Solved: Best Ad Platforms, Budgets, and Service Pricing

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. Regarding your enquiry about advertising for your detailing business, I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience running these sorts of campaigns. It's a common set of questions, and frankly, most local service businesses get the answers completely wrong and end up wasting a lot of money. The approach is often backwards, focusing on the wrong platforms at the wrong time.

I'll walk you through how I'd approach this, what to expect in terms of costs, and where you should really be putting your budget first. Let's get into it.

We'll need to look at where your customers actually are...

Right, let's tackle the biggest and most common mistake first: the platform choice. You asked about IG, FB, and Google. Most businesses in your position immediately think of putting pretty pictures of shiny cars on Instagram and Facebook. It seems logical, right? It's visual, you can show off your work. But it's almost always the wrong place to start, and here's why.

You have to think about intent. When does someone decide they need their car detailed? It's not usually a casual scroll through social media that sparks the idea. It's when their car is a mess, or they've got a special event, or they just spilled a full cup of coffee on the passenger seat. At that moment, what do they do? They don't open Instagram. They open Google and type in "car detailer near me" or "emergency car cleaning".

This is the fundemental difference between the platforms. Google captures demand. Facebook and Instagram are for creating demand. You are a service business solving an immediate or near-immediate problem. You don't need to convince someone they need a clean car; you just need to be the one they find when they've already decided they need one. Trying to create demand on social media is like shouting into a crowded room hoping someone who might need their car cleaned in the next six months happens to hear you. It's inefficient and expensive.

I've seen so many businesses fall into the trap of running "Reach" or "Brand Awareness" campaigns on Meta. Here's a harsh truth about that: when you select that objective, you are giving the algorithm a very specific instruction: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price." The algorithm, being very good at its job, goes out and finds all the users within your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and definately least likely to ever buy anything. Why? Because their attention is cheap. No one else is bidding for them. You are actively paying to advertise to the worst possible audience. For a local service business, this is like setting a pile of cash on fire.

The best brand awareness you can get is a happy customer. And you get happy customers by being the solution when they have a problem. That starts on Google.

I'd say you need a realistic view on costs and returns...

Okay, so let's talk numbers. You asked about monthly spend and how many appointments you can generate. This is the "how long is a piece of string" question, but we can make some pretty solid estimations based on experience with other local service businesses.

First, you don't measure success by how much you spend; you measure it by your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). But to get there, we need to figure out your Cost Per Lead (CPL). A "lead" is someone who has shown interest by calling you or filling out a form on your website. For services, this is the key metric.

The cost can vary wildly. I remember one campaign we worked on for an HVAC company in a very competitive US market, and they were seeing costs around $60 per lead. That sounds high, but their average job is worth thousands, so it's incredibly profitable for them. On the other end of the spectrum, one of our best consumer services campaigns was for a home cleaning company in the UK, and we got their cost down to just £5 per lead. For car detailing, you'll likely fall somewhere in between. Based on some research, you're probably looking at a range of £15-£45 per lead depending on how competitive your local area is.

So, how much should you spend? I usually recommend a starting budget of at least £1,000-£2,000 per month. Why? Because you need to give the platform enough data to learn and optimise. If you only spend £10 a day, you might only get one click, and it can take weeks to get a single lead. With a bigger budget, you can get data faster, see what's working, and make adjustments. The formula is simple: (Number of leads you want per month) x (Estimated cost per lead) = Your ideal ad spend.

But that's just the CPL. Not every lead will turn into a booking. You need to know your closing rate. If you're good on the phone and your pricing is fair, you might close 1 in 3 leads (a 33% close rate). So your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) – the actual cost for a paying customer – would be 3x your CPL. If your CPL is £30, your CPA is £90.

This is where your average ticket size becomes critical. If your average service is £300, and it costs you £90 to get that customer, you're doing very well. If your average service is only £100, that £90 CPA is a problem. The numbers have to make sense. This is the single most important part of paid advertising, and it has nothing to do with ads – it's about knowing your business maths. Before you spend a single penny, you need to know what a customer is actually worth to you.

To make this more concrete, I've built a little calculator for you. Play around with the sliders to see how changes in ad spend and your average ticket size can impact your potential monthly revenue.

You probably should focus on Google Ads first...

So, we've established that Google is the place to start. What does that actually look like in practice? You have two main options: Google Search Ads and Google Local Service Ads (LSAs).

Local Service Ads are the ones you see at the very top of the search results with a "Google Guaranteed" badge. These are brilliant for trades and local services. You don't pay per click; you pay per lead (a phone call or message). It's a much more direct model. You have to go through a verification process with Google, but it's well worth it as that badge provides a huge amount of trust for potential customers.

Standard Search Ads appear just below the LSAs and Maps results. Here, you bid on keywords and pay every time someone clicks on your ad. This gives you more control over your ad copy, the landing page you send people to, and the specific keywords you want to target. For a new business, I'd probably start with LSAs if you can get approved, and then layer in a standard Search campaign to capture any remaining traffic.

For your search campaign, keyword selection is everything. You want to target people with high commercial intent. Avoid broad, informational keywords. You want people who are ready to buy. Your initial list should look something like this:

• -> "car detailing [your city]"
• -> "mobile car valet near me"
• -> "best car detailer in [your area]"
• -> "interior car cleaning service"
• -> "ceramic coating [your city]"
• -> "emergency car valet"

Notice how specific these are. We're not bidding on "how to clean car seats". That person is looking for a DIY solution, not to hire you. By focusing on these 'money' keywords, you ensure the traffic you pay for is much more likely to convert into a paying customer.

A couple of practical tips for setting this up: First, make sure you enable call extensions. This puts your phone number directly in the ad, so people searching on their mobile can just tap to call you. This is huge for service businesses. Second, use ad scheduling. If you're a one-man band and can't answer the phone while you're working on a car, schedule your ads to only run during hours when you can actually take calls or respond to enquiries promptly. There is nothing worse than paying for a lead and then missing the call. It's just wasted money.

You'll need a website that actually converts...

This is a point that gets overlooked far too often. You can have the best ads in the world, targeting the perfect audience, but if you send them to a website that's slow, confusing, or untrustworthy, you will get zero bookings. Your website is your virtual shopfront and your 24/7 salesperson. If it looks unprofessional, people will assume your work is too.

I haven't seen your website, but from looking at hundreds of local service sites, I can guess some of the likely problems. The most common issues are:

• No Clear Call to Action (CTA): What is the one thing you want a visitor to do? Is it to call you? Fill out a quote form? Book online? This should be painfully obvious on every single page. Big, bold buttons saying "Get a Free Quote" or "Call Us Now" are essential. Don't make people hunt for your contact details.
• Lack of Trust Signals: People are handing over the keys to one of their most expensive possessions. They need to trust you. Your website must build that trust instantly. This means having high-quality photos of your work (before and after shots are brilliant), testimonials and reviews from real customers (with photos if possible), and clear information about who you are. An "About Us" page with a photo of you and your story can make a massive difference.
• Poor Mobile Experience: The vast majority of people searching for local services are doing it on their phones. If your website is a nightmare to use on a mobile device – text is too small, buttons are hard to press, it loads slowly – they will just leave and click on your competitor's ad instead.
• Confusing Service Information: Don't just list "Full Detail - £250". Break it down. What does that include? Show them the value they are getting for their money. Use checklists, icons, and clear, simple language. Avoid jargon.

Fixing these issues is your first priority. It should come before you even think about ad spend. Why? Because improving your website's conversion rate is the cheapest and most effective way to lower your cost per booking. Think about it: if you can get your website to convert 10% of visitors instead of 5%, you have just halved your cost per customer without spending a single extra penny on ads. It's the biggest lever you can pull.

You could then experiment with Meta Ads...

So, does this mean you should never use Facebook and Instagram? Not at all. They can be incredibly powerful, but they should be used strategically as part of a larger system, not as your starting point. The best use for Meta ads for a detailing business is retargeting.

What is retargeting? It's the process of showing ads specifically to people who have already visited your website. Think about it: someone searched on Google, found your site, had a look around, but for whatever reason, they didn't book. Maybe their phone rang, maybe they wanted to think about it. They are a warm lead. They know who you are and they've already shown interest. These are the perfect people to advertise to on social media.

You can set up a campaign on Facebook and Instagram to show ads only to people who have visited your website in the last 30 or 60 days (but who haven't booked). This is where your beautiful photos and videos of shiny cars come into play. You can show them a carousel of your best before-and-after shots. You can run a short video of you talking through your process. You could even offer a small discount, like "Still thinking about it? Get 10% off your first detail".

This is a much smarter use of your budget. Instead of shouting at strangers (cold traffic), you're having a quiet conversation with people who are already familiar with you (warm traffic). The conversion rates from these campaigns are always much higher, and the cost per booking is much lower. It's about building a system: Google brings in the initial interest, and Meta helps to close the deal with those who are on the fence. It's the one-two punch that really works for local services.

This is what we call a full-funnel approach. You have your "Top of Funnel" (ToFu) which, for you, is Google Search. Then you have your "Middle of Funnel" (MoFu) and "Bottom of Funnel" (BoFu) which is your website and your retargeting campaigns. Each part has a specific job to do, and they all work together to turn a stranger into a customer.

This is the main advice I have for you:

That was a lot of information, I know. It's easy to get overwhelmed. But paid advertising isn't really that complicated when you break it down into a logical sequence of steps. It's just that most people try to do step 5 before they've even thought about step 1. To make it easier, I've put my main recommendations into a simple action plan for you below. This is the order in which you should tackle things to give yourself the best chance of success and avoid wasting your hard-earned money.

As you can see, there's a clear process to follow. Getting all these pieces right – from the website conversion to the keyword selection to the ad setup and tracking – requires a fair bit of expertise. It's not just about pushing a few buttons in the ads manager. Small mistakes in the setup can end up costing you thousands in wasted ad spend and lost opportunities.

This is where working with an expert can make a huge difference. We've run campaigns for dozens of service businesses and we know what works and what doesn't. We can help you avoid the common pitfalls and build a system that reliably generates new customers for your business, allowing you to focus on what you do best: making cars look amazing.

If you'd like to chat further and get a more personalised plan, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can have a look at your specific situation and give you some more tailored advice on how to get started.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh