Facebook & Instagram Ads in Tauranga built for real enquiries
Horton Taylor runs Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns for Tauranga trade and property care businesses. We recommend an ad spend from $500 a month, paid straight to Meta on your own card, with management on top. Campaigns are built around lead forms and enquiries rather than likes, and Mitch runs the account himself. A free 15-minute call gets you a straight number.
Facebook and Instagram are where your Tauranga customers spend their evenings. We run lead-focused Meta campaigns that put your work in front of them and bring back enquiries you can count, not vanity likes.
Boosting posts gets you likes and comments but no actual jobs
You are guessing at the audience, so half the budget lands outside Tauranga
Your housewashing, landscaping or flooring work looks great and nobody sees it
No Pixel, no tracking, so you cannot tell a good month from a lucky one
How much does a Facebook ad cost in NZ?
You set the budget, so a Facebook ad in New Zealand costs whatever you tell Meta to spend. For a Tauranga service business the sensible floor is $500 a month, roughly $16 a day, billed to your own card. Below that Meta gets too few results to learn from.
What decides whether the ads are worth running is cost per enquiry. Rideshare Consultants got 250 lead-form enquiries at an $11 average. If a job nets you $800 and one enquiry in three books, a $60 lead is cheap. How much Facebook ads cost in NZ has the national picture.
What you pay Meta: from $500/month, about $16 a day, billed to your own card
What you pay us: a flat monthly management fee, quoted to how many campaigns are running, given to you on the first call
What you should never pay: a percentage of ad spend, which rewards us for spending more of your money
Is $500 enough for Facebook ads?
Yes, if you point it at one offer, one audience and one town. $500 a month is about $16 a day, and in Tauranga that buys enough reach for a lead-form campaign to produce real enquiries inside the first fortnight. Plenty of local campaigns start exactly there.
It falls over the moment you split it. Two offers, four audiences and a retargeting campaign on the same $500 leaves Meta a handful of results a week to learn from. One campaign, one audience, two or three pieces of creative is the version of $500 that works.
Mitch runs every account personally from Mount Maunganui.
Social media marketing in Tauranga, and what it actually involves
Social media marketing in Tauranga splits into two jobs, and only one reliably brings in work. Posting and building a following is brand work. Paid social is the lead-generation half: money in, enquiries out, measured. We do the paid half, and a good local content person does the other one cheaper.
Paid social suits businesses selling work people do not think to search for. Nobody searches for a housewash until the fence has gone green, but they will stop scrolling on a before and after clip of a house in Papamoa. The whole picture is digital marketing in Tauranga.
Lead-form campaigns so enquiries land in your inbox without an extra click
Before and after creative built from your own job photos and phone footage
Local audiences drawn around the suburbs you actually drive to
Retargeting for people who watched the video or visited the site and did not enquire
Facebook ads or Google Ads for a Tauranga service business?
Google Ads for work people search for, Facebook and Instagram for work you have to put in front of them. An emergency plumber wants search, because the customer is already typing. A housewashing, landscaping or window cleaning business usually gets cheaper enquiries from Meta.
When both make sense, start with the one that matches what you sell, prove a cost per enquiry, then add the second on a smaller test budget. The national version sits on Facebook and Instagram ads management, and the full comparison is in Facebook ads vs Google Ads.
Local marketing done properly.
Horton Taylor · Tauranga & Mount Maunganui
What you get
Lead-form and conversion campaigns aimed at the Tauranga suburbs you actually service
Audience research specific to your trade, your area and your price point
Static and video creative produced from your job photos and footage, or built from what you already have
Meta Pixel and Conversions API set up properly, so enquiries are attributed rather than guessed at
Retargeting for site visitors, video viewers and people who engaged but never enquired
Weekly optimisation and a monthly report in dollars, direct from Mitch
What that means for you
Consistent local enquiries instead of feast or famine
A cost per enquiry you can quote off the top of your head
Ads that fill the quiet weeks, not just the busy ones
How it works
Our Meta ads process
01
Free 15-minute call
We work out what a job is worth to you and whether paid social suits what you sell. If Google Ads would get you cheaper leads, we say that instead.
02
Audiences and creative
Audience research on your area and your buyer, then ad copy and two or three pieces of creative, usually cut from your own job photos and phone footage.
03
Track, then launch
Meta Pixel and Conversions API go on before the first dollar goes out. Campaigns launch from $500 a month so there are enough results to judge inside a fortnight.
04
Read it weekly, report monthly
Creative gets rotated before it fatigues, audiences get trimmed, budget moves to whatever books jobs. One plain report a month: spend, enquiries, cost per enquiry.
