Everyone talks about what ads produce. Almost nobody talks about the twenty or so decisions you make before a single dollar goes out, and most of them get made quickly, by default, or by the platform on your behalf.
This is about those decisions: what they involved when we set up our own, and what we'd do differently.
Meta or Google, and why the answer isn’t “both”
The useful distinction is simple. Google reaches people who already know they need you: they typed “plumber Saint John” into a search bar. Meta reaches people who don’t know you exist yet: they were scrolling, and your ad interrupted them.
Which one fits depends on how people buy what you sell. Our search data for New Brunswick, Canada showed it clearly. Snow removal and oil delivery searches spike when something breaks or runs out. Gift shop searches peak in August, when people are browsing. If customers come to you in a moment of need, Google is the natural fit. If what you sell is something people don’t know they want until they see it, Meta usually is. Trades lean Google. Restaurants, venues and anything discretionary lean Meta.
Here’s the admission. We started on both at once. It felt sensible: cover both kinds of customer and see which works. But splitting a small budget across two platforms means neither gets enough to learn from. Each platform needs a steady stream of results to work out who to show your ad to, and half a small budget produces half a trickle. If we were starting again, we’d pick one, give it the whole budget for a month, and add the second only once the first was telling us something.
The number below which it isn’t worth starting
The ranges worth knowing for a local business in New Brunswick, Canada are these. For one focused campaign:
Google Search: roughly $500 to $1,500 a month in ad spend, aimed at your main service. Below that, a handful of expensive clicks a week can use up the budget before you learn anything.
Meta: roughly $20 to $50 a day, or $600 to $1,500 a month. Meta’s own guidance is that a campaign needs about 50 results a week to finish its learning phase. Most local businesses won’t reach that at any budget they’d sensibly spend, so the realistic aim is enough steady volume to see which ads are working.
That’s ad spend only, before any management fee and before the page the ads point to. If you’re still sorting out the website side, our guide to what a website costs in New Brunswick, Canada covers it.
The real point is this: a budget that’s too small doesn’t produce bad results. It produces no information, which is worse. Bad results tell you what to change. Ten clicks and no leads tell you nothing, and it’s tempting to read them as proof that ads don’t work.
Where the click lands decides everything
This is the part most businesses get wrong, and the one that matters most. An ad has one job: get the right person to click. What happens next is up to the page they land on.
Sending ad traffic to a homepage wastes most of it. A homepage is built for everyone: new customers, old ones, job applicants, suppliers. Someone who clicked an ad about one thing lands on a page about ten things, and leaves. A landing page is one page, one offer and one action. Ours asks for exactly one thing: book a 15-minute call.
Peter Young, an insurance advisor in Saint John, NB, is the clearest example we have. He’d already worked out that Facebook ads could bring people to him, but he had nowhere to send them. We built him a site and a landing page for the ad traffic. Across the six months that followed his first month running it, he averaged 3.4× the leads of that first month.
We made a related choice for our own ads. Meta offers an in-app form that collects someone’s details without them leaving Facebook, and it usually produces cheaper leads. We sent people to our own page instead, accepting a higher cost per lead in exchange for people who’d read what we do before asking for a call.
How long before the numbers mean anything
Weeks, not days. Both platforms spend the first stretch working out who to show your ads to, and results swing around while they do. Changing things during that period sends them back to the start. We set ourselves a rule of no edits for the first seven days, with proper reviews at two weeks and at a month, and no comparing the two platforms until the month was up.
Early on, a few things are worth watching:
Whether the ads have been approved and are actually being shown
Whether people who start the video keep watching past the first few seconds
Whether clicks reach the page, and whether the form works (submit a test lead yourself)
And a few are worth ignoring: the daily cost per lead, likes and comments, and any single day’s results.
The other thing to hold onto is that a cheap lead and a good lead aren’t the same thing. The cheapest leads often come from people who tapped through a pre-filled form without much thought. What matters is cost per booked call, or better, cost per customer. A $15 lead who never picks up the phone costs more than a $60 one who books.
What the platforms push you toward
Both platforms are genuinely helpful, and both make money when you spend more. Their suggestions mix the two, and it’s worth knowing which is which.
Broader targeting. Mostly good advice now. Both systems find buyers better than hand-picked interests do. But keep the location tight: a business in Saint John, NB doesn’t want clicks from across the country.
