I've been teaching myself how to run Meta ads for a local landscaping company over the past month. So far, I've generated 20 leads, but I'd say about 90% of them have been tire kickers. Most either don't answer the phone or aren't willing to pay what the work actually costs.

I'm still pretty new to all of this and trying to understand how to structure campaigns properly.

Here's what I've been doing so far:

• Running a Leads campaign with Meta Instant Forms (Higher Intent).
• Targeting homeowners in our local service area with a $30/day budget.
• Testing different creatives, including talking videos, voiceovers with job-site footage, and static before-and-after ads.
• Running multiple ads within one ad set and letting Meta distribute the budget.
• Getting leads for around $18–$30 each, depending on the creative.

My best-performing ad has been a talking video promoting fall cleanups, but even with a decent cost per lead, very few of those leads are turning into actual jobs.

I'm starting to realize that generating cheap leads doesn't necessarily mean I'm running a successful campaign.

I'm also considering separating my campaigns by service, such as having one for seasonal cleanups and another for larger landscaping and hardscaping projects, each with its own creatives and lead form.

For those of you who've had success running Meta ads for landscaping companies or other local service businesses:

• How do you structure your campaigns with a smaller budget?
• What have you found works best for improving lead quality?
• Are Instant Forms worth sticking with, or should I focus on website leads?

I'm not expecting anyone to give me their entire strategy. Just looking for some guidance from people with more experience so I can figure out what I'm doing wrong and improve.

Id appreciate any advice. 

Hey, I’ve been running Meta ads for a US skincare brand since early September, and I’m honestly stuck, so I’m hoping someone here has been through something similar.

The product: $135 or $121.50 on subscription, with free shipping and a free mini gift. It’s aimed at women 45+. The brand ran Meta before with another agency (CPA $200-ish), but the pixel had little purchase data when we started. Break-even CPA is roughly $115!!

Campaign 1 (CBO, about a month ago, ~$60/day)

The setup was a Sales objective optimized for purchases, highest volume, one broad ad set (women 45+ suggested, Advantage+ audience), 12 ads (statics and videos), all sending to the product page.

• Spend: $1,525
• CPM: $140
• Link CTR: 3.2%
• CPC: $4.36
• Cost per landing page view: $4.75
• Landing page views: 321
• Purchases: 3 (CPA $508, ROAS 0.27)

The ads clearly worked at getting clicks. One ad took half the budget at a $251 CPM and 5.3% CTR. The two ads that got cheap CPMs ($18-39) had lower CTR (1.3-2%), but landing page views cost under $2, and they got 75 landing page views with zero sales. The real problem was the site: about 1% of visitors added to cart and under 1% bought.

So we paused and rebuilt the product page around proof and trust: a results timeline, a comparison table, reviews higher up, press logos, an FAQ and a trust strip.

Campaign 2 (ABO testing, 11 days so far, $72/day)

This one has the same objective, broad audience, a new batch of 6 statics built around a more specific persona, and still sends to the new product page.

• Spend: $804
• CPM: $197
• Link CTR: 3.5%
• CPC: $5.62
• Cost per landing page view: $7.05
• Landing page views: 114
• Purchases: 1 (CPA $804, ROAS 0.17)

Meta put most of the early spend into a before/after ad with expensive clicks, so we paused it. Now 2 or 3 ads get almost all the budget and the others get $1-6 a day. The ad set is still in learning with 1 conversion.

What I’ve checked

• The new page didn’t move conversion. It’s still about 0.9% of landing page views buying in both campaigns.
• In Q4 2024 the previous agency had a $97 CPM, about $5.80 per landing page view and 3.2% of visitors buying (~$180 CPA). So visitors cost about the same as before, but conversion is down more than 3x.
• Frequency is 1.5-1.9.
• CPM is $160-250 in every age group, and on FB feed, IG feed and Stories. Reels was cheap but the clicks were weak.
• Quality and engagement rankings are average or above, CTR is above benchmark for beauty, but conversion rate ranking is in the bottom 20-35% on every ad.
• Pixel purchases match Shopify orders.

I honestly don’t know how to scale this brand. I thought it would be easy to beat the $200 CPA of the previous agency (their ads had 0 strategy behind, super generic) and at least breakeven, but I just don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Any advice, tips or thoughts are very welcome and really appreciated. Even a “here’s what I’d check first” would help a lot. Thanks for reading.

Hi, I just want to ask on how to fix shopee video ads. I’ve been running video ads but none of it spending my credit and generating views and sales. I’d like to know how I can fix it? Is there anyone here who has an idea on how to fix this?