How much should a contractor spend on Facebook ads?

01 / Where we start

Why we recommend $2,500+ in ad spend

Your budget needs to cover more than a handful of chances to win a job. Some homeowners won’t book. Some estimates won’t turn into work. We look at your job margins, service area, and room for more jobs before recommending what to spend.

That’s your ad budget, paid separately from Apollo’s service fee. Meta Ads & Booking is $2,000–$4,000/month. Before you decide, you see the work, costs, and responsibilities in writing.

We generally recommend this plan for contractors doing $750K+ a year. Revenue is a starting point. You also need jobs worth advertising, cash to test without relying on an immediate sale, someone to handle estimates, and a crew with room for the work.

02 / A smaller budget

What can $750 give you to work with?

If $750 is what you can comfortably put behind ads, let’s be clear about what that gives us to work with.

If each lead costs $75, that budget buys 10 leads. If 4 out of ten qualify and book, you have 4 booked estimates. Those can turn into work. But if a homeowner cancels or a few estimates don’t close, there aren’t many other opportunities left that month.

If 80% of those estimates happen and you win 25% of the ones you attend, the math comes to 0.8 jobs. You can’t sell part of a job. That number means less than one job on average at those rates, with no promise of a sale in any particular month.

With the same costs and rates, $2,500 works out to about 33 leads and 13 booked estimates. At $3,000, it’s 40 leads and 16 booked estimates. You have more chances to win work and more conversations to learn from.

04 / What you’re paying for

A lead isn’t a booked estimate. An estimate isn’t a sold job.

Views tell you people saw the ad. The next steps tell you whether that attention is turning into work.

1. A lead reaches out.

   Someone asks about a project. You still need to find out whether it’s work you take, in an area you serve.

2. A qualified estimate gets booked.

   The project meets your agreed requirements and the homeowner has a confirmed appointment time.

3. The estimate happens.

   Your team meets the homeowner and assesses the work. A booking on the calendar alone doesn’t tell you this happened.

4. You win the job.

   The homeowner agrees to hire you. Track the agreed job value separately from money you’ve actually collected.

We track ad spend per qualified booked estimate: your ad spend divided by the number of qualified estimates booked. Once your team reports what happened, you can also see the cost per attended estimate and per sold job.

Include Apollo’s fee, any performance fees, and your other marketing costs when you decide whether the work pays. The ad bill alone isn’t your full cost to win a job.

05 / Before you turn up the budget

Check what needs fixing before you spend more.

More spending puts more people through the same process. Check what happens to the people already coming in.

They look you up, then leave.

Can they find your services, service area, recent reviews, and finished projects? Give them a reason to trust you before paying for more attention.

They reach out, then go quiet.

Look at how quickly they hear back, whether the project fits, and whether someone keeps the conversation moving.

They book, but the estimate never happens.

Check the appointment details, reminders, and reasons for cancellations. Keep missed appointments separate from estimates you attended.

You give estimates, but don’t win enough work.

Review the projects you’re attracting, your quotes, and follow-up after the estimate. More leads won’t repair a poor fit.

You win jobs, but there’s little money left.

Check labor, materials, and the full cost of winning the work. A fuller schedule isn’t much help if those jobs don’t pay.

Your crew is already booked out.

Check how much work you can take on before paying for more requests. We can talk through whether ads should wait or focus on different jobs.

At the calculator’s starting rates, ad spend per booking stays $187.50 and ad spend per sold job stays $937.50 at all three budgets. Spending more changes the number of opportunities. To lower that ad cost per job, leads need to cost less or more of them need to become customers.

Your service fee is a separate part of the math. If that monthly fee stays the same, more sold jobs spread it over more work. The combined cost per job can fall even when ad spend per job stays the same.

Meta’s own advertiser training covers early campaign performance, reporting, and budget and creative decisions. We read those campaign results alongside what happens to your leads. A cheap click alone doesn’t tell us whether the campaign is bringing you worthwhile work.

06 / Starting smaller

Sometimes a smaller pilot makes sense.

A smaller budget can produce bookings. It gives us fewer opportunities to judge what’s working, so we need a clear reason to run the test and a clear point to review it.

We look at your job margins, local market, current follow-up, and what you can afford to learn from the test. We agree on the work, service fee, ad budget, and duration separately. A smaller pilot isn’t the full monthly service at a lower price.

If the website, reviews, or response to new leads needs attention first, that’s where we start. You don’t need to buy more advertising to find out your estimate requests are going unanswered.

07 / Working together

We handle the lead-to-estimate work. You handle the job.

With Meta Ads & Booking, we plan and manage campaigns, edit the footage you supply, qualify leads, follow up, and book estimates. On-site filming is quoted separately or included in the Full System.

Before launch, we agree how appointments reach your calendar and how your team tells us what happened after the estimate.

Your team handles the estimate, pricing, and the work itself. We need to know whether the appointment happened, whether you won the job, and its value. We agree on a practical way to get those updates. We also keep collected revenue separate from quoted or signed work.

Those updates help us see which opportunities turn into work and where your money is going. We use them to decide what needs attention next.