Facebook and Instagram ads for air duct cleaning: the creative that works, offers, budgets and retargeting
What to film, what to offer and what to spend on Meta ads for a duct and dryer vent cleaning company, plus the retargeting setup that turns a scroll into a booked job.
Nobody opens Instagram looking for a duct cleaner. That is the first thing to accept about Meta ads in this trade, and it is also why they work. The homeowner is not comparing you to four other companies in a search result. They are watching a 20-second clip of what came out of a return vent in a house built the same year as theirs, and they are thinking about their kid's allergies. You are the only company in the room.
Meta leads in this category run $10 to $35, well under Google. They are also softer. The person did not search for you, so the follow-up has to be fast and the offer has to be specific. This guide covers what to film, what to say, what to spend and how to catch the people who watched but did not click.
The creative that stops the scroll
Phone video beats designed graphics in this trade every time. You have the most visual before-and-after in home services and most of your competitors are running stock photos of a family on a couch. Film these on the next five jobs:
- The borescope or phone-light shot down a supply trunk before, then after. Ten seconds each. No music needed.
- The debris on the drop cloth or in the canister at the end, with a tech saying how many years the homeowner said it had been.
- A dryer vent pull: the lint clump coming out of the exterior hood. This is the single best-performing clip in the category because the fire risk is visceral and the fix is cheap.
- The truck-mounted vacuum running, hose into the trunk line, 15 seconds. This is proof you are not the coupon company.
- A 30-second owner-to-camera clip: "Here is what a real duct cleaning includes and here is what it costs."
Caption the price range on the video itself. "Whole house, 1 system: $350 to $450" on screen filters out the $49 shoppers before they ever click.
Offers that work and the one that does not
The $49 special does not work for you even on Meta, because the people it attracts have been trained to expect a bait-and-switch and will say so in your comments.
Offers that hold up:
- A dryer vent cleaning at a flat price, such as $129, as the first job in the home. Clear, small, no upsell pressure in the ad.
- Whole-house cleaning with a stated range and "the price we quote is the price you pay."
- A pre-season furnace and duct cleaning bundle in September and October.
- A post-renovation cleaning aimed at people in your area who just finished a remodel (target by interest in home renovation and new homeowners).
- A spring allergy package that includes register sanitizing.
Put the real price in the ad. Meta rewards engagement, and nothing in this trade gets engagement like an honest number next to a photo of what came out of a duct.
Targeting and the lead form
Target homeowners in your service towns, ages 30 to 65. Layer interests lightly: home improvement, new homeowners, pets, allergy-related pages. Do not over-target. Meta's delivery does more work than the interest list.
Use an instant lead form with three questions: home age, when the ducts were last cleaned (never, 1 to 3 years, 3 or more), and the best time to reach them. The home age question is not for you; it makes the homeowner think about their ducts. "Never" answers are the hottest leads you will get from any channel.
Route the form to a text within 60 seconds. A Meta lead called the next morning is a lead the coupon company already booked.
Budget and timing
A $20 to $40 daily budget is enough to learn in most metros. Run one campaign with two or three video ads and one lead form. After two weeks, kill the ad with the highest cost per lead and film a replacement.
Seasonal windows matter more on Meta than on Google because you are creating demand rather than catching it:
- Late March to May: allergy season. Run the register-sanitizing and whole-house clips.
- September and October: pre-furnace. Run the "smell of burning dust on the first cold night" angle.
- The week after a regional wildfire smoke event: the strongest ad window the trade has. Have the campaign built in advance so it goes live in a day.
- Late November through January: dryer vent clips, tied to holiday laundry loads and winter fire risk.
Retargeting: the part most owners skip
Build two audiences on day one: everyone who watched 50% of any video, and everyone who visited your website in the last 90 days. Run a small daily budget, $5 to $10, showing them the owner-to-camera price clip and a plain "book this week" ad.
Retargeting leads in this trade cost a third of cold leads and book at a higher rate, because the person has already decided you are real. The audience is small at first. It builds.
Add your past customer list as a third audience and show them the dryer vent offer once a year and the whole-house reminder at three years. Repeat work at a known price is the cheapest job you will ever sell.
What to measure
Cost per lead is the vanity number. Track cost per booked job and the booked rate from form to appointment. A healthy duct cleaning Meta account books 25% to 40% of form leads when the text-back is under a minute, and far less when it is not. If your booked rate is under 15%, the problem is the follow-up, not the ad.
After 60 days, compare cost per booked job against your Google numbers from the Google Ads guide. Most companies find Meta cheaper per job and Google faster to close, and run both at a split that matches the season.
Frequently asked
Should I boost posts instead? No. Boosting optimizes for likes and comments. A lead campaign optimizes for people who fill out the form. Same video, different objective, very different result.
Can I run Meta ads without a website? You can, with instant forms, but the retargeting audience from site visitors is the best audience you will have. 35.1% of duct cleaners have no site. See the website essentials guide.
What about comments on the ads? Answer every one, including the "this is a scam" comments. A calm reply with your method and price range, visible to everyone scrolling, does more for you than deleting it.
Meta ads are one of the services in the free 14-day trial. We cut the ads from your own footage and wire the form to text back. Text or call (385) 486-5536.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, air duct cleaning companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor