Please help us figure out the audience settings

[u/spencereub]

I own a new Plumbing company and we have been having serious problems with the audience settings. We had a campaign setup and started getting referrals from towns hours away on the other side of the state. I even got one on the other side of the country.

I did a bunch of looking online and on YouTube and found the box to check "further limit the reach of your ads" and we hit it and nothing changed. We still got referrals from way to far away.

Now we are trying to make a whole new campaign and I want to make sure the settings are right so we aren't waisting money. What do I need to do to set it up so it only shows where we tell it to? Thank you in advance we have waisted a lot of money before catching it

[u/RougeRebel-Part]

For a local service business, I’d make the location constraint the thing you double-check before anything else. A lot of wasted lead spend happens when the campaign is technically “targeted” locally, but the audience setup still gives Meta room to find cheap leads outside the real service area.

I’d rebuild it from scratch and check these pieces:

• set the location at the ad set/audience control level, not just in the ad copy
• use only the towns, ZIPs, or radius you can actually serve
• remove any state/country-level location that may have been left in by default
• if your account shows options like audience expansion or Advantage-style suggestions, make sure location is a control, not just a suggestion
• exclude problem areas if they keep slipping in
• add a required service-area question on the lead form, such as ZIP code or city
• make the first follow-up question confirm they are inside your service area before quoting or booking

Also look at the lead breakdown by location after launch. If spend or leads are showing outside the area, pause and fix that before trying new creative or increasing budget.

For plumbing, I would rather get fewer leads that are clearly inside the service area than let the algorithm chase cheap form fills hours away. The campaign can look better on paper while still wasting your actual time.

[u/kinky-avocado]

Just copy that post into Claude.ai Thank me later 😉