Solved: Facebook Ads Erratic for Carpet Cleaning

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I had a look over the situation with your carpet cleaning ads, and honestly, don't feel too bad about it – what you're describing is a really common problem. A lot of businesses see a great first month on Facebook and then watch it all fall apart, leaving them scratching their heads. It's frustrating as hell.

The good news is that the issue is probably less about your creative being 'good' or 'bad' and more about the underlying proccess and strategy you're using. You've hit on a few things that are likely holding you back. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and a bit of guidance on how you can get things back on track and build a more stable, predictable way of getting bookings for your business. It's definately fixable.

We'll need to look at your campaign management process...

Alright, let's get straight to the biggest issue I can see from your description. It’s the copying and deleting of adsets. I know why you're doing it – it seems logical. One ad worked, it finished, so you start a new one based on the old one. But with how Meta's ad system works, this is probably the single biggest reason for your inconsistent results. You're essentially shooting yourself in the foot every month.

Every time you launch a new ad set, it enters what Meta calls the "learning phase". Think of the algorithm as a new employee you've just hired. On day one, it doesn't know anything. It doesn't know who your best customers are, what time of day they're most likely to click, or what kind of person actually fills out a lead form on your site. During the learning phase, it has to spend your money to figure all this out. It shows your ad to a wide range of people to gather data and learn who responds. This period is always more expensive and less stable. The goal is to get *out* of the learning phase as quickly as possible, so the algorithm has enough data to focus your budget on the people most likely to book a job with you.

By copying the adset, running it for a month, and then deleting it to start another, you're hiring a new employee every single month and firing them just as they're starting to get good at their job. You never let the algorithm finish its training. It goes through that inefficient, expensive learning phase, maybe finds a few good leads towards the end, and then *poof* – you reset the whole thing. The first month was likely a fluke; you got lucky and the algorithm stumbled upon a pocket of good potential customers early on. You can't build a reliable business on luck.

The correct approach is to build for the long term. You should have one campaign with one ad set that is always on. Let's call it your "Lead Generation" campaign. Inside this one ad set, you should test multiple different ads (creatives and copy). You let them all run. After a week or so, you'll see that one or two ads are performing better than the others. You simply turn off the ones that aren't working and introduce new ones to test against your current winner. The ad set itself keeps running, accumulating data, getting smarter, and getting more stable over time. You're not resetting the learning process; you're continuously feeding the machine new ideas while it gets better and better at finding you customers. This is how you get predictable results, not by starting from scratch all the time.

I'd say you need to question your ad platform choice...

The second, and arguably more fundemental, issue is platform choice. Using ChatGPT to set up Facebook ads is fine, but it can only answer the questions you ask it. It can't ask the most important question for you: is Facebook even the right place to be spending your money for carpet cleaning?

To understand this, you need to think about the difference between **Intent vs. Interruption**. This is a core concept in advertising that, once you get it, changes everything.

Facebook and Instagram are interruption-based platforms. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, "I'm going to log into Facebook to find a carpet cleaner today." They log in to see photos of their grandkids, watch funny videos, and catch up with friends. When your ad appears in their feed, you are *interrupting* them. You're trying to grab their attention away from what they actually came to do. To be successful here, you need an offer that is so compelling, so emotionally resonant, or such an incredible deal that it stops them in their tracks and makes them think about something they weren't planning to. This works well for things like fashion, gadgets, or hobbies—things people buy on impulse. Carpet cleaning is rarely an impulse buy.

Google, on the other hand, is an intent-based platform. People go to Google with a specific problem they want to solve *right now*. They type in "emergency carpet cleaner near me," "how to get red wine out of carpet," or "carpet cleaning prices [your town]". They are actively raising their hand and saying, "I have a need, and I am looking for a solution." They have *intent*. When your ad shows up at that exact moment, you aren't interrupting them; you are helping them. You're the perfect solution at the perfect time.

For a local service business like yours, this is a massive difference. The lead you get from Google is almost always going to be higher quality and more ready to buy than a lead from Facebook. The person from Google has a problem that needs solving today. The person from Facebook might just be clicking out of mild curiosity and might not need your services for another six months, if ever. This is likely why you're seeing leads that don't book. They weren't really in the market in the first place.

We see this across the board with service-based clients. We're running a campaign for an HVAC company, and their leads from Google cost around £50, but they close at a high rate because those people have a broken boiler and need it fixed immediately. Compare that to a home cleaning company we worked with where we could get leads on Facebook for just £5, because cleaning can be more of a lifestyle purchase. Your service falls somewhere in between, but it leans much more towards the 'needs-based' side of things. People dont usually get their carpets cleaned for fun; they do it because of a specific event (moving out, a party, a big spill). You want to be there when that event happens, and that place is Google.

I’m not saying you should abandon Facebook entirely. It can be a good place for retargeting (showing ads to people who have already visited your website) or for building general brand awareness with before-and-after videos. But for your main, cold lead generation engine? I would strongly reccomend you shift 80% of your focus and budget to Google Search Ads and Google Local Service Ads. It's a much better fit for your business model.

You probably should rethink your offer...

Okay, let's assume you've fixed the campaign structure and you're focusing on Google. The next piece of the puzzle is your offer. This is where most advertising fails. It's not the ad, it's not the targeting, it's the fact that what you're offering isn't compelling enough. People don't buy services; they buy solutions to their problems. They buy transformations.

Right now, you're probably advertising "Carpet Cleaning Services in [Your Town]". It's logical, but it's not exciting. It's a commodity. It puts you in direct competition with every other person doing the same thing, and the only thing to compete on is price. That's a race to the bottom.

To stand out, you need to stop selling the *service* and start selling the *outcome*. You need to understand the 'nightmare' your customer is facing. Their pain isn't just a "dirty carpet".

• For a tenant moving out, the nightmare is "losing my security deposit because of a stain the landlord finds."
• For a young family with a toddler, the nightmare is "my kid is crawling on a carpet full of germs and who knows what."
• For a pet owner, the nightmare is "my house smells of dog no matter what I do, and I'm embarrassed to have guests over."
• For someone hosting a big family Christmas, the nightmare is "my mother-in-law is going to judge my house."

See the difference? These are emotional, urgent problems. Your job is to create offers that directly solve these specific nightmares. You need to productise your service. Give it a name, a package, and a clear outcome. Instead of a generic service, you could offer:

-> The "Deposit Defender" End-of-Tenancy Clean: We guarantee to tackle the toughest stains, leaving your carpets looking landlord-approved. Includes a certificate of professional cleaning to show your letting agent.

-> The "Healthy Home" Deep Sanitisation Package: Perfect for families with kids and pets. Our eco-friendly, non-toxic process removes 99% of bacteria and allergens, so you can have peace of mind.

-> The "Pet Owner's Rescue" Deodorising Treatment: We don't just mask pet odours; we eliminate them at the source using specialist enzyme treatments, leaving your home smelling fresh and clean.

These offers are powerful because they're specific. A tenant searching for "end of tenancy carpet cleaning" who sees your "Deposit Defender" ad will feel like you understand their exact problem. They're far more likely to click on your ad and book with you than a competitor who just says "Carpet Cleaning from £40".

This thinking should then flow directly into your ad copy. A great framework for this is the **Before - After - Bridge** model.

Before: Describe their current pain. Paint a vivid picture of the problem they're experiencing.
"Staring at that coffee stain on the living room rug? Worried your landlord will use it as an excuse to keep your deposit?"

After: Describe the world after you've solved their problem. What is the ideal outcome they're dreaming of?
"Imagine handing back your keys with confidence, knowing the carpets are spotless. Picture that security deposit landing back in your bank account."

Bridge: Introduce your offer as the clear and simple way to get from the 'Before' state to the 'After' state.
"Our 'Deposit Defender' clean is designed for tenants. We tackle stains, remove odours, and provide a full receipt for your landlord. Get a free quote online in 60 seconds."

This kind of messaging is a world away from "Professional carpet cleaning, call for a quote." It connects with the customer on an emotional level and makes your service the obvious choice.

You'll need a bigger budget to get real data...

Now for the difficult conversation: your budget. I know you've said you're happy to increase the £5 per day budget if you start getting results, but I'm going to be brutally honest with you – at £5 per day, you're almost guaranteed *not* to get consistent results. It's a catch-22. The budget is too low to feed the algorithm enough data to learn effectively, which means the results stay poor, which means you don't feel confident increasing the budget. You have to break this cycle.

At £5 per day, if a single click on a competitive keyword on Google costs £2.50 (which is very possible), you only have enough budget for two clicks a day. If neither of those people fill out your form, you've learned nothing, and the algorithm has learned nothing. It's like trying to learn to cook by only being allowed to buy one ingredient per day. You'll never make a full meal.

To think about budget correctly, you need to stop thinking about the daily cost and start thinking about what a customer is actually worth to your business. This is where understanding your **Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)** is so important. How much profit does a typical customer generate for you, not just from their first job, but over the entire time they remain a customer?

A customer might get their carpets cleaned once a year. If an average job is £150 and they stay with you for 3 years, that single customer is worth £450 in revenue. If your profit margin is, say, 60%, that customer is worth £270 in pure profit to you. This is their LTV.

Once you know this number, you can make an informed decision about how much you can afford to spend to acquire a customer. This is your **Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)**. A healthy business model often aims for an LTV to CAC ratio of 3:1. This means for every £1 you spend on marketing to get a customer, you should get £3 back in lifetime profit. So, for a customer worth £270 in profit, you could afford to spend up to £90 to acquire them.

Suddenly, paying £20 or £30 for a high-quality lead from Google doesn't seem so expensive, does it? If you close 1 in 3 of those leads, your CAC would be £60-£90, which fits perfectly within our healthy 3:1 ratio. This is the maths that sucessful service businesses use to grow. They're not scared to spend money on advertising because they *know* their numbers.

To help you with this, I've built a simple interactive calculator below. Play around with the sliders to get a feel for what a customer is truly worth to your business. This will give you the confidence to invest properly in your advertising.

As for a starting point, I would recomend a minimum test budget of £20-£30 per day, run for at least a month. This gives you a monthly budget of £600-£900, which is enough to gather some meaningful data on Google Ads, find out which keywords are driving bookings, and start optimising properly.

You'll need a better campaign structure...

Finally, let's tie this all together into a structure you can actually use. Forget the simple, one-ad-set approach from Facebook for a moment. Google Ads works best when it's tightly organised around what people are searching for. A disorganised account is an inefficient account.

The best way to structure your account is to group keywords by intent into seperate ad groups, and group those ad groups into campaigns that share a common goal. This allows you to write hyper-relevant ads for each search. For example, someone searching for "emergency wine stain removal" should see a different ad to someone searching for "end of tenancy cleaning quotes". One needs immediate help, the other is planning ahead. A good structure lets you speak to both of them perfectly.

Here is a visual representation of a simple, effective Google Ads structure for a carpet cleaning business. This is a great starting point.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

I know this is a lot to take in, so I've summarised the main action points into a table for you. This is the step-by-step plan I would use to turn your advertising from a source of frustration into a reliable engine for growth.

Getting this right can be tricky, and it's easy to burn through a lot of cash with small mistakes in the setup. You've got a great service, but right now, the advertising strategy is holding you back. Having an expert take a look can often save you a lot of time, money, and headaches in the long run by making sure the foundations are solid from day one.

We live and breathe this stuff every day, and we've helped plenty of service-based businesses build predictable lead generation systems. If you'd like to chat through this in more detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can have a proper look at your specific setup and give you a tailored plan of action.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh