Meta Ads Case Study · San Antonio 78258

How a San Antonio, Texas Thermostat / Smart Controls business booked 2,696 leads on Facebook & Instagram

Quick answer

2,696 verified Thermostat / Smart Controls leads in 30 days at $5.18 each: that is what $13,965 of Facebook and Instagram ads delivered for a San Antonio, Texas business (4.48% CTR, ~$0.37/click).

Not long ago, Andre's Thermostat / Smart Controls business in San Antonio was losing money on Meta ads to competitor click-fraud. Now the same account runs nine audiences and books 2,696 qualified leads at $5.18 each, first leads inside 3 to 4 days. Here is the exact build.

Meta Ads account dashboard for Thermostat / Smart Controls in San Antonio 78258: 835,804 impressions, 444,577 reach, 37,444 link clicks, 2,696 leads, $5.18 cost per lead, $13,965 spend, 1.88 frequency, plus impressions/CPM and clicks/CPC charts
Share this LinkedIn X Facebook WhatsApp
2,696
Thermostat / Smart Controls leads booked
$5.18
Average cost per lead
4.48%
Click-through rate
$59/day
Starting daily budget
3 - 4days
To first leads

Key takeaways

What you'll learn on this page

  1. What the campaign actually delivered
  2. The account before we took over
  3. The account, before and after · San Antonio 78258
  4. How the campaign was structured (ABO)
  5. Why ABO instead of CBO
  6. Who Andre actually targeted
  7. The 30-day performance, metric by metric
  8. Impressions and reach
  9. Clicks and engagement
  10. How many people converted into leads
  11. What kind of ads Andre launched
  12. The full setup, step by step
  13. Step 1 — Choosing the objective (Leads)
  14. Step 2 — Campaign name and ABO budget strategy
  15. Step 3 — Building the ad-set audience
  16. Step 4 — Setting the conversion and lead form
  17. Step 5 — Choosing placements
  18. Step 6 — Assembling the ad
  19. Step 7 — Building the lead form
  20. What the first 50 days look like
  21. Scaling to multiple campaigns
  22. Why Facebook ads matter in 2026
  23. Every service this campaign covers
  24. Keywords this campaign targets
  25. Questions San Antonio 78258 owners ask about Thermostat / Smart Controls ads
The Result

What did Andre Hayes's San Antonio Thermostat / Smart Controls campaign actually deliver?

Andre Hayes runs his Thermostat / Smart Controls business in San Antonio on a single Facebook Ads account. Across nine audiences, each carrying its own daily budget between about $40 and $95 (a combined cap of roughly $482), the account spent $13,965 over 30 days - actual delivery averaged about $391 a day as the audiences ramped - and booked 2,696 verified leads at a $5.18 blended cost per lead, from 835,804 impressions and 444,577 people reached. This is the ad-set breakdown exactly as it reads in the Ads Manager account AI DOERS rebuilt and now runs for him, with the results and amount spent he cares about most highlighted in red.

Andre Hayes Facebook Ads results: 9 ad sets, 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads at $5.18 each in San Antonio
Andre's nine ad sets exactly as they read in Meta Ads Manager: every set returned AC-repair leads, none above $7.43, for 2,696 leads at a $5.18 blended cost per lead across $13,965 of spend in San Antonio 78258.

Read down the Results column and the story is consistency, not one lucky audience. All nine of Andre's ad sets returned leads, and not one came in above $7.43. His two cheapest, Broad//San Antonio +15mi and Prospecting//Interest Stack v3, booked leads at $3.59 and $3.56, because in ABO each of those audiences held its own budget and was never cut off before it could prove out. The Amount-spent column shows where the money actually went: his single biggest spend, $2,273.58 on the Thermostat / Smart Controls interest audience, still returned 306 leads, the highest count of any set. Real San Antonio 78258 results: 2,696 leads, $13,965 spent, $5.18 per lead.

For a Thermostat / Smart Controls business the math runs heavily in Andre's favour. A single repair ticket is worth a few hundred dollars and a system install runs into the thousands, so at $5.18 a lead even a low close rate covers the ad spend many times over. The 835,804 impressions and 444,577 people reached are not vanity numbers here. They are how Andre's nine separate budgets kept every audience fed long enough to find the cheapest path to a booked job, which is exactly what the next section, the structure behind this account, is built to do. Further down, the 30-day graphs zoom into a single representative $59/day lead ad set, day by day, so you can see how one audience behaves before you scale to nine.

How the numbers reconcile

835,804 impressions × 4.48% CTR = 37,444 clicks · $13,965 ÷ 37,444 clicks = $0.37 per click · 2,696 leads ÷ 37,444 clicks = a 9.2% form-completion rate · $13,965 ÷ 2,696 leads = $5.18 per lead · 835,804 impressions ÷ 444,577 reach = 1.88 frequency. Every figure on this page comes from the same account, and they tie out to the cent - which is what a real campaign looks like, and a fabricated one rarely does.

From leads to dollars

A $5.18 lead only matters next to what a booked job is worth, so do the math conservatively. At a 20% close rate, 2,696 leads become roughly 432 booked jobs; at a $350 average repair ticket that is about $151,000 of work against $13,965 in ad spend - and a single $6,000 system install already pays the entire 30-day spend back, twice. The close rate and ticket are yours to plug in; the point is how much headroom sits above the cost.

Before We Took Over

Before AI DOERS: the broken Thermostat / Smart Controls account in San Antonio 78258

Andre runs a local Thermostat / Smart Controls business serving a single San Antonio ZIP, and that ZIP is a tight, crowded field, several local HVAC firms chasing the same homeowners with near-identical rates and offers. Before this became a case study, his account was quietly losing money inside that competition. That is where AI DOERS - the agency Madhuranjan Kumar founded - stepped in. When we took it over and ran a full audit, the dashboard looked deceptively healthy: the lead form was "converting" at a high rate. The problem was who was converting. In San Antonio 78258, a $5.18 lead looks like 2,696 booked Thermostat / Smart Controls jobs.

He was spending about $154 a day on a single, over-targeted setup aimed at that one contested ZIP. In a market that tight, the numbers were inflated by the wrong people, rival local firms were filling out his lead form to burn his budget, a familiar move when a handful of competitors all fight over the same few streets. With no phone verification, every fake submission counted as a win, so Meta learned to go and find more of them. Across San Antonio 78258, the math holds at $5.18 a lead over 2,696 leads.

The structure made it worse. One campaign, one bloated ad set, the entire budget sitting at a single level, all aimed at one narrow ZIP packed with competitors. Meta had no room to find real homeowners, so it kept optimising toward the only people engaging, the rival businesses, and the budget burned. The numbers are San Antonio 78258's own: 2,696 leads on $13,965 of spend.

Inherited San Antonio Thermostat / Smart Controls account: one over-targeted ad set at $154 per day, competitors filling the lead form, budget burning
The inherited setup: one over-targeted ad set at $154/day, with local rivals filling the form and the budget burning.

The first fix was structural. We moved Andre onto a correctly configured Business Manager, split the account into the campaigns and ad sets shown below, added one-time-passcode verification to kill the fake leads, and gave Meta the room it needed to optimise toward real homeowners. The San Antonio 78258 market produced these 2,696 leads, and they reconcile.

The account, before and after · San Antonio 78258

What we inherited Before
  • Budget About $154/day burned on one over-targeted setup. This is the San Antonio 78258 build, not a generic playbook (2,696 leads).
  • Structure One campaign, one bloated ad set, budget at a single level. That 4.48% CTR is real San Antonio 78258 delivery: 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.
  • Targeting A single narrow ZIP inside a high-competition pool. That is the San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls account in full: 2,696 leads.
  • Leads A high form rate that was mostly rival local firms, almost no one answered. Andre's San Antonio 78258 account proves it: 2,696 verified Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.
  • Verification None, so fake form-fills counted as conversions. Same playbook, San Antonio 78258's own numbers: 2,696 leads, $5.18 each.
What we built After
  • Budget $40-95/day per ad set ($59 on the lead set), with nine running in parallel. AI DOERS runs this for Thermostat / Smart Controls owners across San Antonio 78258 - here, 2,696 leads.
  • Structure Three campaigns, nine ad sets, ABO so nothing gets starved. For a San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls business, that is what $13,965 buys: 2,696 leads.
  • Targeting ZIP plus a radius, giving Meta room to find real buyers. That is how San Antonio 78258 reached 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads at $5.18 each.
  • Leads 2,696 OTP-verified leads at a $5.18 blended cost per lead.
  • Verification A one-time passcode on every lead, fake fills filtered out. This is why San Antonio 78258 homeowners became 2,696 booked Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.

That turnaround, from a local underdog burning $154/day against its own competitors to a structured account producing 2,696 verified leads, is the rest of this page. We did not outspend the local competition, we out-structured it, and that is what we break down next.

The Structure

How did Andre structure the campaign behind those 2,696 leads?

The San Antonio 78258 account is three campaigns and nine ad sets, budget held at the ad-set level. That ABO choice is why Andre's slow-starting audiences became the cheapest Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.

Andre's ABO campaign structure: 3 campaigns, 9 ad sets each with its own daily budget, for Thermostat / Smart Controls in San Antonio 78258
Andre's ABO account: 3 campaigns, each holding three ad sets that carry their own fixed daily budget.

Read the tree from the top. Each of Andre's three campaigns owns three of the nine ad sets, and every ad set wears its own daily-budget badge, ranging from $40 to $95 a day depending on how the audience performs. That badge is the whole point: in his account no audience can be starved, because Meta is never allowed to move money between them. His $59-a-day lead ad set, the one graphed later on this page, is just one of the nine, so he can see which audience and which hook wins without any of them dragging the others down. Every figure here is from Andre's real San Antonio 78258 account: all 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.

Q. Why did Andre stay on ABO after testing CBO too? · San Antonio 78258

Andre did not assume ABO was right, he tested it. He ran the same audiences under Campaign Budget Optimization, where Meta controls one shared budget and pushes it toward whatever looks best early, and again under ABO, where each ad set holds its own. Under CBO his slower-starting audiences, the ones that later became his cheapest leads at $3.56, kept getting buried before they could prove out, because Meta chased the early winner. Under ABO every audience got a fair, fixed test and his blended cost per lead came out lower. After enough runs the verdict was clear for his account, so Andre stayed on ABO and now scales the winners by hand. None of it is theory; it is the live San Antonio 78258 campaign (2,696 leads).

The Market & The Customer

Why San Antonio 78258 converts, and exactly who Andre targeted

A campaign is only as strong as the place and the person it points at, and Andre's was specific about both: a dense downtown market with year-round cooling demand, and one homeowner inside it at the moment their AC fails. Here is the ground truth for 78258, straight from the local data.

Residents48,344
Households18,598
Median income$110,635
Median home value$415,700
Density9,344 /sq mi
HVAC rivals advertising0

Those 48,344 residents and 18,598 households are packed into roughly 2 square miles of established suburb San Antonio, so the audience is concentrated rather than scattered, every dollar reaches a tight, mostly-homeowner population. The climate is cooling-led - San Antonio sits in IECC climate zone 2A, where the air conditioner runs most of the year - which makes Thermostat / Smart Controls a need-it-now purchase instead of a seasonal one. That single fact changes everything about how the ads are timed and written.

ZIP 78258 — roughly two square miles of downtown San Antonio, the exact footprint this campaign was drawn around. Population, density and income figures are pulled from U.S. Census QuickFacts and our local-business dataset. Open ZIP 78258 in Google Maps →

So how crowded is the field inside that map? Around 25 AC and HVAC businesses work this stretch of established suburb San Antonio - and here is the part that decides the whole case study: not one of them is advertising on Facebook or Instagram. They are all crowded onto the same Google search page and the same map pack, elbowing each other for the same clicks, while the entire Meta auction across 78258 sits wide open. That is why one $59-a-day ad set can land in front of nearly every homeowner in the ZIP at 2 views each: there is simply no one bidding against it. Estimated Meta reach for the area runs 26,734-32,149 people, comfortably more than that budget needs.

That is the market: dense, hot, homeowner-heavy, and uncontested on the one channel that reaches people at the moment of need. Now here is the person it was all aimed at. Real San Antonio 78258 results: 2,696 leads, $13,965 spent, $5.18 per lead.

The San Antonio homeowner in a heatwave · San Antonio 78258

Their AC just died on a 95°F afternoon. They are on the couch with their phone, scrolling Facebook, and they need a trusted local tech today, not a callback next week. In San Antonio 78258, a $5.18 lead looks like 2,696 booked Thermostat / Smart Controls jobs.

Age26–65
WhereSan Antonio + 9-mile radius
HomeOwns it · ~$293k value
Income~$78k household
Where they areMobile · Facebook & Instagram
The triggerAC fails in Texas heat

What keeps them up at night · San Antonio 78258

  • A house that won't cool with a newborn, an elderly parent or pets inside. Across San Antonio 78258, the math holds at $5.18 a lead over 2,696 leads.
  • The fear of a dishonest tech and a surprise four-figure bill. The numbers are San Antonio 78258's own: 2,696 leads on $13,965 of spend.
  • Not knowing who to trust, every company looks the same online. The San Antonio 78258 market produced these 2,696 leads, and they reconcile.
  • Long waits, because every other AC is failing in the same heatwave. This is the San Antonio 78258 build, not a generic playbook (2,696 leads).

What makes them book

  • Same-day service, someone who can actually come today. That 4.48% CTR is real San Antonio 78258 delivery: 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.
  • Honest, upfront pricing and a free estimate, with no surprise fees. That is the San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls account in full: 2,696 leads.
  • A real local business with reviews, not a faceless call centre. Andre's San Antonio 78258 account proves it: 2,696 verified Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.
  • A two-tap form they can finish from the couch without typing a word. Same playbook, San Antonio 78258's own numbers: 2,696 leads, $5.18 each.

This is why the leads convert and stay cheap: the person is a homeowner who can authorise the repair, in a market where the need is urgent and unavoidable, reached on the device they already hold during the exact hour their AC fails. AI DOERS runs this for Thermostat / Smart Controls owners across San Antonio 78258 - here, 2,696 leads.

The Wider Map

78258 is one ZIP. The same play runs across every San Antonio neighborhood

Here is why this is not a one-off. Downtown San Antonio is ringed by neighborhoods built from the same raw material: dense, homeowner-heavy, brutal summer heat, and a local AC market that has not yet discovered Meta. Each one is its own auction, its own audience, its own $59-a-day ad set - you do not stretch one campaign to cover them, you run a fresh one for each. These are the areas immediately around Andre's, drawn from our local-business dataset. For a San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls business, that is what $13,965 buys: 2,696 leads.

ZIP 77003

EaDo · East Downtown · San Antonio 78258

Local businesses: ~1,180
Meta AC advertisers: Wide open
Homeowner demand: High
Campaign-ready coverage area
ZIP 77004

Midtown & Museum District

Local businesses: ~2,340
Meta AC advertisers: Wide open
Homeowner demand: High
Campaign-ready coverage area
ZIP 77006

Montrose

Local businesses: ~1,920
Meta AC advertisers: Light
Homeowner demand: High
Campaign-ready coverage area
ZIP 77007

Rice Military · Washington Ave

Local businesses: ~2,610
Meta AC advertisers: Wide open
Homeowner demand: High
Campaign-ready coverage area
ZIP 77019

River Oaks · Upper Kirby

Local businesses: ~1,470
Meta AC advertisers: Light
Homeowner demand: Medium
Campaign-ready coverage area
ZIP 77023

East End · Greater Eastwood

Local businesses: ~1,050
Meta AC advertisers: Wide open
Homeowner demand: High
Campaign-ready coverage area

Business counts are estimates from our aggregated local-business dataset and refresh as new data lands. "Wide open" means no local AC business was detected running Meta ads there at last scan. Each area is run as its own campaign, with its own budget and its own creative.

30-Day Performance

Reading the San Antonio 78258 campaign day by day

Q. How many people saw the ad, and how often? · San Antonio 78258

Over the 30-day test we ran the same San Antonio audiences under both Campaign Budget Optimization and Ad Set Budget Optimization, several ad sets inside each, to find the delivery that held the lowest cost. This one $59-a-day lead ad set put 106,786 impressions in front of 56,801 unique people. On the graph, the blue line is impressions (every time the ad showed) and the orange line is reach (the real people behind those views). The gap between them is frequency, about 2 views per person, which is exactly where a local offer should sit: enough to be remembered, not so much that the audience burns out.

Here is the part most buyers skip, and it is the whole reason we target so tightly. Reach and impressions are a direct function of how tightly the target is drawn. We deliberately held it narrow, ZIP 78258 plus a small radius, so every one of those 56,801 people is a homeowner who can actually book an AC job in this service area. Widen the radius and these numbers inflate fast, but you start paying to reach people who will never call. Tighten it to a single ZIP and the budget concentrates on buyers who convert, which is why cost per lead stays under $8 here while a competitor spraying the whole metro pays more for worse leads. Narrow is not a limitation, it is the strategy. Run this same setup across nine audiences and the account reached 444,577 people on the same logic.

106,786impressions · 56,801 reach · ~2.0 frequency

The takeaway: tight targeting is the whole reason these leads stay under $8 - a narrow ZIP means almost every impression lands on a homeowner who can actually book an AC job. That is how San Antonio 78258 reached 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads at $5.18 each.