Higher budgets. The recommendations panel will regularly suggest spending more. Sometimes that’s right. It’s never neutral.
Automatic placements and campaign types. Meta will spread your ad across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and partner apps. Google’s Performance Max spreads across search, YouTube, Maps and display. That makes sense on big budgets and is harder to read on small ones.
Tests and experiments. Meta's A/B test option runs two versions of a campaign side by side and splits the budget between them. It is the right way to settle a real question, but it halves whatever each version gets, so on a small budget it is usually worth testing one thing at a time instead.
Credits. Expect offers of ad credit once you’ve spent a certain amount. They’re real money, but they’re designed to get you spending more, sooner. Decide your budget first, then see whether a credit fits it.
None of this is sinister. The platforms want you to succeed, because businesses that succeed keep spending. They’d just like you to spend more getting there.
What we’d do differently
One platform first. We’d give one platform the whole budget for a month before adding the second.
Tracking before ads. Making sure each platform knew when a lead had actually come in, with a thank-you page after the form connected back to Meta and Google, turned out to be one of the most significant changes we made. We would finish it before the campaign was drafted.
Who answers, and how fast, decided before launch. A lead who waits a day to hear back has often moved on.
The short version: most of what decides whether ads work for a local business happens before the ads run. If you’d like a second pair of eyes on yours, that’s the work we do for businesses in Saint John, NB.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a small business in New Brunswick, Canada spend on ads?
For one platform, roughly $500 to $1,500 a month on Google Search or $600 to $1,500 on Meta, in ad spend alone. Much less than that tends to produce too little data to learn from.
Should I run Google Ads or Meta ads?
Google if customers search for you when they need you. Meta if they need to see you before they know they want you. On a small budget, pick one rather than splitting it.
How long before I know whether my ads are working?
Give it at least two weeks before judging an ad, and a month before comparing platforms. Avoid changes in the first week unless something is clearly broken.
Can I just send ad traffic to my homepage?
You can, but most of it will be wasted. A page with one offer and one action converts far more of the people who click.
Do I need a website to run ads?
Meta can collect leads through its own form without one. Google needs somewhere to send people. Either way, a page built for the ad usually brings better leads.
Everyone talks about what ads produce. Almost nobody talks about the twenty or so decisions you make before a single dollar goes out, and most of them get made quickly, by default, or by the platform on your behalf.
This is about those decisions: what they involved when we set up our own, and what we'd do differently.
Meta or Google, and why the answer isn’t “both”
The useful distinction is simple. Google reaches people who already know they need you: they typed “plumber Saint John” into a search bar. Meta reaches people who don’t know you exist yet: they were scrolling, and your ad interrupted them.
Which one fits depends on how people buy what you sell. Our search data for New Brunswick, Canada showed it clearly. Snow removal and oil delivery searches spike when something breaks or runs out. Gift shop searches peak in August, when people are browsing. If customers come to you in a moment of need, Google is the natural fit. If what you sell is something people don’t know they want until they see it, Meta usually is. Trades lean Google. Restaurants, venues and anything discretionary lean Meta.
Here’s the admission. We started on both at once. It felt sensible: cover both kinds of customer and see which works. But splitting a small budget across two platforms means neither gets enough to learn from. Each platform needs a steady stream of results to work out who to show your ad to, and half a small budget produces half a trickle. If we were starting again, we’d pick one, give it the whole budget for a month, and add the second only once the first was telling us something.
The number below which it isn’t worth starting
The ranges worth knowing for a local business in New Brunswick, Canada are these. For one focused campaign:
Google Search: roughly $500 to $1,500 a month in ad spend, aimed at your main service. Below that, a handful of expensive clicks a week can use up the budget before you learn anything.
Meta: roughly $20 to $50 a day, or $600 to $1,500 a month. Meta’s own guidance is that a campaign needs about 50 results a week to finish its learning phase. Most local businesses won’t reach that at any budget they’d sensibly spend, so the realistic aim is enough steady volume to see which ads are working.
That’s ad spend only, before any management fee and before the page the ads point to. If you’re still sorting out the website side, our guide to what a website costs in New Brunswick, Canada covers it.
The real point is this: a budget that’s too small doesn’t produce bad results. It produces no information, which is worse. Bad results tell you what to change. Ten clicks and no leads tell you nothing, and it’s tempting to read them as proof that ads don’t work.
Where the click lands decides everything
This is the part most businesses get wrong, and the one that matters most. An ad has one job: get the right person to click. What happens next is up to the page they land on.
Sending ad traffic to a homepage wastes most of it. A homepage is built for everyone: new customers, old ones, job applicants, suppliers. Someone who clicked an ad about one thing lands on a page about ten things, and leaves. A landing page is one page, one offer and one action. Ours asks for exactly one thing: book a 15-minute call.
Peter Young, an insurance advisor in Saint John, NB, is the clearest example we have. He’d already worked out that Facebook ads could bring people to him, but he had nowhere to send them. We built him a site and a landing page for the ad traffic. Across the six months that followed his first month running it, he averaged 3.4× the leads of that first month.
We made a related choice for our own ads. Meta offers an in-app form that collects someone’s details without them leaving Facebook, and it usually produces cheaper leads. We sent people to our own page instead, accepting a higher cost per lead in exchange for people who’d read what we do before asking for a call.
How long before the numbers mean anything
Weeks, not days. Both platforms spend the first stretch working out who to show your ads to, and results swing around while they do. Changing things during that period sends them back to the start. We set ourselves a rule of no edits for the first seven days, with proper reviews at two weeks and at a month, and no comparing the two platforms until the month was up.
Early on, a few things are worth watching:
Whether the ads have been approved and are actually being shown
Whether people who start the video keep watching past the first few seconds
Whether clicks reach the page, and whether the form works (submit a test lead yourself)
And a few are worth ignoring: the daily cost per lead, likes and comments, and any single day’s results.
The other thing to hold onto is that a cheap lead and a good lead aren’t the same thing. The cheapest leads often come from people who tapped through a pre-filled form without much thought. What matters is cost per booked call, or better, cost per customer. A $15 lead who never picks up the phone costs more than a $60 one who books.
What the platforms push you toward
Both platforms are genuinely helpful, and both make money when you spend more. Their suggestions mix the two, and it’s worth knowing which is which.
Broader targeting. Mostly good advice now. Both systems find buyers better than hand-picked interests do. But keep the location tight: a business in Saint John, NB doesn’t want clicks from across the country.
Higher budgets. The recommendations panel will regularly suggest spending more. Sometimes that’s right. It’s never neutral.
Automatic placements and campaign types. Meta will spread your ad across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and partner apps. Google’s Performance Max spreads across search, YouTube, Maps and display. That makes sense on big budgets and is harder to read on small ones.
Tests and experiments. Meta's A/B test option runs two versions of a campaign side by side and splits the budget between them. It is the right way to settle a real question, but it halves whatever each version gets, so on a small budget it is usually worth testing one thing at a time instead.
Credits. Expect offers of ad credit once you’ve spent a certain amount. They’re real money, but they’re designed to get you spending more, sooner. Decide your budget first, then see whether a credit fits it.
None of this is sinister. The platforms want you to succeed, because businesses that succeed keep spending. They’d just like you to spend more getting there.
What we’d do differently
One platform first. We’d give one platform the whole budget for a month before adding the second.
Tracking before ads. Making sure each platform knew when a lead had actually come in, with a thank-you page after the form connected back to Meta and Google, turned out to be one of the most significant changes we made. We would finish it before the campaign was drafted.
Who answers, and how fast, decided before launch. A lead who waits a day to hear back has often moved on.
The short version: most of what decides whether ads work for a local business happens before the ads run. If you’d like a second pair of eyes on yours, that’s the work we do for businesses in Saint John, NB.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a small business in New Brunswick, Canada spend on ads?
For one platform, roughly $500 to $1,500 a month on Google Search or $600 to $1,500 on Meta, in ad spend alone. Much less than that tends to produce too little data to learn from.
Should I run Google Ads or Meta ads?
Google if customers search for you when they need you. Meta if they need to see you before they know they want you. On a small budget, pick one rather than splitting it.
How long before I know whether my ads are working?
Give it at least two weeks before judging an ad, and a month before comparing platforms. Avoid changes in the first week unless something is clearly broken.
Can I just send ad traffic to my homepage?
You can, but most of it will be wasted. A page with one offer and one action converts far more of the people who click.
Do I need a website to run ads?
Meta can collect leads through its own form without one. Google needs somewhere to send people. Either way, a page built for the ad usually brings better leads.