We've taken over more than a few ad accounts from trade businesses that tried running Facebook and Google Ads themselves, or hired an agency that treated them like any other local business. The results are almost always the same: high cost per lead, poor lead quality, and a sales process that lets good enquiries go cold.
Mistake 1: Using stock photography
Nothing kills trust faster than a roofing ad with a stock photo of a model in a hard hat that's clearly never held a nail gun. Homeowners can tell the difference between real job-site photos and generic imagery, and it directly affects how many people trust the ad enough to click.
Mistake 2: Targeting too broadly
"Homeowners in Auckland" is not targeting. It's a guess. Effective campaigns for home improvement businesses need to be built around the specific service, price point, and urgency of the job, with creative and copy that speaks directly to that situation.
Mistake 3: No fast follow-up
This is the big one. A trade business can run a genuinely excellent ad campaign and still lose most of the value if leads sit for hours before anyone calls. We've covered this in more detail in our piece on why the first 3 minutes decide whether you win the job, but the short version is: speed to lead matters more than almost anything else in the funnel.
What we do differently
Every retainer campaign we run is built around real photos of your crew and job sites, tight local targeting instead of broad demographic buys, and a 3-minute call-back process handled by a New Zealand-based salesperson. It's a simple formula, but it's the reason our clients see results like 2X revenue in 6 months or a 3x increase in inbound calls, not because the ads are flashy, but because nothing falls through the cracks between the click and the booked job.
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