Let me be straight with you before we start.
I read the paid social press every morning. Over the last week, the Meta Ads section of my own briefing has come up empty more often than it’s come up full. Not because I stopped looking, but because Meta genuinely hasn’t shipped much that changes anything for a plumber or a kitchen company.
That’s the honest answer, and I’d rather tell you that than pad this out with a logo redesign and pretend it matters to your leads.
But there are five things worth knowing, and one of them is a ten-minute job that comes straight off your wasted spend. Start there.
1. Stop paying to advertise to people who already bought from you
This is the best thing on the list and it takes ten minutes.
Meta has added a new type of custom audience that can only ever be used to exclude people. Not target them. Exclude them, permanently.
Why that matters: until now, exclusion lists sat in the same place as targeting lists, which meant they could be picked up and used the wrong way round by accident. A guardrail that can’t be misused is worth having.
What to upload:
- Every past customer. They’ve had their driveway done. They don’t need to see the driveway ad for the next eighteen months.
- Your own staff and their families. You’d be amazed how much budget goes on the lads checking whether the ad’s live.
- Anyone who has asked not to be contacted.
If you’re spending £1,000 a month and even 5% of your impressions are going to people who will never book, that’s £600 a year on nothing.
Ten minutes per account. Do it this week.
2. If you’ve plugged an AI tool into Meta Ads, go and check what it’s allowed to do
A lot of businesses have connected some AI or automation tool to their Meta account over the last year. A reporting dashboard, a creative generator, a lead handler, something a mate recommended.
Jon Loomer flagged this month that it’s worth going back and checking exactly what permissions those connectors hold.
You’re looking for two things. What can it read, and what can it change. A tool that reads your performance data is one thing. A tool that can edit campaigns, move budget or export your customer list is another entirely.
Go to your Business Settings, look at connected apps and integrations, and remove anything you don’t recognise or no longer use. Same as clearing out old people’s account access, just less obvious.
3. Your job photos look grim because of the lighting, not your phone
The biggest reason most trades don’t post Reels isn’t a lack of ideas. It’s that editing on a phone is fiddly, so they give up halfway through.
Meta has added new tools to the beta tab of Edits, its free video editing app. There are folders for keeping drafts organised by job, speed curves, and adjustable layers on Android.
The one worth caring about is one-tap colour correction. It sorts exposure, contrast and tone automatically.
That fixes the exact thing that makes trades footage look amateur. A bathroom filmed under a bare bulb, a driveway shot in flat grey light, a loft conversion in near darkness. One tap and it looks watchable, and nobody has to learn anything.
Worth knowing: these features are off by default. You have to open the beta tab and switch them on.
Give it five minutes yourself before you recommend it to anyone.
4. Meta One perks: probably not worth it, but here’s what you get
Meta has added more to its paid subscription. For a business account the relevant bits are a bigger follow button on Reels, up to three location listings on a profile, and automatic invites to follow your page for anyone who interacts with a post.
The three location listings are genuinely useful if you cover distinct areas and want each one visible.
The auto-invites are the headline feature and there’s little evidence they actually work. Getting a follow request from a page because you accidentally liked a post isn’t the same as someone choosing to follow you, and it isn’t the same as someone ringing for a quote.
If you’re already paying for it, switch the location listings on. If you’re not, this isn’t the reason to start.
5. The new Custom attribution option: walk past it
A “Custom” option has appeared in the attribution dropdown in Meta Ads. If you’ve spotted it and wondered whether you’re missing something, you’re not.
It only works through API partners like Adobe, Northbeam, Rockerbox or Triple Whale. These are enterprise measurement platforms. If you’re a trade business running local lead gen, you don’t have one and you don’t need one.
Jon Loomer’s read is that most advertisers should not bother, and for this audience that’s an easy yes.
Leave it alone.
And one to keep half an eye on: Meta might be building a search engine
Developers have spotted Meta crawling websites at scale, and the second-hand reading from inside the company is that it wants its own web index so its AI isn’t leaning on Google’s.
Meta has said nothing publicly about this. So treat it as a rumour worth watching, not a job for this week.
But it’s an interesting thought. In a year or two, people might start looking for a local trade inside Facebook or Instagram rather than Google.
And if that happens, the businesses that get found will be the ones whose website plainly says what they do and where they do it. “Emergency plumber, Bristol and 15 miles.” Not “delivering excellence since 2003.”
Which is exactly the same advice as it’s always been. That bit never changes.
The one thing to do today
If you only take one thing from this: go and set up an exclusion-only audience.
Past customers, your own staff, anyone who has asked not to be contacted. Ten minutes, no cost, and it stops you paying to reach people who were never going to book.
Everything else here is worth knowing. That one is worth doing.
Unsure if your ads are driving leads at a simular cost to your competitors? Use this FREE Facebook Ads Cost Checker.
Want someone to look at where your Meta budget is actually going? Book a free 15-minute call and I’ll tell you straight whether it’s working or whether something needs fixing.
Kelly x