There is one rule, and it settles the argument before the argument starts: is your customer already looking for you, or do you have to make them want you? If a homeowner is typing "emergency plumber near me" at 11pm, that demand already exists and Google captures it. If a homeowner has an ugly 1987 kitchen they have never once searched about, that demand does not exist yet and Facebook creates it. Everything below — costs, tables, budget math — is detail hanging off that one question.
The rule, and why we are the wrong people to be telling you this
Fair warning: this article is published by a company that sells Facebook advertising. Assume we are biased, then read the honest version anyway — for a lot of trades, the correct answer is "Google first, and it is not close." If you run an emergency-response business, most of what you read about Facebook ads is written by people who want your money. Including us.
The two platforms are not competitors doing the same job at different prices. They do opposite jobs.
- Google Ads captures demand. Someone already decided they need a service and is searching for a provider. You are buying a place in line — and competing with everyone else in that line, which is why the clicks cost what they cost.
- Facebook Ads creates demand. Nobody opens Instagram looking for a roofer. You are interrupting someone with an offer they were not seeking, hoping it lands on a want they already half-had.
So the question is never "which platform is better." It is "does my customer already know they need me?"
The demand test, applied trade by trade
Run your service through this table. The middle column is the whole decision.
| Business / job | Already searching? | Start here | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emergency plumbing (burst pipe, no hot water) | Yes — urgently | Water is on the floor. They search and call whoever answers. | |
| HVAC repair (AC down in July) | Yes | Broken now, searched now. Same shape as the plumbing emergency. | |
| HVAC replacement / maintenance plans | No | Nobody searches "should I replace my 18-year-old furnace." You plant that thought in October. | |
| Roofing — storm damage | Yes, for about 72 hours | Google, Facebook right behind | Search spikes after hail, then dies. Facebook radius targeting on the hit ZIP codes reaches the majority who never searched. |
| Roofing — full replacement (aging roof) | No | A 22-year-old roof is not an emergency until it is. A free-inspection offer creates the want. | |
| Kitchen remodeling | Vaguely, for months | Before-and-after photos beat any keyword. The trigger is emotional, not urgent. | |
| Real estate | No | Nobody googles "should I sell my house." Housing falls under Meta's Special Ad Category, so age, gender and tight radius targeting are off the table. | |
| Dental implants | Yes | Someone missing teeth searches for the fix. Use Facebook to nurture the consult. | |
| Gyms | Partly | "Gym near me" exists but volume is thin outside January. Facebook manufactures that impulse in mid-December. | |
| Restaurants | Yes | Neither — Google Business Profile | The ticket is too small to buy a first visit profitably on either platform. |
| Landscaping — mow and blow | Yes, every spring | People search "lawn care near me" the week the grass turns. Capture it. | |
| Landscaping — design/build, patios, hardscape | No | A $15,000 patio is a want you build with photography, not a search someone runs. | |
| Med spa (Botox, laser, body) | Partly | Aesthetic desire is created in the feed. Google works but costs $8-25 a click. |
Notice the pattern: most trades appear in both camps depending on the job, not the business. The same plumber is a Google business for burst pipes and a Facebook business for repipes. See Facebook ads for plumbers and Facebook ads for roofers.
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What a click actually costs on each platform
Here is where the comparison gets lopsided — and where most owners draw the wrong conclusion.
| What you are buying | Typical US cost | What that money gets you |
|---|---|---|
| Google: "emergency plumber near me" | $15-45 per click | A person with a flooded basement and a phone in their hand |
| Google: "HVAC repair near me" | $10-30 per click | A homeowner sweating in a 90-degree house |
| Google: "roof replacement [city]" | $12-35 per click | Someone actively collecting quotes |
| Google: "dental implants near me" | $15-40 per click | A patient who already accepted they need the procedure |
| Google: "personal injury lawyer" | $50-200+ per click | The most expensive real estate on the internet |
| Facebook: local services feed click | $0.50-$3.00 per click | Someone who stopped scrolling. That is all. |
| Facebook: 1,000 impressions (CPM) | $8-25 | A thousand people who were not thinking about you |
A Google click can cost 30 times a Facebook click. The reflex is to call Google a rip-off. It is not. You are not buying clicks, you are buying booked jobs — and intent converts.
Run the arithmetic for a roofer. On Google at $25 a click, roughly 1 in 10 clicks becomes a call — $250 per lead. Close 1 in 3, normal for someone who searched for you, and a booked roof cost $750. On a $12,000 replacement, that is a fine trade.
Same roofer on Facebook: $1.50 a click, about 1 in 12 clicks fills out a lead form — $18 to $60 per lead. But those leads are cold, and a realistic close rate is 1 in 8 to 1 in 12, so a booked roof costs $150 to $700. Cheaper on paper, far more work to collect, because it takes five times the phone calls. Both channels work; they spend different currencies. Google spends dollars, Facebook spends your follow-up time. More in how much Facebook ads actually cost.
The exception that flips everything: law firms. At $50-200 a click, a $500 Google budget buys 3 to 10 clicks a month. That is not a campaign, it is a rounding error. For a small firm, Facebook is not the compromise — it is the only affordable option.
"I have $500 a month. Where does it go?"
