Facebook Ads for Electricians: Actionable Tips & Best Practices

What are the Benefits of Facebook Ads for Electricians?

Facebook ads are a great channel for gaining and retaining electrical leads due to their cost-effectiveness.

For better context, Facebook ad campaigns cost an average of $9.24 per thousand impressions, while a 30-second Super Bowl ad, which reached 115.10 million viewers in 2023, cost $5.6 million, around $48 per thousand viewers.

Other benefits of Facebook ads include:

Specific targeting

Typically, electrical businesses operate within a specific local service area. 

That’s because customers always prefer to hire service businesses close by since they’re likely to respond quickly to their complaints. Plus, customers usually have a relationship with the owners and employees.

Facebook ads let you target audiences in specific areas (and with specific interests). You can use demographics, location, previous internet and social media activity, etc.

That way, you can ensure a large percentage of people viewing your ads are quality leads who are more likely to need your electrician services. 

Pairing the ultra-targeting ability of Facebook ad campaigns with local search ads offers even more benefits.

This helps you show up on search engine result pages when searchers execute local-intent queries like “electrician near me” or “electrician in [name of location].”

And since these searchers stay within your local service area, they’re more likely to convert.

You can also increase the effectiveness of your local search ads with ServiceTitan’s Local Service Ads feature.

By partnering with Google, ServiceTitan can help you rank above competitors on local search result pages and allow customers to book straight from your local service ad.

Once they book, the job and customer contact information, such as their phone number, automatically appear in your ServiceTitan account.

This one-click booking experience makes it convenient for customers to schedule appointments, increasing conversions.

Additionally, you can monitor the progress of your local service ad campaign since it’s always included in your ServiceTitan marketing scorecard.

So, you can monitor your campaign’s performance and make iterative adjustments where necessary.

Adjustable budget

FB advertising can be as affordable or expensive as the contractor wishes. You can adjust your ad spend to align with your goals.

Let’s say your goal is to boost awareness of your electrical company. 

You can spend $9.24 to reach 1,000 potential clients (Cost Per Mile or CPM) or $5.49 for each lead generated (Cost Per Click or CPC) if your goal is to create appointments, website visits, or subscribers to your newsletter.

This helps prevent budget overruns and allows you to ensure you spend only on profitable campaigns.

Trackable results

Meta’s ad manager has in-depth analytics and metrics on the performance of any campaign running on Instagram or Facebook.

It shows how many clicks and views your ads got and how much you spent on your campaign or ad set, using four charts:

• Platform

This reveals the performance of your ad on Meta's different platforms—Instagram and Facebook— and ad placements—reels, Facebook streams, etc.

• Demographics

As the name implies, this chart shows the demographic distribution—age, sex, and gender—of people interacting with your ads. 

• Delivery

This chart shows the reach and impressions your Facebook ad will likely achieve alongside the amount you've spent.

Note: you can only access this chart in frequency and reach ad sets.

• Performance

This shows the overall performance of your campaign: the reach, impressions, clicks, and associated cost. 

You could also view the data for just a single day.

These charts collectively reveal your ad's performance, enabling you to monitor it, make adjustments, and use what you’ve learned to craft future campaigns.

Pro tip!

Measurement is not restricted to Facebook ad campaigns alone. It's also crucial for measuring campaigns on other channels, such as email marketing, to avoid wasting scarce resources.

That’s why ServiceTitan built the Field Service Marketing feature.

With it, electrical contractors and business owners can monitor the performance of all their marketing or advertising efforts, including Google Ads and PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns. This helps them create and adjust campaigns quickly.

You can use the built-in scorecard to see which campaigns generate the most revenue and prioritize those campaigns.

This is better than most marketing tools showing only the calls a campaign generates. Besides, only some calls translate into new business.

It gets even better:

You can see the areas where most of your customers are coming from. This reveals the locations where you can spend less and still get massive results.

Different Types of Facebook Ads to Consider

Facebook ad campaigns are of five types: image, video, carousel, instant experience, and collection ads. 

Each one has specifications, so let’s run through them below.

Simple Image ads

Facebook image ads allow you to use static visuals to sell your electrical work to Facebook users.

They have a range of specifications:

• Resolution: 1080 x 1080 pixels.

• File size: 30MB.

• File type: JPG or PNG.

To make them work, consider:

• Using high-resolution images.

• Making your visual designs more image-focused than text-focused. The less text used, the better.

• Showcasing before-and-after photos of a recent project you undertook for a customer.

Video ads

With video ads, you showcase your services using sound and motion.

It can be a single video or a slideshow of several clips.

The specifications include:

• Resolution: 1080 x 1080 pixels.

• File type: MP4, MOV, or GIF.

• Video duration: 1 second to 241 minutes.

• File size: 4GB.

You can increase its effectiveness by:

• Using storytelling to hook viewers.

