Facebook Ads vs Google Ads — which fits your trade?

The intent difference

Google Ads puts you in front of someone who typed their problem into a search box. A homeowner searching "roof leak repair near me" has the problem today, has a budget forming in their head, and is comparing two or three companies at most. You pay a premium per click for that intent, and for most trades it is worth paying.

Facebook works the other way around. Nobody opens the app looking for a contractor. Your ad interrupts them between family photos and videos, so its job is to plant an idea — the house could look better, the kitchen they have complained about for years could actually get done. That works, but the lead it produces sits earlier in the buying process. They are interested, not committed.

That single difference drives everything else in this comparison: cost per lead, close rate, how fast you have to follow up, and which trades each platform suits.

Lead quality and close rates, by trade

Urgent trades live on search. Roof repairs, burst pipes, dead AC units, electrical faults — when water is coming through the ceiling, nobody waits around to be inspired by something in their feed. If you run a roofing company, the searcher with the active leak is the best lead you will ever buy, and Google is where that lead exists. We break down how we approach this for roofers specifically, because storm-driven and repair-driven demand behaves differently from almost any other trade.

Project trades flip the logic. Exterior painting, kitchen and bath remodels, decks, concrete patios — this is visual work with flexible timing and a bigger ticket. A before-and-after photo set in a Facebook ad can restart a project the homeowner shelved three years ago. Painters tend to get real traction here because the work photographs well and the targeting can reach the right neighborhoods at the right income levels.

Expect the trade-off to run in both directions. Facebook leads generally cost less per lead and close at a lower rate, because you created the interest rather than caught it. Google leads cost more up front and close more often, because the buyer arrived with the problem already in hand. Neither number means much on its own — the metric that decides your budget is cost per sold job, and that depends on your average ticket and how well your team follows up.

When running both makes sense

If your budget only covers one platform, match it to your trade. A search-driven trade should fund Google first and treat Facebook as a later experiment. A visual, big-ticket trade can justify a serious Facebook test sooner. Most established contractors eventually run both, with search carrying the larger share of the budget.

The play that makes Facebook genuinely cheap is retargeting. Most people who click your Google ad will visit your site and leave without calling — that is normal, not a failure. A retargeting audience puts your reviews, project photos, and offer back in front of those same visitors for a fraction of what the original click cost. You already paid to earn their attention once, and retargeting keeps it. It is the first Facebook campaign we recommend for almost every contractor, because the audience pre-qualified itself through its own search behavior.

This pairing is baked into how we run Google Ads for contractors: search captures the demand, and retargeting recovers the visitors who were not ready on the first click.

How long before you judge each one

Give Google Ads 60 to 90 days before you call the verdict. The algorithm needs conversion volume to optimize toward your good leads, and the first month is mostly buying data. Judging the account at week three punishes it for doing its job. What you can check early: the search terms report, to see whether budget is going to real buyer searches or junk, and whether tracked calls are actually connecting.

Facebook runs on creative cycles rather than keyword data. A fair test means two or three distinct angles — before-and-after photos, a customer review ad, a seasonal offer — each given enough spend and time to produce a readable result. If three angles fail against sensible targeting, the platform may genuinely not fit your trade. If you only ran one ad, you tested the ad, not the platform.

On either platform, fix your tracking before you judge anything. If you cannot tie leads back to jobs sold, every budget decision you make is a guess wearing a spreadsheet.

Quick answers

What is the minimum monthly budget for each?

For Google Ads, our honest minimum is $50/day per service line — below that, the algorithm has no statistical signal to work with. The full math lives in our answer on what Google Ads cost for contractors. Facebook retargeting can start on a small fraction of that, because the audience is tiny and warm. Cold-audience Facebook prospecting needs enough budget to test multiple creatives for at least a month, and if you cannot fund a real test, retargeting alone is the better use of the money.

Facebook lead forms or landing pages?

In-app lead forms cost less per lead and produce more tire-kickers, because two taps require no commitment from the prospect. A landing page filters harder and sends fewer, better leads. Use lead forms when your follow-up is fast and automated, and use landing pages when your team cannot chase every form fill the same day.

Do Facebook leads actually answer the phone?

Less often than Google leads do, and that should not surprise you — they never asked to be called. Text first, call within minutes rather than hours, and treat the first reply as the start of a conversation instead of a quote request. Plenty of contractors run Facebook leads through the same follow-up routine as inbound calls, conclude the leads are fake, and quit the platform when the real problem was follow-up that never matched the lead's temperature.