This is the question owners actually ask, so here is the direct answer.
| Your business | Where the $500 goes | What it realistically buys per month |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency plumbing, HVAC repair, auto repair, locksmith | 100% Google | ~25 clicks, 2-3 jobs. Thin, but real revenue. |
| Roofing, remodeling, hardscape, HVAC replacement | 100% Facebook | $16/day, roughly 8-25 leads at $20-60 each. One $9,000 roof pays for 18 months. |
| Real estate | 100% Facebook | 15-30 seller-valuation or listing leads. Google is priced for brokerages, not agents. |
| Dental implants, cosmetic dentistry | 100% Google | 15-30 clicks, 1-3 consults. One $4,000 implant case clears it. |
| Gyms, personal training | 100% Facebook, 3-5 mile radius | 20-40 trial leads at $12-25. People do not drive far to a gym. |
| Med spa | 100% Facebook | 10-25 consult requests at $20-50. |
| Small law firm | 100% Facebook | Google buys 3-10 clicks at this budget. Not a real option. |
| Restaurants | $0 — fix the free stuff first | See the next section. |
Now the part nobody wants to hear: splitting $500 across both platforms means failing at both. At $250 on Google you buy about 10 clicks a month — never enough data to know whether it worked or you got unlucky. At $250 on Facebook you are running $8 a day, and Meta's algorithm wants roughly 50 conversions a week per ad set to optimize. You will sit in the learning phase forever. Two half-budgets produce two dead campaigns and an owner who concludes "online ads don't work." Pick one, fund it 60 to 90 days, then judge. More on that in our guide to setting a Facebook ads budget.
The free thing you have to do first
If you are running Facebook ads and have not claimed your Google Business Profile, you are skipping the highest-ROI channel you own to pay for the third-highest. Fix that today.
It costs $0 and about 45 minutes. The profile is what puts you in the map pack — the three-business box that sits above the paid results on a phone screen. Every "plumber near me" search in your ZIP is showing someone that box right now: you, or your competitor.
What to actually do, in order:
- Claim and verify the listing. Correct hours, correct phone, service area set to where you actually drive.
- Add 20+ real photos. Your trucks, your crew, finished jobs. Not stock images — people can tell.
- Get reviews, relentlessly. Ask every customer. Going from 8 reviews at 4.1 stars to 40 at 4.7 moves your call volume more than your first $500 of ad spend.
- Post services individually. "Water heater installation" as its own service beats one blob that says "plumbing."
Only then should you argue about Facebook vs Google. We rank every channel a local owner has in how to get more customers for a local business.
When you need both, and in what order
Most established businesses eventually run both. The order is not a preference, it is a sequence:
- Week 1: Google Business Profile. Free. Non-negotiable. Never "finished" — keep asking for reviews forever.
- Months 1-3: one paid channel, the one your demand type points to. Minimum $400-500 a month. Do not touch it for the first 7 days — editing an ad resets Meta's learning phase and you start over.
- Month 4+, at $1,200/month or more: add the second. The trigger is not the calendar. It is channel one producing consistently while you still have capacity to fill.
One thing is worth doing out of order. If you already run Google Ads and get a few hundred site visitors a month, Facebook retargeting is the cheapest inventory in the stack: $3-8 CPM to reach people who already visited. Someone who searched, clicked, and left is warm. It needs the pixel and real traffic, so it is a step two, not a step one.
And if Facebook is your channel, the Instagram question answers itself — same Ads Manager, one campaign, both placements. We cover the split in Instagram ads vs Facebook ads.
When neither one is right
Ads amplify whatever is already there. If nothing is there, ads amplify nothing — expensively. Do not spend a dollar on either platform if any of this is true:
- You have no capacity. Booked six weeks out? Ads generate people you disappoint, and disappointed people leave one-star reviews that cost more than the ads earned. Raise your prices instead — free, and immediate.
- You cannot follow up fast. Speed-to-lead is the whole game: widely cited response studies put the drop-off between contacting a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes at roughly 20x in qualification odds. If nobody can call back within the hour, you are buying leads for your competitor.
- Your offer is broken. If you close 1 in 20 quotes and your competitor closes 1 in 4, ads help you lose money 20 times faster. A multiplier on a bad number is a worse number.
- The math cannot close. Gross profit of $150 a job, a $60 cost per lead and a 20% close rate means $300 to acquire a $150 customer. That is not a campaign problem, it is a business-model problem.
That last one is why restaurants keep landing in this section. A $28 ticket with no guaranteed second visit cannot carry a $15 cost per lead. Fix the profile, fix the photos, and put the ad money into making Tuesday regulars out of Saturday customers.
If Facebook is your answer, the setup is the hard part
Say the demand test landed you on Facebook — remodeling, roofing, real estate, gyms, med spa. The strategy took four minutes. Meta Ads Manager takes considerably longer: Business Manager, ad accounts, pixels, objectives, ad sets, audiences, and twenty settings that do not matter surrounding the five that do. Most owners quit in there, or hit the blue "Boost" button, which optimizes for likes rather than phone calls.
Leadria exists for that gap. You describe your business in a sentence — "roofing contractor in Tulsa, full replacements and storm damage" — and the AI writes the ad copy, generates the visual, sets the Meta targeting, and publishes the ad to Facebook and Instagram. Leads come back with a phone number attached. 7-day free trial, no credit card.
If the demand test pointed you at Google, go do that instead. We would rather be the honest article you bookmarked than the $500 you regret. When planned work is what you need, come back — the full playbook is in the complete Facebook ads guide for small business.