Lead Generation for Contractors: Facebook vs Google Ads?

Both are good, none are bad, sometimes one is better

Navigating the digital marketing world can be difficult for a lot of contractors. There are many options of where you can run ads but the 2 most popular are Facebook and Google ads.

Right off the bat I will say a lot of times a contractor can make both of these work well. There isn’t a definitive answer on which one is the best, but there are times where I would recommend one over the other.

Cost/Budget

For a contractor who’s never ran any kind of ads online whatsoever, and is intent on starting to run some themselves, I would typically recommend Facebook ads. Both platforms can be very technical if you want them to be, but Facebook is a bit easier to get into and manage. If you don’t know what you’re doing, Google ads can eat up your budget very quickly. Next thing you know you’re looking around where all your money went.

I say this as someone who is mostly Google-based. It’s a great advertising platform, but it does require a bit more planning, management, and at times, budget than Facebook. For contractors wanting to use Google ads, I typically recommend a budget of around 2000-3000$/month. I’ve made it work with less, but the results cannot be as guaranteed. In most areas, having a budget of around 100$/day to spend will be enough to give you profitable results, especially when operating in the residential space. Though this is still quite location/niche specific, you still want to have a decent budget to spend with Google. This is of course taking into account that the other factors are well set up, like your actual campaign and landing page.

No amount of money will make a bad campaign work. For some contractors, this may be too much to spend on advertising. In those cases, sometimes Facebook can be the way to go or simply wait until you’re comfortable investing your Google ads budget for at least around 3 months, to give it time to learn and give it a chance to start giving back profitable results. You can expect results to get better over time.

Type of Service

The type of service a contractor is offering is also a determinant. Facebook is more of a visual ad platform where Google is more of a text-based ad platform. This means that if your service is a highly visual service, it’s possible it may perform better on Facebook. Keep in mind that when I say this or that niche may be better on one platform, it doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t work on the other.

Right off the bat I will say if you are a contractor who mainly does “repairs” (ex. fence repairs, emergency service repairs, plumbing repairs, etc.), it is recommended to go with Google Ads if you’re looking for leads. This is because for repair services, people will typically search on Google for something like “plumbing repair near me” or something similar. If you’re service is more of a repair or utility service like plumbing, electrician, or HVAC, you may perform better on Google ads. This is because people don't typically see images or a video of some new plumbing and go “oh wow this is beautiful, I need some new plumbing for my house”. At least no one that I know of. It’s not something that makes your house pretty, it’s a utility thing.

When you have a plumbing, electric or HVAC problem, it’s usually something that needs to be repaired relatively quickly. For “quick fix” type of things, Google Ads is usually the superior option because you’re dealing with non-visual, utilitarian, and urgent need. Text based platforms lend themselves better to non-visual and utilitarian, and Google shows your ads to people who are looking for that thing, at that exact moment. (We’ll talk about this in the next section; “Buyer Intent”. Once again, this doesn’t mean that more “visual” services wouldn’t perform well on Google, they often do also. One doesn’t mean that that the opposite is true (if that makes any sense).

Buyer’s Intent

Let’s talk about buyer’s intent when looking at these two platforms namely, Facebook Ads and Google Ads. I think this is important to understand, as it can affect your “higher-level” strategy. One of the reasons why our agency loves using Google Ads is the buyer intent behind it.

You can look at Facebook ads as more of a “hey! Look at us, this is what we do” kinda thing. Meaning people are usually just scrolling through their feed and your ad will happen to pop up on their screen, between a bunch of other un-related posts from their cousin who they haven’t seen in years but apparently just got married last week. There is targeting on Facebook, but it isn’t as direct as Google. They might have at one point shown interest about something related to the service that you offer or just fall in the general demographic of people that might be able to use your service, but they weren’t looking for it at that exact time.

On Google on the other hand, when your campaign is properly set up, you are only being shown to people that at that very moment are looking for your exact service, or at a minimum something related to the services you offer. It’s direct and instant. They weren’t searching for a concrete contractor 2 weeks ago; they’re searching for it at this very moment. For this reason, the leads generated from Google Ads tend to be warmer. They tend to be more serious about getting this service done, as they’re actively looking for contractors who do it, or trying to learn more about the service, or pricing. This gives Google Ads a big advantage in our opinion.

People who click on a Google ad are people who just seconds ago typed in themselves the service you’re offering or “[niche] contractors near me”. People searching on Google ads for a specific contracting service just tend to have already put a little more thought into actually getting that service done than on Facebook. Facebook can still work, but if it’s a high-ticket service, that lead may take a bit more nurturing before it decides it is going to get that service done and hires your business.

There are cases where someone who just saw an ad of yours on Facebook and didn’t really have any previous intention of getting that service done beforehand, still becomes a warm lead relatively quickly, and that is usually when the service itself is relatively low-ticket (low cost).

Cost of Service

The cost of your services also affects which platform is better for you.

Typically, Facebook can do well with lower ticket services, where Google can do well with higher ticket services. This is because a higher ticket service, let’s say a service that might be more expensive, like redoing your driveway that could cost a couple thousand dollars, is usually something that requires more thought put into it before pulling the trigger. It’s normal that you’re going to think more about a decision that requires you to spend 5000$ vs a decision that requires you to spend 500$.

Google might be better for someone who put more thought into a decision because they’re actively looking for someone who can do that specific thing. Facebook on the other hand is more of a billboard on the side of the highway. You’re not likely to spend a large sum of money on something more random that you saw on a billboard ad, then while you’re actively searching for that thing. (Billboard ads are still more random than Facebook. FB still has a lot more targeting options but I’m using this as an example, when compared to Google Ads.) Whereas, if you see something on a billboard that isn’t a huge expense, you're more likely to buy that product/service even if you hadn’t really thought about doing so beforehand.

That is why low-ticket services can still work well on Facebook. For example, am ad for lawn maintenance or hedge-trimming services, might persuade a lot of people that hadn’t really thought about getting this done, especially knowing it might just cost them a couple hundred bucks. Combine the highly visual aspect of lawn maintenance, where you can show the before and after of lawns you’ve taken care of, and knowing that their lawn could look like that for just a couple hundred bucks, and you have a good chance at getting more interest from leads.

With high-ticket services, you’re typically looking at trying to capture leads at the bottom of the funnel. By bottom of the funnel, we mean people who have already done some research on that thing and who are intent on getting that service done, rather than just looking for more info. Using the right keywords in Google can lead your ads to show to that bottom of the funnel prospect.

Overview

All in all, both Google Ads and Facebook Ads can prove themselves to be very profitable for businesses of all kinds.

In general, for high ticket contracting services, Google Ads will perform better at getting higher intent leads. If you’re services are highly visually appealing, less utilitarian, Facebook might be the right option for your business.

There is no wrong answer. Both these platforms combined with a good overarching strategy, campaigns implemented correctly, and suitable landing pages, can work well for contractors looking for more leads for their business.