A plumber asked me this last month, and he asked it the way most owners do: half hoping I'd say yes, half braced for a sales pitch. Do Facebook ads still work for local business, or is it money you light on fire while a 24-year-old in a hoodie sends you a "performance report"? The honest answer is yes, they work, but not for everything, and not the way Google does. Facebook is good at a specific set of jobs. Used for the wrong one, it'll disappoint you fast.
So this isn't a yes-or-no question. It's a "for what" question. Let's get into where the channel earns its keep and where you're better off spending somewhere else.
What Facebook is actually good at
Most owners compare the two as if they're the same product. They aren't. When someone types "emergency plumber Ogden" into Google, they already have a problem and they're looking to hire today. You're catching demand that already exists. Facebook doesn't work like that. Nobody opens Instagram thinking "I'd love to see a roofing ad right now." You're interrupting them.
That sounds like a knock, but it's the whole point. Facebook is a demand-generation channel. It's where you reach people before they're searching, plant your name, and stay in front of them until the day they do need you. That's a real job, and for a lot of local businesses it's a job nothing else does as cheaply.
The platform also knows a frightening amount about who it's showing your ad to. You can put an offer in front of homeowners in three zip codes around your shop, people who recently moved, people who follow your competitors, or a "lookalike" built from your own best customers. For Facebook and Instagram advertising, that targeting is the part worth paying for.
Where Google beats it for local
I'm not going to pretend Facebook wins every matchup, because it doesn't. For high-intent, "I need it now" work, Google is simply better, and it's not close.
Think about how an emergency actually goes. The water heater bursts at 6am. Nobody scrolls Facebook hoping a plumber's ad floats by. They grab their phone and search. Whoever shows up at the top, in the map pack, or in the Local Service Ads slot gets the call. That's demand capture, and it's where a Google Ads campaign or LSA earns its money. We manage one account where paid search pulled 1,740 conversions at a 13.46% conversion rate, and that kind of efficiency comes from meeting people at the exact moment they're ready to buy.
So if your business lives on urgent jobs, plumbing, locksmith, water damage, towing, electrical faults, Google should get your first dollar. Facebook can support it, but leading with social for emergency trades is fighting the way people actually behave.
Facebook creates demand, Google captures it. The trick is putting each channel on the job it's built for.
Retargeting is the easy win
If you do only one thing on Facebook, do this. Most people who land on your website leave without calling. They got distracted, they were comparison shopping, the kid started crying. They're gone, and they were interested.
Retargeting puts your ad back in front of those exact people while they scroll later that night. It's cheap because the audience is tiny and already warm, and it tends to convert better than anything else you'll run on the platform. You're not introducing yourself. You're reminding someone who was already on the fence. For a local business with steady website traffic, a simple retargeting campaign is close to free money sitting on the table.
It only works if you've got the tracking pixel installed and your site is actually pulling visitors in the first place, which loops back to having a website that loads fast and converts. Retargeting an empty room does nothing.
The jobs where Facebook quietly shines
Beyond retargeting, a few situations let Facebook earn a real spot in the plan rather than a backup role.
Promotions are the obvious one. A spring tune-up special, a grand opening, a slow February you want to fill, those are all reasons to interrupt someone's feed with a timed offer. Google can't really do that, because nobody's searching for a deal they didn't know existed.
Then there's visual work that people mull over. If what you do photographs well and the decision takes a while, think remodels, landscaping, a med spa, a new roof, a strong before-and-after stops the scroll and starts a conversation. One of our clients in a visual trade built up to 3.41 million impressions and 64,800 clicks over six months across their channels, and social did a lot of the early lifting, getting the brand in front of people who weren't searching yet.
Don't underrate plain awareness, either. When your name has floated past someone a dozen times, you're the one they recognize when they finally do search, which makes both your Google ad and your organic listing work harder. The channels feed each other.
Why some businesses swear it doesn't work
Plenty of owners have tried Facebook and come away burned, and usually it traces back to one of a few mistakes rather than the platform being broken.
The most common is running lead-gen ads for an emergency service. If you sell "call us right now" work, interrupting a feed is the wrong moment, and you'll pay for clicks from people who forgot they clicked. Wrong channel for the job.
Weak creative is the other big one. On Google, the search does half the selling because the person already wants the thing. On Facebook, the creative is the campaign. A boring stock photo and "Quality service, call today" gets scrolled past in a quarter second. The targeting can be perfect and it won't matter if the ad itself doesn't stop the thumb.
The last trap is judging Facebook by Google's scoreboard. People expect every click to call within the hour, and when it doesn't, they call the whole thing a waste. Facebook usually plants a seed that pays off later. Measure it like demand generation, assisted conversions, branded searches that climb, retargeting that closes, not like a same-day lead machine, and the picture looks a lot different.
When Facebook ads are worth it
So, do Facebook ads still work for local business? Yes, for the right jobs. They're worth running when you want to build awareness in your area, retarget the people who already visited your site, push a promotion, or sell visual work that people mull over before they buy. They're the wrong tool when your bread and butter is the 2am emergency, where Google search and Local Service Ads will out-earn them every time.
The smartest local setups we run don't pick one. Google catches the people ready to buy now, Facebook keeps you in front of everyone who will be ready later, and the two reinforce each other. If you're in Salt Lake City or Ogden and you're not sure whether your first dollar belongs on social or search, grab a free audit and we'll look at your trade, your market, and your numbers, then tell you honestly where it should go, even if the honest answer is "not Facebook, at least not yet."