Where we work
Areas we serve
Mitch is based in Mount Maunganui, so the audience radius on your campaigns comes from local knowledge rather than a guess at a map. We run Meta campaigns across the Western Bay of Plenty, and remotely for businesses elsewhere in New Zealand.
The team had deep expertise in rideshare tax but no real marketing infrastructure. Revenue was happening, but with no visibility into lead sources, no conversion tracking, and no structured way to scale acquisition.
What we did
Set up end-to-end tracking and attribution via Google Tag Manager so every decision could be data-led.
Rebuilt the Google and Meta campaigns around high-intent targeting and conversion objectives.
Created a niche lead magnet (Tax Guide for Uber Drivers) to capture and qualify prospects.
What happened
250 Facebook lead-form leads at an $11 average cost
200+ website leads at a $12 average cost
900+ tax-guide downloads at $1.50 each
~20% lead-to-client conversion rate
"Mitch gave us real clarity on what to focus on and what to fix. The Tax Guide and Facebook ads strategy especially made a huge difference. It's given us the confidence to grow properly."
"Horton Taylor has been helping us get our business cranking and Mitch’s expertise have been a huge help. Can’t recommend Mitch enough, he’s epic! Super knowledgeable, efficient and friendly. Mitch has grown his own businesses so he’s got heaps of good advice too. He really cares about the success of your business!"
Alex Fladgate, JunkBoss
"How good. Been dealing with Horton Taylor for the last couple of months and been real happy with what they have been doing for my business. We have lots of exciting stuff in the pipeline that Mitch is involved in. I appreciate what you guys do for us and am looking forward to the future."
Mikey Smale, Clean Windows NZ
Questions we get about Meta ads in Tauranga
Is there a minimum budget for Facebook ads?
In practice, yes. We recommend starting from $500 a month in ad spend, about $16 a day, paid straight to Meta on your own card. Below that Meta gets too few results to optimise against, so the campaign stays in the learning phase and your cost per enquiry never settles. Management sits on top as a flat monthly fee, and you get that number on a free 15-minute call. Once enquiries land steadily at $500 a month, scaling to $1,000 usually buys more of the same, so scale after the first number is good rather than before.
How much do Facebook ads cost per 1000 views?
That figure is a CPM, and it only really applies when you buy reach or awareness. On the lead and conversion campaigns we run for Tauranga businesses you are effectively paying per result, so a CPM tells you almost nothing about whether the ads are working. We will not hand you a New Zealand CPM as a benchmark, because ours moves with the season, the audience size and the creative. Cost per enquiry is the number we report. There is a fuller breakdown in how much Facebook ads cost in NZ.
Is it worth paying for Facebook ads?
It is worth it when an enquiry costs less than a job earns, and it is a waste when nobody is measuring that. On a lead-form campaign for Rideshare Consultants we brought in 250 enquiries at an $11 average cost, alongside 200+ website leads at $12 each, and the business grew 40% in 12 months. That worked because tracking went in before the spend did. For the channel-by-channel version, read Facebook ads vs Google Ads for NZ service businesses.
What are the common Facebook ads mistakes?
Boosting posts instead of running campaigns is the big one. Boosting optimises for engagement, so you buy likes and comments from people who will never hire you. After that: no Pixel or Conversions API, so nothing is attributed; one piece of creative left running until it fatigues and the cost per enquiry doubles; audiences so broad that half the budget lands outside your service area; and sending paid clicks to a slow home page instead of a lead form or a page about that one service.
Do I need to provide the creative?
No. We produce static and video ads for you, and the best-performing local creative is almost always your own job photos and phone footage rather than stock imagery. Send us the before and after shots already sitting on your phone and we will edit them into ads. If you have a logo, brand colours or existing assets, we use those too.
Do the ads run on Instagram as well?
Yes. Facebook and Instagram sit in the same Meta ad account, so campaigns run across both, plus Messenger and other placements where they earn their keep, and we cut whichever placement is not producing enquiries. The national version of this service is on Facebook and Instagram ads management.
Who owns the ad account and the Pixel data?
You do. The Meta ad account and Business Manager are set up under your own business with your own billing details, and we take partner access on top of that. If you stop working with us you keep the account, the audiences, the Pixel history and the creative. Ask any agency that question before you hand over a card.
Do you handle social media posting too?
No, and we would rather say so up front. We run the paid side: campaigns, creative, targeting and tracking. Day-to-day posting and replying to comments is a different job, and a good local content person will do it better and cheaper than we would. If you want the ads, the website and the follow-up handled by one person, see digital marketing in Tauranga.
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Let's talk.
Tell us about your business and we'll get back to you within one business day, or call Mitch on 027 412 1176.
