July 1, 2026

What 20 leads in 5 days taught me about Meta ads for trades

I run the ad creative for Adrian at Mauka Cleaning. He cleans windows on Oahu. He runs his own ads, and I script, film, and edit them for him. The first batch we put out pulled 20 leads in 5 days. Here is what actually made that happen, because it was not the targeting.

Creative does the heavy lifting, not the audience

Everybody obsesses over targeting. Who to show it to, what interests to pick, how to slice the audience. For a local trade, that is not where the money is. The video is what stops the scroll and does the selling. A boring ad with perfect targeting still gets skipped. A great ad shown to roughly the right people on your island does the work.

Show the real work

Before and after. Dirty window, then clean window. People do not want to see a logo, they want proof you can do the thing they need done. The dirtier the before, the better the ad. Real results beat anything polished.

Talk like a person, not an ad

Nobody on Oahu wants to hear about premium residential window solutions. Say dirty windows, we fix that. Local, plain, done. The second your ad sounds like an ad, people scroll. The second it sounds like a neighbor who happens to be good at this, they stop.

One offer, one action

Do not give five options. Give one. Free quote, text this number, done. A confused person does not book, they scroll. Make the next step so obvious a tired guy on his couch can take it without thinking.

The first second is the whole ballgame

If the hook does not land in the first second, the other twenty-nine do not matter. Lead with the mess, the result, or a line that makes them stop. You are not writing a commercial, you are interrupting somebody who was about to keep scrolling.

Let me be straight with you

I do not run Adrian's ad account. I make the creative, he pulls the trigger on the spend. So when I say 20 leads in 5 days, that is what good creative did in the hands of a guy willing to run it. Creative is the part most trades get wrong, and it is the part I handle.

You can have the best window cleaning on the island. If your ad looks like every other ad, it dies in the feed.

Fix the creative first. The targeting is the easy part.

Running ads and need creative that pulls? Let's talk.