almost doubled ROI compared to when the tool wasn’t used.

Liz Soto, a senior account manager at the agency, calls the tool’s capabilities “next-level” and encourages service companies to use it.

“You stand to make more money on [your] investment, regardless of the level that you're able to invest,” she says. “So it's a safer, more secure way of doing it, rather than throwing something against the wall and seeing what sticks.”

Once you’ve figured out the tool to use, the next step is to identify the metrics relevant to your desired outcomes. Here are some Facebook ad campaign performance metrics you can track:

• Clicks

• Conversion rate

• ROAS

• Results

• Cost per result

• Spend

• Impressions

• CTR

• Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)

Check out what they mean and how to track them using Facebook Ad Manager.

6. Retarget potential customers

Consider these two groups: Group A is made up of individuals who visit your website and see your ad later, while Group B consists of Facebook users who encounter your ad in their feed.

Which group is more likely to take action? It’s Group A, as visiting your website unprompted is a sign of people who are interested in your services and just need a little nudge to take action.

Facebook lets advertisers target Group A-type customers using remarketing ads. These ads use a Meta pixel—a small code block generated by Facebook— to gather data on potential customers’ behavior.

To retarget potential customers, install the Meta pixel to the backend of your website or CRM using the instructions mentioned in the video below:

Facebook PIXEL & Events Setup & Installation (STEP BY STEP) - Track Website Conversions from Meta

After installing the code snippet, confirm if it works using Meta's Pixel Helper Chrome extension. To do so, install the extension, open your website, then click on the extension from the address bar.

If it’s working, you’ll get this image:

If it’s not working, you’ll see something like this:

Next, visit your Facebook Ad Manager and select Meta pixel as your source to build a custom audience. Then, create and launch an ad campaign targeted at them that’s relevant to their previous interactions with your brand.

For example, you can promote a discount to prospective customers who requested a free estimate but didn’t book an appointment. Or those who visited your services page in the past week without scheduling an appointment.

7. Use Facebook Lead Ads for easy contact

Facebook Lead Ads are special ads that allow users to complete and submit intake forms automatically filled out with their profile details without leaving the platform. These ads appear in stories, articles, Messenger, and Facebook news feed placements.

A major advantage of Facebook Lead Ads is their frictionless conversion path. Plus, all information entered into the intake form is automatically collected by a CRM integrated at the backend of your Facebook Ads Manager.

Furthermore, Lead Ads support segmentation; you can target people belonging to specific demographics, locations, interest groups, etc. You can also use the ‘connections’ filter to target people who have interacted with your page. 

With these segmentation features, only qualified handyman leads, whom you can follow up with and nurture into customers, end up filling out the form. This increases your ad spend efficiency.

Here are some helpful tips to keep in mind when creating Facebook Lead Ads:

• Enable automatic placements so your ads can reach more people.

• Explain why people should fill out the form and provide some context about your business.

• Limit the size of the form to a few fields.

• Target lookalike audiences—people similar to your current customers. 

8. Promote special offers and discounts

Facebook advertising lets you tie your campaigns to specific outcomes, including promoting a discount to potential customers. This ensures every dollar you spend has a real effect on revenue.

When creating special offers and discounts, tailor them to your target audience’s needs. They should solve a real problem that people currently have.

Lastly, include a short lead-capture form that leads to your offer. Once the form is completed, users should find a CTA that explains the next step.

9. Include social proof

Nothing is more powerful at convincing prospects to book appointments than the words of others like them—aka your current or past customers. 

Prospects may dismiss what you say about your brand as self-promotion. But hearing or reading the words of a real person who has booked an appointment and was satisfied with the experience can help them overcome their hesitation. They’ll realize you’re worth their time and money.

There are various ways to include social proof in your Facebook ads. It could be a video testimonial, a written review, a satisfied customer quote, or a successful project case study.

Regardless of your chosen method, the person used as social proof must be a real customer. That’s the only way to get an authentic reaction that every prospect will believe and connect with.

Examples of Handyman Facebook Ads to Inspire You

Tips and strategies are simply theories, except they’ve been proven to work. That’s why we scoured Facebook to find examples of the best ads from various handyman companies.

Below, we’ll explain what they did differently, what makes them unique, and how you can use the same strategies they used in your Facebook ads.

Let’s get to work, shall we?

Example 1: Home Repairs LLC

Remember us mentioning the power that’s packed into a single image? This Facebook ad nails it.

The high-quality image captures attention and helps prospects visualize the exact result that can be achieved by prospects who hire the company. Plus, the copy is short, straight to the point, and speaks directly to prospects’ pain points—the struggle of having a presentable deck.

Lastly, Home Repairs LLC quotes the number of years the company has existed beneath the Facebook ad to demonstrate expertise. This further convinces prospective customers about the company’s ability to fix their needs.

Example 2: The Guys For That LLC

This ad exemplifies the power of simplicity; it’s just an image and a few pieces of text explaining what they offer to prospects.

Just take a moment to glance at the image one more time. You’ll notice that the company lists all the services it offers, some caricature images showing its brand personality, and contact information.

By providing this information, The Guys For That LLC will attract only qualified leads—people who need the services captured in the image.

Example 3: J & C Handyman Services

J & C Handyman Services expertly combines an eye-catching visual with text that reinforces what’s captured in the image. If anything, it's a great example of a vital advertising ethos: the image and text must always be related. 

It’s like a two-pronged attack: the image captures the reader’s attention, and the words reinforce the message. The repetition here increases the likelihood of a prospect taking action.

It’s Your Turn Now

Facebook advertising is an excellent channel in which you should invest. 

Sure, the cost can be steep. 

However, benefits such as broadened brand awareness, generation of qualified leads, and the platform’s detailed performance reports more than outweigh the costs. Plus, you can recoup your investment from the revenue generated from a single lead that converts.

If you wish to monitor your campaigns from one platform, consider investing in ServiceTitan. Handyman companies use it to track campaign performance on various channels without switching between platforms.

If you want to find out more about how ServiceTitan assists in revenue attribution, contact us for a demo today,

ServiceTitan is a comprehensive tool built specially for tradespeople, to help them optimize, monitor, and streamline their operations. Currently, there are over 10,000 tradespeople, including handyman contractors, using it to manage their work.