Most tradies who tell us “we tried Facebook ads and they didn’t work” spent $5 or $10 a day for three weeks, got two enquiries from people who wanted a quote for a job they were never going to book, and switched it off.
That was never going to work, and it is not because Facebook does not work for trades. It is because a budget that small never gives Meta enough to work with.
This article is written for the plumber, sparky, builder, painter or landscaper who wants to know what Facebook and Instagram ads will realistically cost, what a sensible budget looks like, and how to tell whether it is paying for itself. Our interest, stated plainly: we run Meta ads for trade businesses, so we are selling something. The guidance below stands on its own either way.
There is no price list
Facebook does not charge a set rate. Meta runs an auction, and what you pay is decided by who else wants to reach the same people at the same moment. A roofer in Tauranga and a kitchen company in Auckland pay different amounts for the same ad placement because they are bidding against different people.
That means three different people quoting you “the cost of Facebook ads” can all be right, because they are quoting different metrics:
- CPM is what you pay per thousand times your ad is shown. This reflects how contested your audience is.
- CPC is what you pay per click. Driven by your CPM and how compelling your ad is. A better ad gets more clicks from the same impressions, so your CPC falls.
- Cost per lead is the only one that matters commercially, and it depends as much on your landing page and your follow-up as on the ad.
You can have a cheap CPM and a terrible cost per lead. That happens constantly, and it is usually the landing page or the follow-up, not the ads.
The good news for a local trade business: homeowners in one region are a broad audience, and broad audiences are the cheapest kind to reach on Meta. You are not competing with national retailers or software companies for a narrow slice of people. Your costs per thousand impressions will generally sit well below what a B2B advertiser pays.
Why $20 a day is the floor
Meta has to learn before it can perform. Every time you launch an ad set, Meta spends the first stretch working out who in your area is most likely to click and enquire. It does that by showing the ad, watching what happens, and adjusting. That process runs on results. Fewer results, slower learning. At $5 a day it can take the whole month to learn anything useful, and by then most people have given up.
Small budgets buy you noise, not data. Say you spend $150 over a month and get two enquiries. Is that good? You have no idea. If one of those enquiries had not come in, your cost per lead would have doubled. One extra lead would have cut it by a third. You cannot make a decision on two data points, and you certainly cannot compare ad A against ad B.
You need to reach enough people, enough times. Nobody books a builder off the first ad they see. Meta works for trades because people see you three, four, five times over a few weeks and you become the name they think of when the job comes up. At $5 a day in a city the size of Hamilton, you are reaching a sliver of the market once. At $20 a day you can cover a real audience at a frequency that builds recognition.
$20 a day is $600 a month. That is the point where a single-region trade campaign has enough spend to exit Meta’s learning phase in a reasonable time, generate enough enquiries to judge fairly, and let you test one ad against another. It is a floor, not a target. If you cannot commit $600 a month for at least two months, you are better off putting that money into your Google Business Profile and reviews and coming back when you can.
Work the budget backwards from a job
The right budget is not about what feels affordable. It is about what a job is worth.
- Average job value. What does a typical job from a new customer bring in? Not your biggest job, your typical one.
- Close rate. Of every four enquiries, how many become paid work? Be honest.
- What a lead is worth. Job value multiplied by close rate. A $2,000 job at a one-in-four close rate means every lead is worth about $500 in revenue, before margin.
- What you can afford per lead. Take your margin on that job and decide how much of it you will hand to Meta to get it. Most trades land somewhere between a tenth and a quarter of the job’s margin.
Once you know what a lead is worth, the budget stops being scary. If you can profitably pay $100 for a lead and $600 a month is bringing in six to ten enquiries, you are not spending $600. You are buying a month of work.
If the arithmetic does not stack up, the answer is not a smaller budget. It is either a better landing page, a different service to advertise, or Google instead of Meta.
What drives your cost up or down
How narrow your targeting is. The tighter the audience, the higher the CPM. Most tradies over-target: they layer on age, interests and behaviours until the audience is tiny and expensive. Location plus a broad age range is usually enough. Let the creative do the filtering.
The time of year. November and December are the dearest months on Meta because every retailer in the country is bidding for the same attention. A trade business advertising in October pays less than one advertising in late November for the same audience. If you have a seasonal service, heat pumps before winter, decks before summer, start early.
How good the creative is. This is the biggest lever you control. Meta rewards ads people actually engage with by showing them more cheaply. A real photo of your team on a real job outperforms stock imagery almost every time. A genuinely good ad can halve your effective cost, and a bad one is expensive no matter how well the account is set up.
Whether you are asking for too much too soon. Cold audiences who have never heard of you convert worse than people who have seen your work or visited your website. Retargeting those people is the cheapest spend in your account, and it only works if the budget is big enough to build that audience in the first place.
What a tradie should budget
$20 a day is the minimum. Below that, Meta cannot learn, you cannot measure, and you will switch it off convinced it does not work.
$600 to $900 a month of media is a realistic starting range for a local trade business in one region. Enough to exit the learning phase, run two or three ad variations, and know within two months whether it is working.
Give it at least 8 weeks. Anyone judging Meta ads on two weeks of data is reading noise. Costs swing week to week, and the first fortnight is the algorithm working you out. Set the budget, leave it alone, and judge it at the eight-week mark.
Budget for the landing page too. Sending paid traffic to a slow site or a page with no clear next step is the single most common way tradies waste money on Meta. Our guide to what a website costs in NZ covers that side.
Budget for the follow-up. An enquiry that sits unanswered until Saturday is a lead you paid for and gave to whoever replied first. Sort out who answers, and how fast, before the first ad goes live.
Facebook or Google for a trade business?
Different jobs, and for most trades the answer is Google first.
Google catches people already looking. Someone typing “emergency plumber Napier” has the problem right now. That intent is why Google clicks cost more and convert better. Our Google Ads cost guide covers what that looks like by trade.
Meta creates demand rather than catching it. Nobody is scrolling Instagram hoping to find a roofer. Meta works for trades when the job is visual and somewhat discretionary: decks, landscaping, kitchens, painting, heat pumps before winter. It also works very well for staying in front of people who already looked at your site.
If you are choosing one, choose Google. If you are running both, Meta is where you spend the money that Google’s limited search volume cannot absorb.
Facebook ads cost FAQ
How much do Facebook ads cost in New Zealand?
There is no fixed price. Meta is an auction, and a local trade business reaching homeowners in one region is one of the cheaper audiences to buy. What matters is not the cost per click but the cost per lead, and whether that lead is worth more than it costs. Budget at least $20 a day to find out.
Is a $5 a day Facebook budget worth it?
No. Meta needs enough results to learn who to show your ads to, and $5 a day does not produce them. You would spend the whole month in the learning phase and switch it off with nothing to show. If $150 a month is what you have, run it as $20 a day for one week of a promotion, or save it and put it towards a proper month later.
Why $20 a day and not $10?
At $10 a day you are still in the range where one enquiry more or less swings your cost per lead by half, so you cannot judge anything. $20 a day is roughly where a single-region trade campaign gets enough reach and enough enquiries to make a fair call after eight weeks. It is a floor. Plenty of trades run more once it is working.
What is a good cost per lead for a tradie?
It depends entirely on what a job is worth to you. Work out your average job value and your close rate, and the answer falls out: if a job is worth $2,000 and you close one in four leads, a $150 lead is comfortably profitable. Chasing the cheapest possible lead usually buys worse leads.
Do Instagram ads cost more than Facebook?
They come from the same auction and the same budget, and Meta places your ad wherever it expects the better result. Costs differ by placement but you are not really choosing between them. Let it optimise across both unless you have a strong reason not to.
Why did my costs suddenly jump?
Usually one of three things: your creative has fatigued (the same people have seen it too many times), you are in a competitive season like the run-up to Christmas, or your audience is too small and you have exhausted it. Fresh creative fixes the first, patience fixes the second, wider targeting fixes the third.
Can I run Facebook ads myself?
Yes, and the platform is designed to let you. Where most tradies come unstuck is not the setup, it is the follow-up: the enquiry arrives and sits unanswered until the weekend. Whoever replies first usually wins the job, so fix that before you spend a dollar.
Want to know what Meta would realistically cost for your trade and your area? Get a free game plan: 20 minutes with Ryan or Matt, your actual numbers, no obligation.