Local Service Business

This client had been relying on word of mouth and organic referrals for years. Good for keeping costs low — not so good for predictable growth. When referrals slowed, they had no paid channel to fall back on.

The brief: build a scalable, trackable lead generation system on Meta that could deliver qualified enquiries at a sustainable cost — without a large upfront budget.

With no prior campaign data to learn from, we had to build from zero: new creative, new audiences, new tracking, new everything.

Rather than sending cold traffic to a website and hoping they fill out a contact form, we used Meta Instant Lead Forms — which pre-populate with the user's Facebook data and require just one tap to submit.

This dramatically reduces drop-off and means leads flow directly into a pipeline we can track in real time. The campaign ran continuously, with ongoing creative and audience refinements as data accumulated.

1. Instant Lead Form campaign setup — Chose Meta lead forms over website traffic to reduce friction and capture intent at the moment of interest — no landing page drop-off.
2. Audience research and targeting build — Built layered audiences from scratch — interest-based cold audiences, lookalikes from email lists, and retargeting pools as pixel data accumulated.
3. Creative testing and iteration — Multiple ad variations tested across copy and imagery. Winning creatives scaled, underperformers cut within the first 4 weeks.
4. Monthly optimisation and budget management — Continuous bid strategy adjustments, ad set budget reallocation toward top performers, and monthly reporting with clear next-step recommendations.

Every number below comes directly from the Meta Ads Manager campaign report — no rounding, no cherry-picking. Over 7 months (1 June – 31 December 2025) the campaign delivered 106 qualified leads at an average cost per lead of $36.10, against a total spend of $3,827 AUD (roughly $547/month).

The $36.10 cost per lead sits 44–70% below the typical Meta CPL for local services in Australia ($65–$120+). The campaign delivered 99,528 total impressions and reached 21,031 unique people, producing a predictable lead pipeline at a cost that works.