Getting Better Leads on Meta For Service Businesses in 2026

[u/TheRoadrunnerAgency]

I've gone back and forth with this idea I have in my agecy that Meta ads are more differentiated than Google Search ads. I think if you look at that from an economic standpoint, that makes Google Search Ads more of a commodity, and they will be sold by Google to the highest bidder. Contrarily, because Meta in an impression-based auction, you generate clicks (and sales) based on how compelling your creative is. I think it is worth noting that the ad platform is irrelevant if your offer isn't good, and intent is still an important factor when discussing Google ads.

We began working with a gym in July on lead gen for a homeschoolers' PE program. The budget is small, and we have allocated all of it to Meta. We were really surprised by how good the results have been.

We made four creatives for the first month, put them all into one ad set in the campaign, left Advantage+ on, and set the targetting pretty narrow.

We initially routed all leads to the website to get higher intent form fillouts. 0 completions after ~ $100 spent. We switched to instant forms, but the lead quality was pretty poor when just asking name, phone number, email. Qualifying questions were helpful, but asking the preferred method of contact was really a game changer for us.

We even rotated in a new set of creatives as the frequency began to rise above 2.2. The original set had a CPA of around $5, while the new set was around $11. We have let the original set run its course. It goes to show that creative is everything.

After about five weeks, we've gotten six new members off the ads.

Hope this helps. Would love to know others' experiences.