Where People Actually Spend Their Time

When I asked Ben how he thinks about Facebook ads, he started with something fundamental that I hadn't considered.

"The place to start is where do people spend time online and where can you reach them," Ben explained. "The two goliaths of the online advertising world are Google ads and then I still refer to it often as Facebook ads but really we should call it Meta ads because it includes Facebook and Instagram and people are spending a huge amount of time there."

If you want to reach people, put your stuff in front of them, get them to convert, you have to pick a place where you can reach them reliably, consistently, at scale. Facebook ads is definitely one of those places.

Beyond that, you need to understand what form of advertising it is. It's on a social media channel, which has challenges and benefits. People can interact with your ad on Meta in ways they can't with a billboard or TV ad. But it's also interruption advertising with almost no search involved.

"You're interrupting them from what they originally had planned to do and convincing them to hopefully take an action that you want them to take," Ben said.

How Facebook and Google Actually Compare

I wanted to know how Facebook ads compare to Google ads since Ben runs both for clients. His answer surprised me.

With Google, you have that intent side. People are searching for stuff, which changes the game from an advertising standpoint. You're likely to pay a lot more in cost per click on Google because of that intent - it's very valuable.

But here's what most people miss: they think Google and Facebook differ more than they actually do.

"People think of Google ads as just search. Google ads includes all sorts of other networks, display, which are like banner ads across the internet, YouTube, Gmail, shopping, other areas that don't contain anywhere near as much intent," Ben explained.

There's a lot of interruption advertising on Google too. The synergy between the two platforms means if you get campaigns running on both, you're covered for most businesses, especially local businesses.

Tell Meta What You Want

Ben emphasized something that seems obvious but most people get wrong: you need to tell Meta what you want.

"One of the most important things I tell people when they first start advertising on Meta is tell Meta what you want," Ben said.

If you're a local business and you want leads that you'll turn into customers by meeting in person or calling, tell Meta you want leads. They'll optimize the campaign for leads. They'll work out who to put your ads in front of, what time of day, how often they need to see an ad to convert.

But you have to start by getting the objective right.

This is where I learned Meta has gotten significantly smarter over the years. Ben's been in the game long enough to see the evolution. A lot of AI integration, algorithm development. Whereas advertisers used to do heavy lifting figuring out who to advertise to, now Meta works that out for you.

"We can afford to say, particularly for a local business, look, we're just going to target everyone in this city, everyone in this local area. Meta, you go and work out who's interested in this stuff," Ben explained.

That leaves advertisers to focus on things that really matter: your offer and your ad creative.

The Tennis Analogy That Changed My Perspective

When I asked Ben about testing, he shared an analogy that completely reframed how I think about learning new marketing channels.

"One of the analogies I give is think of tennis. No one goes down to their local tennis club, having never played tennis before, plays for three days, and then enters the local tournament at the end of the month, gets absolutely smashed, barely wins a point, and goes, tennis doesn't work," Ben said.

You would never say "tennis doesn't work." You'd understand you're just not good enough at tennis yet to compete. It's the same with Facebook ads.

You're in a competitive landscape competing against other advertisers who've been doing it longer. If you want to succeed, you need to develop that skill through education and testing.

"You can't just throw up one ad, hope it works. You have to keep going, experiment with different creative offers, ad copy, and find what works specifically for your business and for your niche because it will vary quite a bit," Ben explained.

This hit home because I talk to local business owners all the time who say "Facebook ads doesn't work, I did them for a month" or "Google ads don't work, I did them for two months." They're not willing to go through the learning process.

The Best Ad Out of 100 Changes Everything

Ben shared a framework that shows the power of continuous testing.

If one ad out of 10 produces a 3x return on ad spend, one ad out of 100 might produce a 6x or 9x return on ad spend. To get there, you've got to create 100 ads. That's a lot of time, effort, and work.

"But what would it do for your business if you got triple the results from the same ad spend? It might completely change everything because it might allow you to scale, have more customers than you know what to do with, open new locations," Ben said.

The only way you get the best ad out of 100 is to make 100 ads. That involves huge amounts of testing.

This applies not just to Facebook ads but any online advertising. The platforms give you such great feedback through data that you can test quickly and iterate fast.

Ben's team created a new TikTok account and they're in absolute testing mode, trying a different type of video every single day. If you looked at his profile, it looks completely scattered. But they're working out what will work for his personal brand.

"You could do the same thing with ads because the feedback is so fast. It's fantastic for being able to test your way to success," he said.

Instagram Versus Facebook: It Doesn't Really Matter

I asked Ben about the difference between Instagram and Facebook since they're now together under Meta. His answer was simpler than I expected.

Yes, there are differences. Facebook skews older than Instagram. Facebook's more text-heavy, though that's been changing. From an advertiser standpoint, it kind of doesn't matter because you advertise on both through the same platform.

"As long as you have the right campaign objective set up and you're optimizing the campaigns for what you want, Meta is going to work out should we put 50% of your budget on Instagram, 50% on Facebook, or should it be 85% of your budget on Instagram, 15% on Facebook," Ben explained.

That depends on your business. More visual-based businesses often perform better on Instagram. Ones that skew younger will do better there too. But it's all worked out automatically.

Ben's been doing this long enough to remember when Instagram ads first launched. There was tons of skepticism from Facebook advertisers who thought it was all kids and nobody would buy. People manually overrode settings to only advertise on Facebook.

But the longer that went on, the more people realized Instagram converted just as well. Now we're in a complete inverse where Instagram is seen as the cooler platform where you want your brand represented.

CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) are now higher on Instagram than Facebook because so many brands want to be on Instagram and think Facebook's the older platform.

"From an advertising standpoint it doesn't really matter. You want to set your ads up to advertise on both, which is a default, and let Meta work it out for you," Ben said.

The Only Metrics That Actually Matter

It's easy to get lost in detail when looking at ad metrics. Ben always brings things back to basics.

For most local businesses optimizing for leads: what is your cost per lead?

But you have to look at that in conjunction with your conversion rate. Ben recommends working backwards.

How much is each customer worth? Let's say $1,000. What are you willing to pay to acquire that customer? If you can pay $200 in advertising cost (a 5x return on ad spend), that works given your margins.

You can afford to pay $200 to get a customer. What's your conversion rate from lead to customer? You convert about one in four.

"So we can afford to pay $50 cost per lead to get a to pay $200 because we convert one in four for a customer that's then worth $1,000," Ben explained.

Then you're optimizing around that $50 cost per lead target. You need to keep an eye on your conversion rate to make sure it doesn't slip, but that's what you're looking at.

If you start going down the route of optimizing clickthrough rate or CPMs, you can easily optimize for those secondary metrics but not actually do the thing that matters: be more profitable.

For example, you could reduce CPMs by advertising to a less sought-after audience. CPMs reflect how many people want to advertise to that audience. High net worth individuals? You'll pay more. Other demographics? Less.

"You can change your targeting to go after inferior demographics for your offer, but will they convert? They're far less likely to do so," Ben said.

The secondary metrics help diagnose problems. If your cost per lead is high but clickthrough rate is good, you're getting clicks but they're not converting on your website. Maybe you need testimonials or better landing page copy.

If clickthrough rate is low but conversion is high once they get there, you need a stronger call to action in the ad.

The metrics Ben focuses on: link clickthrough rate (not regular clickthrough rate), conversion rate from click to lead, conversion rate from lead to customer, and for video ads, hook rate (what percentage get past the first 3 seconds).

Beyond that, you're getting into the weeds and probably focusing on the wrong stuff.

Website Forms Versus Instant Forms

I asked Ben about something controversial: should you drive customers to your website to fill out a form, or use Facebook's instant forms?

His answer: it depends, and you should test both.

Instant forms are easier for people. You click an ad, fill out details on Facebook instead of going to a website, and that information goes to the company. Meta loves it because people don't leave the platform.

"That means you typically see a significantly lower cost per lead if you're going to run with that setup. However, that lack of friction means you don't weed out the leads that aren't as interested and therefore you can see a lower quality lead," Ben explained.

It's a trade-off. Some businesses are happy with more volume and lower quality. Most local businesses probably aren't. They'd rather have higher quality and send people to their website.

That said, you need a decent website. It needs to look good, be designed well, have reviews and testimonials and trust points. If you don't have that, you're better off using instant forms.

For most businesses, Ben recommends testing both. It's easy to duplicate a campaign and use the opposite setup.

The Offer Is Everything

Ben said the offer is probably the most important thing for local businesses, maybe in your entire business.

Think about how many other businesses offering what you offer are also advertising on Meta right now. Probably not that many. If there's 10, you probably have a lot of competition. There may be less than that.

"Being able to be the best and differentiate yourself from the pack when it's only 5, 10, maybe 20 if you're operating like a big city or whatever is really quite easy to do," Ben said.

So much easier than trying to compete with the best sportswear brands in the world. The offer is the best shortcut.

The best resource Ben recommends is Alex Hormozi's "$100 Million Offers" book. It talks about different components: what people get, perceived likelihood of actually getting it, and how much time or resource is required from the person.

Improving the perceived likelihood of achievement? Add a guarantee. "We achieve X for you with our service or you get your money back." Or time-based: "We guarantee installation within 48 hours or you don't pay."

Making it clear there's no hassle, no time commitment? "We do kitchen remodeling, be tidy, restrain ourselves to this part of the house. You can stay, it's nice and easy. We'll get it all done within four working days."

Local businesses also need urgency and scarcity. Scarcity is easy: you can only work with a certain number of clients every month.

"We've got this offer for new kitchens. We get it done in 5 days. We have this special deal. We only have three more spaces left for the end of the quarter," Ben explained.

Urgency is different - it's around a timeframe. A special deal that runs out at the end of the month. You can have a sale running all the time if you mix it up. This month it's 20% off. Next month buy one get one free. Next month pay for this service and get this extra thing free.

"The urgency element, the scarcity element make them go oh I need to do this now I'm standing in a line waiting for my coffee I need to do this now otherwise I'm going to miss out on this great deal," Ben said.

Otherwise life gets in the way and distracts people from taking action.

Lead Magnet or Direct Offer?

I asked whether local businesses should use a lead magnet first or go straight to the offer.

Ben said it depends on average customer value and how much knowledge there is around what's being offered.

For pest control, it probably makes sense to have an intermediate step. People have questions. Is the poison kid-friendly? Pet-friendly? There's likely a reasonably high average customer value depending on the pest and treatment.

But if you're advertising something less expensive that everyone understands, like a car wash? Go straight for the sale. It doesn't cost a lot, it's easy, everyone understands you're going to clean their car.

Ben structured it in three tiers:

• Under $100: Go direct to offer

• $100 to $1,000: Lead magnet first can work really well (still test direct offer)

• Over $1,000: Lead magnet first, or even an omnipresent content strategy

"How much money someone is going to have to give you for your product or service really determines how much warming up you need to do," Ben explained.

Local restaurant looks nice? Book tonight. Easy to say yes to. Car wash? Same thing. But more involved things require more convincing.

The Rapid Fire Insights

I finished with rapid-fire questions to get Ben's quick takes on common Facebook ad questions.

Do boosted posts work? Yes, they can, but they're not ideal. A great offer will make up for issues with campaign setup, so you could boost a post with a great offer and do fine. But you'd see better results setting things up properly through ads manager.

Who should run awareness ads? Really big brands with massive budgets that want their thing to become synonymous with that industry. Or businesses using an omnipresent content strategy putting ads in front of people repeatedly with frequency caps.

Video or image ads? Ben polled his audience and pulled data from 450 ad accounts in their business manager. Video ads perform best about 60% of the time, with the other 40% being images, carousels, and other formats.

But don't go video unless you can produce something that looks good. Either have those skills in-house or budget to pay people who know what they're doing. Otherwise image ads are easier to create and will perform better.

"Particularly for local businesses that have an element of expertise-based service, video is fantastic for building that trust with your audience, for demonstrating what you do, for making your potential customer feel like there's real people that really care," Ben said.

Most underrated strategy? Using influencers. Not sending the Kardashians your latest handbag for a million dollars. Working with much smaller influencers who are just well-known in your local town for a tiny fraction of the cost.

Get them to create video ads you can run yourself. When someone's scrolling and sees someone they recognize and respect, that stops their scroll better than almost anything else.

Minimum budget? Don't start with anything less than $10 a day. Even with that, if you get a 5x return on ad spend, that's only $1,500 a month generated. Not really going to move the needle for most businesses.

The $10 a day minimum is for getting started, learning the platform, familiarizing yourself. Then scale from there.

My Main Takeaway

The biggest lesson from talking to Ben is that Facebook ads success comes from systematic testing, not talent or genius.

The tennis analogy hit hardest: you wouldn't play tennis for three days, lose a tournament, and declare "tennis doesn't work." But people do exactly that with Facebook ads. They run campaigns for a month, don't get results, and give up.

You're competing in a competitive landscape against people who've been doing this longer. Developing the skill requires education and relentless testing. The best ad out of 100 might produce triple the results of your first attempt, but you have to be willing to create 100 ads to find it.

Meta has gotten incredibly smart through AI and algorithm development. Your job as an advertiser is to tell Meta what you want (leads, sales, traffic) and let them optimize for that. Then focus on what actually matters: your offer and your creative.

For local businesses, the offer is the highest leverage thing you can do. You're not competing with Nike. You're competing with 5 to 10 other local businesses. A strong guarantee, clear scarcity (only 3 spots left this month), and urgency (sale ends Friday) makes people take action now instead of forgetting about you.

The metrics that matter: cost per lead and conversion rate. Work backwards from customer value to figure out what you can afford to pay. Everything else is secondary diagnostics to figure out what's broken.

Video ads win 60% of the time, but only if you can produce quality. Otherwise stick with images. Instagram versus Facebook doesn't matter - advertise on both and let Meta figure out the split. Test website forms versus instant forms to see what works for your business.

And most underrated: local influencers crush celebrity-level campaigns. Someone well-known in your town creating video ads for you stops scrolls better than anything else and costs a fraction of what people think influencer marketing requires.

Start with $10 a day minimum. Test. Learn. Scale what works. That's the path to making Facebook ads profitable for local businesses.

Want to learn more from Ben? Search Ben Heath on YouTube to find his channel with over 300,000 subscribers (now 400,000), packed with Facebook ad tutorials. Join his Facebook Ads Mastermind Group with nearly 300,000 members. Visit heathmedia.co.uk if you're interested in working with his agency - 70% of their clients are US-based even though they're UK-based, and they work with clients in over 40 countries.

Listen to the full episode to hear more of Ben's insights on campaign structure, creative testing, and the strategies that separate profitable Facebook ads from money pits.