Facebook ads are the most powerful tool for rapidly growing your lawn care business. Whether you want a steady flow of new leads, better customers, or denser (and more profitable) routes, Facebook ads deliver the best bang for your buck. 

But if you’ve never used them before, it can be challenging to know where to start. 

• What should your ads look like?

• How do you target the right people? 

• How do you guarantee you’ll make a profit?

In this post, we will give you a marketer’s guide to setting up your first *successful* Facebook and Instagram campaign. We’ll cover the basics of creating an ad campaign, monitoring and analyzing ad performance, and give you a few secrets to ensure you maximize your profits—and grow faster than ever before.

Benefits: how will Facebook Ads grow your lawn care business?

Precise Targeting of Potential Customers

With its vast user data, Facebook gives you the tools to target extremely specific audiences. As a lawn care business, you can specify demographics such as gender, age, and location (down to the exact neighborhood!), but Facebook also offers lifestyle-based targeting options, including interests, recent purchases, education and job history, income, political affiliation, major life events, and spoken languages—so you can target your most ideal clients. 

Experience Powerful Results

Once you have a handle on Facebook Ads Manager, setting up ads is a breeze, and results come quickly. According to a 2020 survey of US retailers, 41% see the best return on advertising spend from Facebook Ads. This is HUGE compared to the average conversion rate across all industries, which stands at just 9.21%. And it gets even better: since Lawn Care is a locally-driven industry, you have a great chance of capturing even better results if you target only your local market.

Get Instant Access to a Million (or More) Local Leads

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, also owns Instagram, making it easy for businesses to advertise on both platforms simultaneously. By advertising on Facebook and Instagram, you can reach an unprecedented number of social media users. You’d be amazed how many of your ideal clients are on Facebook every single day.

Real-Time Tracking of Ad Performance

Meta provides great resources for understanding ad performance, including metrics for reach, engagement, conversions, and more. This data is updated in real-time, allowing you to adjust your campaigns based on performance. Additionally, you can add the Facebook pixel to your website, enabling you to track user behavior and create specific target audiences for future Facebook advertising campaigns. 

How to set up a Facebook Ads campaign (step by step)

Before you start advertising on Facebook, think about what kind of growth you want for your lawn care business. Set a goal before launching your ads:

• Do you need fresh leads?

• Do you want more clients immediately?

• Do you want to grow your client base in a specific area?

This will help you create a much more focused (and more powerful) Facebook Ad campaign. For instance, if your goal is to increase the number of service requests through Facebook Ads, your success metric could be 25 new service requests in the first month. If you want to generate more leads, success could be measured by a larger email list. The key is to have a clear understanding of your objectives before creating your ad campaign.

Step 1: Set Up Facebook Ads Manager

1. Create a Facebook Business Manager account (if needed): If you don't have a Facebook Business Manager account, you'll need to create one. This will allow you to manage your Facebook page, ad account, and other assets in one place.

2. Add your payment information: Before you can create an ad campaign, you'll need to add payment information to your Facebook Ads Manager account. You can do this by clicking on the "Billing" tab and following the prompts to add a payment method.

Once you've completed these steps, you're ready to create your first Facebook Ad campaign.

Step 2: Go to Facebook Ads Manager

Facebook Ads Manager is where all of Facebook's ads are created and managed. You can access it on a desktop or laptop computer.

To get started with Ads Manager, you can use this direct link. If you manage multiple ad accounts, you can choose the right account from the account drop-down menu.

Another way to access Ads Manager is through your business page. Click on the "Ad Center" drop-down arrow on the left sidebar of any Facebook page, then select "All Ads" and click "Ads Manager" at the bottom of the page.

Once you're on the Facebook Ad Accounts page, you can choose the account where you want to run ads.

Step 3: Choose Your Campaign’s Objective

To get started with your first ad, click the green ‘Create Ad’ button. Facebook will take you to a page where you will be prompted to choose a campaign objective. 

You have many different ways of approaching an ad campaign based on what you wish to achieve. These ways fall within three categories of benefits: 

Awareness 

This category consists of objectives that generate interest in your product or service. Mostly, this will increase traffic to your website. We recommend you ignore this objective for your first campaign. =

Consideration

Similar to awareness, this objective won’t result in a ton of direct sales—at least, not at first. You might want to choose this category if you want people to start thinking about your business or looking for more information about it, so it can be great for acquiring new leads that you can nurture into clients. This can be a great option for your first campaign.

Direct Conversion 

As a lawn care owner, this is what will drive the most direct business to your company. 

The objectives in this category are designed to get people to purchase or use your product or service. You may opt to: 

• Increase engagements on your website 

• Get people to claim an offer (like a lawn mowing discount)

• Direct new leads and existing clients to your sales pages 

Once you’ve selected your marketing objective, you’ll be asked to name your campaign. Make sure to make your campaign name something recognizable to everyone working on the ads. 

Step 4: Set Your Budget

You have two choices when it comes to how your ad spend will run:

Daily: If you set a daily budget, you choose the most you want to spend each day. Facebook will use the information you provide to show your ad to the right people at the right time. When your daily budget is used up, the ads will stop running for the day. They will start running again the next day.

Lifetime: If you choose a lifetime budget, you decide the most money you want to spend for the entire time your ad campaign runs. You choose an end date, and Facebook will spend the money based on how well your ad is doing. When your lifetime budget is used up, your campaign will end.

For your first campaign, we recommend you spend an average of $10 - $25 per day. This will give Meta’s algorithms enough space to figure out how to reach your future clients, without breaking your bank. 

When your ads start to work—and you want more leads and clients—you can always update your budget.

Recommended reading: How much should you spend on Marketing? Your Marketing Budget Guide

Step 5: Target only your ideal clients

This is the most powerful part of Facebook’s ads, particularly for Lawn Care and Landscaping owners: 

You get to choose exactly who sees your ad, so you don’t waste any money sending ads to the wrong people! 

For example, let's say you want to advertise your lawn care services to people who live in your town, who live in a specific neighborhood and are between the ages of 40 and 65. You can tell Facebook to only show your ad to people who fit those criteria. This will help make sure that the people who see your ad are more likely to be interested in your services. You can even choose people who have already shown interest in your business, a powerful strategy called retargeting ads.

You can also choose to exclude people who have already liked your page or used your services before. This will help make sure you're reaching new people who haven't seen your ad before.

Facebook will give you an estimate of how many people your ad could reach based on the criteria you choose. This can help you decide if you want to adjust your targeting to reach more or fewer people.

Step 6: Set your ad placements to “automatic”

Ad placement is where your ad will appear for people to see. Depending on what you want to achieve, you can choose to show your ad on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or the Audience Network.

We strongly suggest you use automatic placements for your chosen objective, which lets Facebook will choose the best place to show your ad at the lowest possible cost.

But if you want to choose the specific places where your ad appears, you can pick from a variety of options. You can show your ad in people's feeds, stories and reels, in-stream, search, messages, in-article, or on external apps and websites.

If you want more information, you can read Facebook's guide to ad placement.

Step 7: Create your Facebook ad!

One last step: it’s time to finally create your Facebook ad. You have two major choices

Use an Existing Post

If you choose to use an existing post, select the "Use Existing Post" option and pick the post you want to use.

If you have a post that is doing unusually good, we recommend this option. If, however, you don’t frequently post to Facebook, you should create a new ad.

Create a New Ad

Go with this option if you want to test out a new idea, or if you want to start from scratch. We also have a quick guide to creating a great Facebook ad here. Lightspeed Social specializes in creating higher, better-performing ads that actually generate new business for your lawn company. Feel free to talk to us if you need help from our expert team of marketers. 

What kind of ad should you create?

Facebook has eight formats to choose from, and it will try to suggest the best one for you.

If you have a great sales video for your services, we recommend you start with video ads. 

Otherwise, grab a few images of your best work, and create either a photo ad or a carousel ad (which is simply a series of photos).

Step 8: Publish your campaign!

To put your ad out there, click the ‘Publish’ button at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. After you submit your ad, Facebook will check it to make sure it meets their rules and standards. This process usually takes about a day, sometimes a little longer. When your ad is approved, you'll get an email from Facebook, and your ad will be live for people to see.

Do You Have a Winning Facebook Ads Strategy?

Creating a campaign is only the first step. 

Now that you know how to make a Facebook ad, it’s time to experiment and see what works best for your lawn care business. If you’re not sure what your audience wants, Facebook has tools to test different ads and find out what works best. Don’t be afraid to get creative and try new things, and always keep an eye on how your ads are performing, so you can make changes if needed.

Need help? Talk to us! Lightspeed Social is a marketing agency that specializes in helping lawn care and landscaping owners massively increase their profit and build a truly impressive business. Schedule a strategy session with us today!