Solved: Instagram Leads Convert Better Than Facebook?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I'd be happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience. Your situation with Facebook and Instagram leads is a really common one I see, but the answer isn't as simple as just ditching one platform for the other. In fact, that's probably the last thing you should do.

The real issue here isn't about Instagram vs Facebook. It's about the instructions you're giving the advertising platform and the way you're measuring success. Let's break it down.

We'll need to look at what 'better' actually means...

You said your Instagram leads "seem to convert much more" despite being more expensive, while Facebook leads "ask a million questions and don’t end up booking". This is a classic case of making decisions based on gut feeling rather than cold, hard data. The most succesful advertisers are ruthless with data, they don't guess.

The first thing you have to do is stop thinking about the cost per message. It's a vanity metric. A cheap lead that doesn't buy anything is infinitely more expensive than a 'costly' lead that becomes a repeat customer. The real question isn't "How low can I get my cost per message?" but "How much can I afford to spend to acquire a customer who's actually going to pay me?"

This is where we need to figure out your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). You charge $200 for a service. How many times does a happy customer come back in a year? Once? Twice? Let's be conservative and say a good customer comes back twice a year. That's $400 in revenue. How long do they stay a customer? Maybe two years on average? Now that single customer is worth $800 to your business, not $200.

Let's do some proper maths on this. This is how we work out what you can actually afford to pay for a lead.

A Quick LTV Calculation for Your Business

Let's make some assumptions. We'll use pounds here but the principle is the same for dollars.

-> Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): Let's say a customer gets two details a year at £160 ($200) each. That's £320 per year, or about £27 per month.

-> Gross Margin %: After your cleaning products, petrol, and other direct costs, let's say your profit margin is 70%. That's pretty reasonable for a service business.

-> Monthly Churn Rate: This is the percentage of customers you lose each month. For service businesses, it can be high. Let's guess you lose about 8% of your customers a month (which means a customer sticks around for about a year).

Here's the calculation:

LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

LTV = (£27 * 0.70) / 0.08

LTV = £18.90 / 0.08 = £236.25

So, over their 'lifetime', a single customer is worth about £236 in pure profit to you. A healthy business model aims for at least a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £78 (£236 / 3) to acquire a single new paying customer and still run a very profitable operation.

Suddenly, a £10 message lead from Instagram that converts into a £78 paying customer looks like an absolute bargain, doesn't it? And a £2 message lead from Facebook that just wastes your time looks incredibly expensive. You need to be tracking not just the messages, but which messages from which platform actually turn into a booking. Without that, you're flying blind.

You probably should rethink your campaign objective...

This is the most critical point. You said, "My service cost is $200 so I don’t run conversion campaigns." Tbh, this thinking is what's holding you back and likely causing the very problem you're describing.

Let me be brutally honest: you are paying Facebook to find you time-wasters.

When you set up a campaign with the "Messages" objective, you give Meta's algorithm one simple command: "Find me the cheapest people inside my audience who are most likely to send a message." The algorithm does exactly what you ask. It finds people who are bored, people who love to chat, people who fire off messages to dozens of businesses without any intention of ever buying. Their attention is cheap because they don't convert, so other advertisers aren't bidding for them.

You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your business.

When you run a Conversion campaign, you give the algorithm a completely different, much better command: "Find me people inside my audience who behave like others who have previously taken a valuable action."

You don't need a fancy website checkout to do this. You can set up a custom conversion event. For example, when a message lead turns into a confirmed booking, you could manually trigger an event or direct them to a simple "Thank you for booking" page on a basic website. By optimising for that 'Booking Confirmed' conversion, you're telling Meta: "Ignore the time-wasters. Go and find me more people who look and act just like the ones who actually give me money."

The platform will then go and find people who are less likely to just send a message, but far more likely to become a paying customer. Yes, your cost per message will go up. But your cost per booking will plummet. This is the single biggest change you need to make. Your $200 service price is completely irrelevant to the campaign objective you should be choosing. The goal is bookings, so you must optimise for bookings (or a proxy for it, like a qualified lead).

I'd say you need to pre-qualify your audience better...

The "million questions" problem from Facebook users is a symptom of poor targeting. You're reaching a very broad, low-intent audience. You need to stop thinking about your customer as a demographic ("men, aged 25-55, near me") and start thinking about their nightmare.

A person doesn't just want a "clean car." They have a specific, urgent problem they need to solve. Your job is to find them by targeting that problem.

Who are your best customers? Let's build a few Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) based on their pain point:

1. The Status Seeker / Enthusiast:
-> Their Nightmare: Swirl marks on their black paint, seeing a rival's car looking better at a car meet, feeling their pride and joy isn't protected from the elements. They don't want a "clean," they want "perfection."
-> How to Target Them: Forget broad "cars" interests. Target specific magazines (Evo, Top Gear), YouTube channels (Carfection, Harry's Garage), car shows (Goodwood Festival of Speed), luxury car brands (Porsche, BMW M, Audi RS), and even high-end detailing product brands (Autoglym, Meguiar's, Chemical Guys).

2. The Reseller:
-> Their Nightmare: Getting a low-ball offer for their car on Autotrader because it looks tired and worn. They know a good detail can add hundreds to the price. It's a pure ROI decision for them.
-> How to Target Them: Target interests like Autotrader, PistonHeads, WeBuyAnyCar.com. You can even use Meta's behavioural targeting to find people who are "likely to move" soon, as a car change often accompanies a house move.

3. The Family Protector:
-> Their Nightmare: The embarrassment of giving a colleague a lift in a car filled with crushed crisps and sticky juice stains. The feeling that their expensive family car looks like a rubbish bin on wheels.
-> How to Target Them: This is broader, but you can target parents of young children, people interested in family-focused car brands (Volvo, Skoda, Land Rover Discovery), or family holiday destinations. The ad copy is key here.

By building seperate ad sets for these specific ICPs, you're pre-qualifying the audience before they even see your ad. An enthusiast is less likely to ask a million questions about price because they already understand the value. A reseller is focused on the return, not just the cost.

You'll need a message they can't ignore...

Once you know who you're talking to and what their specific pain is, your ads need to speak directly to it. Generic "Car Detailing Services" ads get generic, low-quality responses. You need to use a framework like Problem-Agitate-Solve.

Here are a few ad copy examples you could test for these different audiences. Notice how they call out the nightmare directly.

Ad Copy Sample for 'The Enthusiast':

Headline: That Showroom Finish Is Hiding Underneath.
Body: Are swirl marks and fine scratches ruining the look of your paintwork? Don't just wash your car, restore it. Our multi-stage paint correction and ceramic coating packages are designed for enthusiasts who demand perfection. Protect your investment and get that deep, wet-look gloss back. Tap 'Send Message' for our packages.

Ad Copy Sample for 'The Reseller':

Headline: Add £££s To Your Car's Sale Price.
Body: Selling your car soon? A professional valet is one of the best ROIs you can make. We remove the signs of daily life and restore that 'new car' feel that buyers love. Most of our clients see a significant increase in their final sale price. Before you list it, message us for a quote.

Ad Copy Sample for 'The Family Protector':

Headline: Get Your Family Car Back.
Body: From school runs to road trips, the family car takes a beating. Feeling embarrassed by the sticky seats and biscuit crumbs? Let us handle the deep clean. Our interior detailing package removes stains, eliminates odours, and makes your car feel fresh and hygienic again. Message us for our family-friendly packages.

This kind of targeted messaging instantly filters out the people you don't want. Someone who isn't an enthusiast won't care about swirl marks. Someone not selling their car won't be moved by resale value. You attract the right people and repel the wrong ones, all with your ad copy.

This is the main advice I have for you:

As you can see, this goes a lot deeper than just picking Instagram over Facebook. It's about building a predictable, scalable system for acquiring profitable customers. You need to shift your mindset from "getting cheap messages" to "investing to acquire valuable customers".

Getting this structure right—the tracking, the campaign objective, the audience targeting, and the creative—is what separates businesses that struggle with ads from those that grow consistently because of them. I've worked with many service businesses, including an HVAC company that saw great results once we dialed in their lead quality, and a home cleaning company where we got their cost per booking down to just £5 by implementing this kind of strategic approach.

This is a lot to take in, I know. It's the difference between just 'boosting posts' and running a professional advertising operation. If you'd like to go through this in more detail and have a look at how we could apply this directly to your ads account, we offer a free, no-obligation initial strategy session where we can do just that.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh