Facebook and Instagram ads for gutter companies: creative, offers and budgets
The before-and-after video that sells cleanings, the offers that work by season, retargeting the guard shopper, and what a Meta lead should cost.
Nobody scrolls Instagram thinking about their gutters. That is the whole problem with Meta ads in this trade, and it is also the opportunity. Google catches the homeowner who already knows something is wrong. Meta creates the homeowner who did not know, or knew and kept putting it off, which is most of them.
The creative has to do the work that intent does on Google. Get the creative right and Meta produces gutter cleaning leads at $8 to $35. Get it wrong and you spend $600 on a boosted post about your company's anniversary.
The one video that outperforms everything else
Fifteen to thirty seconds, shot vertically on a phone from the top of the ladder:
- Two seconds looking down a trough packed solid with black sludge, shingle grit and a maple seedling growing out of it. No talking yet.
- A hand pulls out a fistful. Text on screen: "This house is four years since the last cleaning."
- Cut to the scoop-and-bag, sped up.
- The flush. Water running clean out of the downspout.
- The finished trough, straight and empty.
- Last two seconds: your logo, your city, and the offer.
That is the ad. It works because it is disgusting and satisfying at the same time, and because the viewer is thinking about their own house by second four. Shoot a new one every couple of weeks so the library stays fresh, and never use stock footage. Homeowners can tell instantly, and the comment section will tell you so.
For installation and guards, the equivalent is the drone shot: the ugly sagging run with streaked fascia, then the finished seamless run in a color that matches the trim. Guards need a third angle, a close-up of debris sitting on top of the mesh with clean water going through, because the whole objection to guards is "does it actually work."
Offers by season
Meta needs an offer with a date on it. "Call for a free estimate" is not an offer.
- Late August to October. "Fall cleaning, booked before October 1, $30 off. We are filling the schedule now and the last week of October is usually gone by Labor Day." Urgency is real here, which is why it works.
- After a storm. "Storm on Thursday. We have six slots open Friday for overflowing gutters and detached downspouts." Launch it the morning of the forecast. This is the highest converting ad a gutter company can run and it has a 72-hour shelf life.
- March to May. "Spring cleanout, pollen, seeds and winter debris, $189 for homes under 150 feet." Give a real price. Price in the ad cuts the tire-kickers and doubles the booking rate.
- December to February. Guards and replacement. "Book guard installation in January and we take 15% off, because our crews would rather work than wait for spring." Homeowners understand that logic and respect it.
- Any time. Twice-a-year maintenance plan. Two cleanings, spring and fall, one price, billed once. This is the single best thing a gutter company can sell on Meta because it converts a one-off into an annuity.
Targeting, honestly
Do not overbuild the audience. Meta's algorithm is better than your guesses now.
- Geography: your actual service radius, drawn as a custom area, not a 25-mile circle centered on downtown.
- Age 35 and up. Homeowner targeting where it is still available in your region.
- Interests: leave them off for cleaning offers. Add home improvement and specific interests only for guard and installation campaigns where the audience is narrower.
- Exclude your customer list from acquisition ads and run a separate campaign to it for the maintenance plan.
Upload your customer list as a Custom Audience and build a 1% lookalike once you have 500 past customers. In this trade the lookalike outperforms interest targeting by a wide margin, because past gutter customers cluster by neighborhood age and tree cover in ways no interest checkbox captures.
Budgets and what to expect
Start at $20 a day for six weeks. That is $840 and it is enough to learn something. Below $15 a day the campaign never leaves the learning phase and you will conclude Meta does not work when what did not work was the budget.
Realistic outcomes for a residential gutter company:
- Cleaning offer with a price in it: $8 to $25 per lead, 30% to 50% book rate.
- Guard or replacement consultation: $30 to $90 per lead, 15% to 30% appointment rate, much longer sales cycle.
- Storm-week ad: $5 to $15 per lead for the three days it runs.
Lead forms inside Facebook produce more leads at a lower cost. Landing pages produce fewer, better ones. Use the lead form for cleaning offers where volume is the point, and send guard and installation traffic to a real page on your site. Either way the response has to be fast, which is the subject of the missed calls and follow-up guide. A Meta lead that sits for four hours is dead.
Retargeting is where the guard money is
The guard sale takes weeks. Somebody watches your drone video in October, thinks about it, gets a $6,000 quote from a national brand in November, and buys in February. Retargeting is how you stay in that conversation for the cost of a few dollars a day.
Build three audiences and run $5 a day to each:
- Watched 50% or more of any video in the last 90 days. Show them the mesh close-up and a real price range.
- Visited the guards or installation page on your site in the last 60 days. Show them a customer testimonial video and a financing-free message: "No 60-month contract. We quote the job, you pay when it is done."
- Past cleaning customers. Show them the guard upgrade with the actual math: "You have paid us for six cleanings. Guards cost about four."
That third audience is the highest return advertising a gutter company can buy, and almost nobody runs it.
What not to do
Boosting posts from the page with the blue Boost button. It optimizes for engagement, which means you pay for likes from people 300 miles away. Build campaigns in Ads Manager with a leads or calls objective.
Running the same creative for four months. Frequency climbs past three, cost per lead doubles, and you blame Meta. Swap the video every three to four weeks.
Running Meta before the Google profile is respectable. Homeowners look you up after they click. If your profile has 6 reviews, the trade median, the ad works and the search does not. See where you stand in the benchmark report.
Frequently asked
Instagram or Facebook? Run both placements and let Meta allocate. In practice the cleaning audience converts on Facebook and the installation and guard audience skews Instagram and Reels, but the budget should not be split by hand.
Do I need a Meta pixel if I use lead forms? Yes. Install the pixel and the Conversions API on your website anyway, because retargeting site visitors is where the installation revenue is, and the pixel is what makes that audience possible.
How do I stop getting junk leads? Put a price in the ad, add a qualifying question to the lead form (approximate linear feet, one story or two), and switch the form to the higher-intent setting. Volume drops by half and booked jobs go up.
Meta ads management is one of the services in the free 14-day trial. Text or call (385) 832-6175.