AM:PM:Impact
All guides

ad strategy

Meta lead ads vs Google Ads for service businesses: when each one wins

7 min readFor: Service businesses spending £100-£1,000 a week on paid ads.

There is a recurring conversation in every trades WhatsApp group: "Should I be on Facebook or Google?" The answer is not "both" or "whichever is cheaper" — the two channels reach different buyers at different stages, and the wrong choice at small budgets burns money fast.

Here is the framework we apply for every :Impact client before the first pound is spent.

The buyer-intent ladder

Google Search captures people who already know what they need: "emergency plumber Glasgow", "MOT near me", "Botox aftercare". The buyer has typed the words. Conversion rates are high, costs per click are also high (£3-£12 for trades, £8-£30 for legal).

Meta lead ads capture people who do not know yet they will buy today. They are scrolling Instagram and your ad pattern-interrupts them. Costs per lead are lower (£8-£25 for trades, £12-£40 for beauty), but the leads are colder.

Google Local Service Ads (LSAs) sit at the top of search results with a "Google Guaranteed" badge. Pay-per-lead, not per-click. Best for emergency-led trades — plumbers, locksmiths, garage doors. Slow to qualify into.

Budget thresholds that change the answer

Under £50/week: Meta lead ads only. Google Search needs minimum £20/day per campaign to learn, and you will not see meaningful volume on £50/week.

£100-£300/week: Meta lead ads as the primary spend, with a small Google Search retainer (£25/day) on the highest-intent keyword cluster, eg "emergency [trade] [city]". Do not run Google brand campaigns at this stage.

£300/week+: Both, but separated by campaign objective. Meta runs cold prospecting. Google runs hot demand capture. Track each channel separately so one does not eat the other’s budget in reporting.

Where lead quality actually differs

Meta lead ads pre-fill the form with the user's Facebook contact info. This is fast for the user but corrupts your data: typos, decade-old emails, and the partner's phone number all leak in. Plan for 20-30% of Meta leads to need a manual cleanup pass before they hit your sequence.

Google Search and LSA leads are typed live, so the data is cleaner. They also self-qualified by searching, which means stronger intent. Pay the higher cost-per-click and you get fewer wasted hours.

The 5-second response rule applies to both

Both channels lose 40-60% of leads to slow response time. A lead who waits more than 5 minutes is half as likely to convert. Whichever channel you pick, the system on the other end matters more than the channel itself.

This is why :Impact runs the same speed-to-lead pipeline regardless of source: AI scoring inside 30 seconds, WhatsApp alert to the owner inside 5 seconds, auto-response email inside 30 seconds.

Pick a starting plan

Tell us your spend, industry, and city. We will say which channels to run, what creative to brief, and which :Impact tier covers it.

Start with Core

More guides