Solved: Facebook Lead Form Ads Getting Leads Outside Target Area

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I saw your query and it’s a really common problem, so don't feel like you're alone in this. It’s incredibly frustrating when you're paying for leads, especially for a local service, only to find they’re coming from miles outside your patch. It feels like you’re just throwing money down the drain. The good news is, there are definately ways to tackle this and tighten things up considerably. It usually comes down to a few different factors working together, and it's rarely just one single thing.

I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance based on what you've described. I've seen this exact issue with a number of service-based businesses we've worked with, and we've always managed to get it under control. It just takes a bit of a methodical approach.

We'll need to look at the root cause of the location issue...

First off, let's talk about Facebook's targeting itself. You've already done the right thing by switching to "People living in this location." That's the first and most obvious step, as the default "living in or recently in" setting is a nightmare for local businesses. It'll happily show your ad to someone who drove through your 30-mile radius on the M6 a week ago and now lives in Scotland. So, good job on catching that one.

However, even the "living in" setting isn't foolproof, and here's why. Facebook determines a person's location based on a mix of signals, and none of them are perfect. It looks at the location they've listed on their profile (which many people never update after moving), the location of their internet connection (their IP address), and their phone's GPS data if they're using the app on mobile. This creates a few problems:

• Outdated Profiles: Someone might have lived in your target city five years ago, moved 150 miles away, but never bothered to update their profile. To Facebook, they still "live" there.
• VPNs and Work Networks: People using a VPN can appear to be anywhere in the world. Similarly, someone might live 100 miles away but work for a company with a head office in your city, and their internet traffic might be routed through there. Facebook's system gets confused and might place them inside your radius.
• GPS Drift and Ambiguity: Mobile GPS can sometimes be inaccurate, placing someone a few miles from where they actually are. It’s not usually off by 100+ miles, but it contributes to the general messiness.

The biggest issue, though, is the algorithm's motivation. Your campaign objective is "Leads." You've told Facebook, "Find me the people most likely to fill out this form for the lowest possible cost." The algorithm doesn't really care if that person is a good customer for you; it only cares about hitting the objective you gave it. If it finds a pocket of users 100 miles away who are 'click-happy' and love filling out lead forms (these people exist!), and they're cheaper to show ads to than the more discerning people inside your actual service area, it will happily serve your ad to them to get you that cheap "lead". You're essentialy paying Facebook to find you people who are good at filling out forms, not people who are good customers. It's a subtle but massive distinction. The machine is doing what you asked, just not what you meant.

Realising this is the first step. You can't just trust the platform's location targeting to do all the heavy lifting. You have to build your own filters and qualification steps right into the campaign itself to protect your budget from being wasted on these irrelevant clicks.

I'd say you need to bulletproof your lead form...

This is probably the most powerful change you can make, and it's where you take back control from the algorithm. Your current question, "Do you live in the area?", is a good thought, but it's too easy to bypass. People on the internet have developed 'banner blindness' and will often just click "Yes" without properly reading the question, just to get to the next step. It’s a low-friction question, which means it’s a low-quality filter.

You need to add a bit more 'positive friction'. You want to make someone briefly pause and prove they are in your area. The best way to do this is with a required custom question.

Instead of a yes/no question, change it to a short-answer question that says something like:

"To confirm you're within our 30-mile service area, please enter your full postcode below."

Make this field mandatory. Suddenly, a person 100 miles away has to stop. They either lie and make up a postcode (unlikely), or they realise they're in the wrong place and abandon the form. And that is exactly what you want. Every person who drops off at this stage is saving you time, effort, and the mental energy of dealing with a useless lead. You are effectively pre-qualifying them before they ever hit your inbox.

Now, the immediate thought here is often, "But won't that increase my cost per lead?" Yes, it probably will. But that's the wrong metric to be obsessing over. You need to stop thinking about Cost Per Lead (CPL) and start thinking about Cost Per Qualified Lead (CPQL). Let's do some quick maths to illustrate why this is so important. Imagine this scenario for a local service, say a home cleaning company:

As you can see, even though your CPL doubled, your cost for a genuinely useful lead has been more than halved. You're getting fewer leads in total, but you're spending your money far more efficiently and your sales team (or you!) is spending time only on people who can actually become customers. This is how you scale a local service business with paid ads. I remember one client providing home cleaning services who, by making similar changes, went from a messy £20 CPL with loads of duds to a clean £5 CPL for genuinely local enquiries. It completely changed their business.