• Keeping it short—15 seconds maximum.

• Sticking to one central theme or desired action.

Carousel ads

These involve a type of Facebook ad that allows you to use multiple images and videos simultaneously.

They’re great for showcasing your different electrical services, communicating your unique story, and giving more details about your company.

Facebook’s acceptable specifications for carousel ads include:

• Resolution: 1080 × 1080 pixels.

• Video file size: 4GB.

• Image file size: 30MB.

• File types: JPG or PNG for images, and MP4, MOV, or GIF for videos.

• Card number: 2-10.

Increasing its effectiveness is down to a few strategies:

• Use high-resolution images and videos.

• Stick to short text descriptions and headlines.

Instant experience

These are ads that allow you to deliver a full-screen interactive experience for ad viewers.

Once they come into the feed of a Facebook user, they start loading. They immediately switch to full-screen view when the user clicks on them.

Their supported specifications include:

• Image and video types: JPG or PNG for images. MP4 or MOV for videos.

• Number of images supported: 20 images.

• Size: 1080 × 1920 pixels.

For better results, you can

• Leave out video captions.

• Direct users on what to do to get a better view. It could be little things like swiping to the next image or video or tilting their screens for a better view.

Collection ads

These ads usually have one video or photo ad as a cover and three images below, highlighting your electrical services. And once a potential customer clicks either of them, an instant experience landing page automatically pops up.

To be accepted, a collection ad must adhere to the following specifications:

• Resolution: a minimum of 1080 × 1080 pixels.

• Image and video type: JPG or PNG (images) and MP4, MOV, and GIF (videos).

• File sizes: 30MB (images) and 4GB (videos).

As with other ad formats, there are little things you can do to increase its effectiveness:

• Use attention-grabbing photos or video thumbnails.

• Include a URL parameter to keep track of its performance.

Different Types of Facebook Ad Budgets

Earlier, we mentioned Facebook ads' adjustable budget is a significant benefit of using Facebook ad campaigns for lead generation. Below, we'll explore the different Facebook ad budgets.

But before we begin, it's essential to differentiate between a campaign and an ad set.

A campaign is a collection of ad sets sharing the same or similar goal.

Here's an example:

Let’s say you want to increase brand awareness using a Facebook campaign. You could create an awareness campaign containing three ad sets.

One could be targeting people who have interacted with your Facebook page. Another one could target people who have visited your electrical website. And the last one could be for customers who last hired you a long time ago.

Now that's out of the way, let's explore the different types of budgets.

Campaign budgets

These budgets dictate the amount allocated to all ad sets of a particular ad campaign. If you choose this, Facebook automatically distributes your budget across the various ad sets per their performance.

Ad set budgets

In this case, you stipulate the amount that goes to each ad set.

It's mostly used when the objective of each ad set differs. Or when there's a significant disparity between the audience sizes of each ad set.

Daily budgets

Daily budgets place a soft cap on the amount Facebook can spend daily on an ad set or campaign.

It's perfect if you'd like to achieve the same result for each ad set.

Lifetime budgets

This covers the amount you wish to spend the entire time the campaign is in circulation.

Unlike daily budgets, lifetime budgets are a hard cap. This means Facebook can alter the amount spent daily but can always stay within it.

For example, if your lifetime budget is $500, Facebook can spend $100 on day one and $200 on days two and three, but not a penny more.

Facebook Ad Campaign Objectives to Choose From

A campaign objective is an outcome your electrician business hopes to achieve with a Facebook ad campaign.

Facebook supports six types of campaign objectives. They include:

Source: Facebook

• Awareness: Choosing this objective serves your ad to the most people possible, so your brand remains top of mind until they're ready to book an appointment.

• Traffic: This drives traffic to you. It’s perfect if your current electrical business goal is driving traffic to your digital storefronts—social media page, website, application, etc.

• Engagement: This objective finds people fitting your client profile and nudges them to engage with your ad or Facebook page.

• Leads: You can use this objective to generate calls or job bookings for your business.

• App promotion: This objective nudges mobile users to download your app or perform an action in it.

• Sales: This is primarily for finding people who are likely to book an appointment with you.

You can read this article by Meta to learn more about choosing the perfect objective for your Facebook ad campaign.

Facebook Advertising Tips & Best Practices for Electricians

Like every marketing strategy, Facebook ad campaigns can fail or succeed.

Here are some tips to tilt your Facebook ad campaign toward success.

Invest in local awareness ads

Most electrical businesses like yours operate locally.

Thus, it’s a great idea to leverage Facebook’s local awareness ads to target potential customers within a predefined area that overlaps your service area.

This helps attract high-intent leads and increase your brand awareness.

However, always remember to exclude people traveling through or visiting your service area.

If you have multiple locations, also run separate local awareness ads for each. This way, you can tailor the ads’ content to reach only prospects close to each branch's physical location.

Leverage look-alike audiences

Look-alike audiences consist of people who share similarities with your current customers.

They're usually created from a source audience—lists of people who have engaged with you in the past by doing things like:

• Watching a video ad.

• Visiting your website.

• Actively engaging with your email newsletter.

Leveraging look-alike audiences increases the likelihood of your campaign succeeding since your target audience bears similarities with your current clientele.

It's also a great way to reach people similar to your current customers who need to be made aware of your brand's existence.

You must first install Meta’s Pixel on your website or application to use this targeting. Or gather the data of your current customers from your CRM, email marketing software, or any place their data resides. 

Wherever it comes from, that data represents your custom or source audience.

Once that's done, go to "Audiences" in your Facebook ad manager account, navigate to "Create an audience," choose “Look-alike audience,” and select the source of your custom audience.

Facebook will then automatically generate your look-alike audience within 7-24 hours.

Pro tip!

You could create multiple look-alike audiences, use them to run multiple campaigns and select the one with the best performance.

This ensures you spend only on look-alike audiences closest to your ideal customer.

Harness the power of remarketing

Who's more likely to book an electrical job?

Is it someone who visited your website or a person who does not know your company?

It's definitely the person who visited your website, right?

Well, that's the idea behind Facebook's remarketing.

The feature allows you to target only people who have interacted with you.

For example, you could create an ad campaign targeting people who recently filled out a free quote form on your website, visited your contact page, and so on.

This ensures your ad gets in front of a ready-to-buy audience since visiting high-intent sections on your website shows they need help with an electric issue.

When setting up a remarketing campaign, always exclude people who have already converted. The last thing they'd like to see is an ad for a service they're already signed up to. 

Use compelling visuals

The best-performing advertisements never look like advertisements. This prevents people from putting up mental walls to block out the message.

That same theory applies to Facebook ads.

For your ad campaign to be effective, your ad must blend in with other organic posts. And since Facebook is a visual social media platform, visuals are necessary.

Use images that can capture the attention of anyone scrolling through and convince them to take action.

You could use images showcasing the electrical work you did for a previous client. Or images showing your employees busy at work.

For videos, ensure the thumbnails are eye-catching. This is crucial, especially for video ads not set to play automatically.

Optimize your bidding

There are many electrical businesses like yours running their own Facebook ad campaigns. 

Facebook knows they can’t serve all these ads simultaneously because it creates a lousy user experience, which may chase people away from the platform.

So, Facebook created an auction system that selects the ads they serve using various factors.

Chief among them is the amount the companies are willing to pay for the ad placement (your bid).

Optimizing and choosing the right bidding strategy can give you a better chance of winning this bidding war. It also ensures you don't overpay for your campaign or reach only a small portion of your target audience.

The various bidding strategies include:

• Highest volume.

• Highest value.

• Cost-per-result goal.

• Return on ad spend (ROAS).

• Bid cap.

You can consult these two articles from Facebook and Wordstream to learn more about the different bid strategies.

However, since your focus for running Facebook ad campaigns is mainly to generate electrical leads, using the highest volume or cost-per-result bidding strategies is advisable.

This reduces your ad spend while giving you the best result achievable with your budget.

Don’t forget about Meta Pixel

Earlier, we mentioned a key element when discussing remarketing to custom audiences and building look-alike audiences: Meta Pixel.

A Meta Pixel is a short HTML code snippet you can install on your digital platforms for tracking conversions, building and remarketing to custom audiences and monitoring the browsing behavior of website visitors.

You can generate it from your Business Manager account and install it manually or set it up from your Meta Events Manager.

After setting up your Meta Pixel, always ensure it works properly. You can use Meta’s Test Events tool to do so.

Additionally, considering recent changes in privacy laws, pair your Meta Pixel with Facebook's Conversion API. Conversion API collects data directly from your server, which is more reliable than using data from cookies and browsers.

Experiment with videos

Approximately 68% of small business owners agree that Facebook video ads are more effective than ads with static content. That’s because they drive more clicks and engagement from viewers.

This is understandable since people watch over 100 million hours of video—more than any content type—on Facebook daily. Plus, the average click-through rate (CTR) for videos on small pages—5k followers or less— is 29%.

Hence, you should explore the use of video ads.

You can use them to showcase a recent job you did for a client or feature a video testimonial from a satisfied customer.

In either case, it’s advisable to keep it short even though you can use videos with lengths of up to 241 minutes. Why?

Well, it allows you to grab the attention of mobile users and feature in different ad placements, which increases your ad’s reach.

Additionally, always use subtitles since 94% of Facebook video viewers watch without sound.

Note: Facebook only accepts video ads that adhere to their specifications. You can check them out in the earlier section, where we covered the types of Facebook ads.

Match your FB ad with the right landing page

If your electrical business ad aims to generate new customers, getting viewers to click on your ad is only half the battle. 

You only win if they take action. And that depends mainly on your landing page.

The copy on the landing page is supposed to demonstrate your understanding of the customer’s pain points and promise to solve them.

To do that, stick to one theme or offer. 

For example, suppose your promise is a 20% discount for repeat customers. In that case, your landing page copy should highlight the benefits of being a repeat customer and why visitors should book your service again and send referrals.

Additionally, give your copy more conversion power with relevant images, videos, and customer testimonials. 

But any testimonial you use should be from a customer similar to those you’re targeting. 

That means you’re to collect testimonials from a business owner if commercial clients are the target. Or from homeowners if you want residential customers.

Pay attention to the ad copy

Visuals—images and videos—grab the attention of potential customers scrolling through their Facebook feed. But the text does the grunt work of finally convincing the user to take the following action.

Your copy should align with the visuals you use, your objective, and the audience you're targeting.

Additionally, use simple words to make it easier for readers to understand your message, even if they’re scrolling quickly through their feeds.

The copy should answer these questions:

• What are you offering for the problem they're facing?

• Why should they choose you?

• What should they do next?

Pro tip: Getting the copy right on the first try usually takes a lot of work. Don’t be afraid to workshop your Facebook ad copy and choose the best iteration.

Examples of Electrician Facebook Ads to Inspire You

Now that we’ve covered strategies for ensuring your Facebook ad campaign is effective, let’s show you how to implement it using examples from our customers.

Example 1: Any Hour Services – Electric, Plumbing, Heating & Air

Imagine you’ve been paying so much for electricians to replace your light switch, and you see this ad. Will you be convinced to click?

Yes, right?

The thumbnail will be the first thing that catches your eye. And the visual of someone replacing a faulty switch tells you that this ad was created by someone who has tried the process themselves, lending credibility to the ad.

Since the ad is primarily educational, Any Hour Services may not make an electrical sale immediately. But it boosts their brand awareness.

Finally, the copy is concise and ends with a catchy phrase—now let there be light—that can continue reverberating in the reader's mind after they’ve scrolled past the ad. This increases ad recall.

Example 2: AC Electric

A common pain point for most customers, primarily due to the recent electricity price hikes, is skyrocketing energy bills. So, AC Electric uses this as a focal point for its Facebook ad campaign. 

This increases the likelihood of a customer clicking on the ad and converting.

And it doesn’t stop there.

As we stated earlier, the landing page is meant to nudge the customer to take action and respond to the ad's message. AC Electric’s ad campaign does this well.

Clicking on the ad leads to a landing page with copy optimized to resonate and fulfill the promise in the ad. The header section rechoes the offer straightaway, so anyone coming from the ad is not confused.

The rest of the page lists the several benefits of the offer, how it works, and reasons why the offer is perfect for the customer. Plus, the website design is optimized for scanners—short paragraphs and sentences interrupted with catchy visuals and headlines.

AC Electric can increase conversion rates by addressing potential objections and making it easy for potential customers to request a free quote via clear CTAs (calls to action).

Example 3: Mel Carr Electric

Facebook ad campaigns are not only a tool for generating leads. You can also use them to build your online presence by driving traffic to your website. And Mel Carr does so with this ad.

But instead of just writing a copy saying “click here,” they give a brief description that resonates with viewers' emotions concerned about their electrical system's health. 

It also helps that the ad was created at the same time when Americans were seeing a lot of lightning caused by hurricanes.

You can do the same thing.

Simply create an article solving a current pain point of your target audience and run Facebook ads linking to it. This will drive traffic to your website, helping to boost organic ranking and position your brand as a credible expert.

Tip: You can consult this list of 21 electrical marketing slogans to create a viral advertising campaign. 

Now Over to You

Facebook ad campaigns are a key part of electrician marketing strategies alongside search engine optimization, email marketing, and other advertising activities.

Implementing the strategies we discussed will help increase the chances of your ad campaign succeeding.

Using electrical software like ServiceTitan will help you track, adjust, and create other marketing campaigns to supplement your efforts on Facebook.

Tools like ServiceTitan are vital to attracting new talent.

Chris Crew, president of The Blue Collar Success Group, a well-respected group of business coaches, technician trainers, and marketing experts who work to guide the in-home service industry, said this in a recent webinar:

“When there’s little-to-no technology, it’s a turnoff for [potential employees],” Crew explains. “They’re looking for someone who’s ‘with the times.’ If you want to tap into the newer generation, you’re going to need some technology.” 

ServiceTitan is a comprehensive tool built specially for tradespeople, to help them optimize, monitor, and streamline their operations. Currently, there are over 10,000 tradespeople, including electrical contractors, using it to manage their work.