Paid ads can absolutely work for contractors, but they work best as an accelerator on top of a solid foundation, not as a replacement for one. Sending ad traffic to a weak website with no clear next step is one of the fastest ways to waste a budget.

Google Ads tends to work well for contractors because it captures people who are already actively searching — “emergency plumber Salem Oregon,” for example. That’s high-intent traffic. The keys to making it work:

• Target specific, buyer-intent search terms rather than broad ones like “contractor”
• Send traffic to a page built around that exact service, not your generic homepage
• Track which keywords are actually producing calls and booked jobs, not just clicks

Facebook Ads work differently — they’re better for building awareness and staying visible to people in your service area who aren’t actively searching yet, but might need a contractor soon. Video-based ads featuring real job sites tend to outperform static image ads by a wide margin for trades.

A few things that quietly sink contractor ad campaigns:

• No clear call-to-action or an unclear next step for the person clicking
• Sending every ad to the homepage instead of a page matching the specific service
• No tracking in place to see which ads actually turned into jobs
• Turning ads off after a slow week instead of giving the algorithm time to optimize

Ads can absolutely generate leads fast — but they’re one piece of a bigger system. EJ Studios manages Meta advertising as part of a full contractor marketing strategy, so ad spend is backed by a site and follow-up process built to actually convert, instead of leaking budget into clicks that never turn into jobs.