This brings us to the bigger picture of what a customer is actually worth to you. This is the Lifetime Value (LTV). Knowing this number tells you how much you can realisticaly afford to spend to acquire a customer (Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC). For instance:

LTV Calculation Example:

• Average revenue per customer per year: £1,000
• Gross Margin: 70% (£700 profit)
• Average customer lifetime: 3 years
• Lifetime Value (LTV): £2,100 (£700 * 3)

A healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to CAC ratio. So, with an LTV of £2,100, you could afford to spend up to £700 to acquire a single new customer. If you convert 1 in 4 of your qualified leads into a customer, that means you can afford to pay up to £175 per qualified lead. Suddenly that £21.74 CPQL from our example looks like an incredible bargain, doesn't it? This is the kind of maths that frees you from the tyranny of cheap, useless leads.

You probably should rethink your audience targeting beyond just location...

Right, so we've fixed the leak in the lead form. Now let's improve the water we're putting into the pipe in the first place. Just targeting a 30-mile radius is like shouting into a crowded stadium; you need to be more specific about who you're shouting at.

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't just "someone who lives near me." It's about their problems, their life stage, their needs. You need to define your customer by their pain. Who are they?

• Are they new homeowners who are likely to need lots of services (you can target people with a "Recently Moved" life event on Facebook)?
• Are they families with young children who might need specific services (you can target parents)?
• Are they affluent professionals in specific postcodes who are time-poor and value convenience over price?

Once you define this, you can layer these demographic and interest-based targeting options on top of your location targeting. For example, instead of just `[City + 30 miles]`, your targeting could become `[City + 30 miles] AND [Homeowners] AND [Interest: Home Improvement]`. This forces the algorithm to work harder to find a much more specific, and likely more valuable, person within your desired geography. This pre-qualifies them even before they see your ad.

This also extends to your ad creative and copy. Your ads themselves should scream "LOCAL!" The message has to be so specific that it repels people from outside the area.

• Headline: Don't just say "Expert Electrical Services." Say "Your Trusted Manchester Electrician." Use the name of the main city or region you serve right in the headline.
• Ad Copy: Mention local landmarks or specific areas you cover in the first line of your ad text. "Serving communities from Stockport to Bolton..." This immediately signals relevance to locals and irrelevance to outsiders.
• Imagery/Video: If possible, use photos or videos of your team, your vans, or a completed job with a recognisable local backdrop. A picture of your branded van parked on a street people recognise is far more powerful than a generic stock photo. It builds instant trust and confirms your locality.

By making your ad creative hyper-local, you're creating another manual filter. The person 100 miles away will just scroll past because the ad is clearly not for them, saving you the cost of their click. This is about building an offer and a message that your specific audience can't ignore, while being easily ignored by everyone else.

You'll need a solid process for what comes next...

Even with all these filters, the odd dodgy lead might slip through the cracks. What you do next is also part of an optimised system. You need a process for handling leads and feeding data back into the machine.

Firstly, for the leads that are clearly outside your area, have a quick and professional template response ready. Something simple like, "Hi [Name], thanks so much for your enquiry! Unfortunately, it looks like you're based outside of our service area, so we won't be able to help on this occasion. We wish you the best of luck with your project!" This is professional and closes the loop without wasting more of your time.

Secondly, and this is a more advanced tactic, you should be using that data to make your campaigns smarter. Keep a simple spreadsheet of all the out-of-area leads you get, including their names and email addresses from the form. Once you have a list of 100+ of these people, you can do something really powerful: you can upload this list to Facebook as a Custom Audience and then set that audience to be permanently excluded from all your future campaigns. You are literally telling Facebook, "These specific people are duds. Never show my ads to them again." Over time, this cleans up your targeting significantly.

Finally, don't just 'set and forget' your campaign. You should always be testing. Even for a local service.

• Test different audience layers. Does targeting Homeowners work better than targeting Recently Moved?
• Test different ad creatives. Does a picture of your van get a better CPQL than a picture of your team?
• Test different headlines. Does mentioning Manchester work better than mentioning Greater Manchester?

Structure your campaign with one audience per ad set, let them run for a week or until they've spent enough to get a fair number of leads, analyse the CPQL for each, and then turn off the losers and scale up the winners. This continuous process of optimisation is what seperates campaigns that just 'work' from campaigns that become a reliable engine for business growth.

I know that's a lot to take in, so I've detailed my main recommendations for you below in a more straightforward format. This is the main advice I have for you:

Getting this stuff right can be the difference between a campaign that burns money and one that drives real, predictable growth for your business. It takes time and a bit of expertise to implement and manage it all effectively, turning all these levers in the right way.

If you'd like a hand walking through your account and putting a proper strategy like this together, we offer a free initial consultation where we can do just that. We can take a look at your specific setup and give you a clear roadmap. No pressure at all, but the offer's there if you feel you could use an expert eye on it.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh