Is Facebook Showing Your Concrete Coating Ads Outside Your Service Area?
A simple location targeting mistake can send your advertising budget hundreds or thousands of miles away from the homeowners you actually serve.
The problem
One Saturday morning, I opened Facebook from Utah and saw an advertisement for a concrete coating company in Ohio.
The ad itself looked fine.
The problem was simple.
I was nowhere near their service area.
That means at least some portion of their advertising budget was being used to reach someone who could never become a customer.
So I messaged the contractor and let him know.
I sent him a screenshot and told him:
"Your ad showed up in Utah. You're wasting ad budget. I can probably help you fix it in about five minutes."
A few minutes later, we were on the phone.
What we found
The contractor had been using boosted Facebook posts as part of his marketing.
He believed the posts were targeting people within roughly 40 miles of his business.
But when we walked through the audience setup together, we found that the location settings needed to be cleaned up.
This can happen when advertisers use:
- saved audiences
- automatic audience options
- older audiences
- broad location settings
- boosted posts created at different times
The important lesson is simple.
Do not assume Facebook is only advertising inside your service area because the audience name says "local."
Open the actual location settings and verify them.
The five-minute check
When you boost a Facebook post or review an existing campaign, look at the audience being used.
Confirm the actual geographic locations included.
If your company only works within 30 or 40 miles of your shop, make sure the advertising is built around that service area.
Remove locations you do not serve.
Pay special attention to broad locations such as an entire state or the United States if those are not intentional.
Also check whether an older saved audience is being used.
The audience name itself does not tell you everything.
Open it and inspect the settings.
What happened next
While we were still talking, the contractor received a new message from the post.
A homeowner wanted more information.
That does not mean changing one audience setting magically guarantees leads.
It does show why the basics matter.
Before spending more money on advertising, make sure the money you are already spending is pointed at people you can actually serve.
Are boosted posts bad?
Not necessarily.
Boosting a post can be useful when you want to quickly put a project, promotion, or piece of content in front of more people.
But there is a difference between occasionally boosting a successful post and operating a repeatable customer acquisition system.
A complete system should give you more control over:
- targeting
- campaign structure
- creative testing
- lead tracking
- landing pages
- follow-up
- appointment booking
- reporting
That is the difference between simply paying Facebook for reach and intentionally building a system around booked estimates.
EpoxyDemo already positions its service around the full path from advertising through lead response, follow-up, booking, and tracking rather than treating the ad itself as the entire solution.
Contractors do not work 9 to 5
There was another important part of this conversation.
The contractor was not sitting in an office.
He was driving to a job.
And it was Saturday.
That is normal in this industry.
Good epoxy and concrete coating companies are often installing during the week, estimating after hours, responding to customers from the truck, and working weekends when projects require it.
Your marketing company should understand that.
If your customers are submitting quote requests Saturday morning, the system should still be working Saturday morning.
If your crew is installing while leads are coming in, follow-up should not stop because everybody at the marketing company went home.
That is one of the reasons EpoxyDemo focuses specifically on epoxy and concrete coating companies.
Before you spend another dollar
Check these five things:
- Is Facebook showing your ads only inside the area you actually service?
- Do you know which campaigns are currently active?
- Where does someone go after clicking the ad?
- What happens immediately after someone becomes a lead?
- Can you tell which advertising actually turns into estimates and jobs?
If you cannot answer those five questions quickly, there is probably something worth fixing.
Want us to take a look?
If you run an epoxy or concrete coating company and you're unsure where your Facebook ads are actually showing, send us a screenshot.
We will take a look.
If the problem is something simple, we will tell you.
If there is a larger issue with the campaign, landing page, follow-up, or booking process, we can show you that too.
Get Your Free Epoxy Lead System Audit
Call or text us and we'll tell you what we would do next.