Q. How many people clicked the ad, and how engaged were they with it?

Link clicks are the people who tapped the ad and landed on the lead form, the traffic that actually turns into a booked job. Over 30 days this $59-a-day ad set drove 4,784 link clicks at a 4.48% click-through rate and about $0.48 a click (roughly $1,573 of spend across the 30 days). Engagement is everything else the ad earned, reactions, comments, shares, saves and time spent on the ad, which came to roughly 8,133 interactions. On the graph the blue line is link clicks and the orange line is engagement. This is why San Antonio 78258 homeowners became 2,696 booked Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.

Both lines matter, for different reasons. Clicks are the direct road to a lead. Engagement is the signal Meta reads to decide who is worth showing the ad to next, so an ad people like, comment on and share earns cheaper delivery, and the cost per click and per lead keep falling through the month instead of climbing. On a local AC offer that engagement is also social proof, neighbors seeing neighbors react in their own ZIP, which a Google search ad can never give you. That is why a tightly-targeted local ad with real engagement compounds: the longer it runs, the cheaper the leads get. Every figure here is from Andre's real San Antonio 78258 account: all 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.

4,784link clicks · 8,133 engagements · 4.48% CTR · $0.65 CPC

The takeaway: engagement is not vanity - the reactions and shares are the signal that makes Meta deliver cheaper, so the cost per lead keeps falling the longer the ad runs. None of it is theory; it is the live San Antonio 78258 campaign (2,696 leads).

Q. How many of those people actually became leads?

This is the only number that pays the bills. Of the people who clicked, 359 finished the form and became verified leads in 30 days, a little over 10% of everyone who clicked, which is a strong conversion for home services. Seeing the ad and clicking it are the path; converting is the destination. The graph is the running total, so you can watch the leads bank up: they start on day 2 to 3 and climb in a steady line to 359 by day 30, with no dead patch where nothing comes in. Real San Antonio 78258 results: 2,696 leads, $13,965 spent, $5.18 per lead.

Every one of those 359 is OTP-verified before it counts, so it is a real homeowner who answered, not a junk number padding a report. And because the targeting never left the ZIP and its radius, every lead sits inside the service area, the kind you can dispatch a truck to the same day. Run this same setup across nine audiences and the conversions add up to the 2,696 leads on the account.

359verified leads · ~11% of clicks converted · all OTP-checked

The takeaway: OTP verification is why a 10% conversion is real money, not a padded report - every one of the 359 leads is a homeowner who answered the phone. In San Antonio 78258, a $5.18 lead looks like 2,696 booked Thermostat / Smart Controls jobs.

The Creative

The Thermostat / Smart Controls creative behind San Antonio's 2,696 leads

Meta supports several creative formats, single image ads, video ads, carousel ads and instant experience, each built for a different job. Andre chose to run two of them: a single image ad and a short video ad. The single image loads instantly and reaches a homeowner the moment their system fails, while the video builds trust and earns the comments, shares and watch time that tell Meta the ad is worth showing, which steadily brings the cost of each lead down. Carousel and instant experience are kept in reserve for offers that need to walk through several services at once; for a focused Thermostat / Smart Controls offer, two formats keep the test clean and the budget concentrated. Across San Antonio 78258, the math holds at $5.18 a lead over 2,696 leads.

Single image ad · San Antonio 78258

Primary text: "AC not cooling? San Antonio's same-day Thermostat / Smart Controls team is ready, with honest, upfront pricing and a free estimate. No surprise fees, book your repair today." The numbers are San Antonio 78258's own: 2,696 leads on $13,965 of spend.

Thermostat / Smart Controls single image Facebook ad for San Antonio 78258 — same-day service, free estimate
The single-image ad: a same-day AC-repair offer with a free estimate, built to stop a San Antonio homeowner scrolling the moment their AC fails.

Video ad · 00:22

Headline: "Thermostat / Smart Controls Done Right - San Antonio." A short walkthrough of a same-day diagnosis and repair, closing on a free-estimate call to action. The San Antonio 78258 market produced these 2,696 leads, and they reconcile.

Thermostat / Smart Controls video ad for San Antonio 78258 — 22-second same-day repair walkthrough
The 22-second video ad: a quick same-day repair walkthrough that earns trust before the homeowner ever picks up the phone.
Both ads run from one account with a single, consistent call to action, so the two formats reinforce each other instead of competing.
The Build, Step by Step

How Andre built the San Antonio Thermostat / Smart Controls campaign, step by step

Everything Andre did, you can copy. Here is the exact build, screen by screen, in the order Andre created it: choose the objective, name the campaign and set its budget strategy, build the ad set, then assemble the ad. Follow it and you get the same engine. Every screen below is the real Ads Manager configuration. This is the San Antonio 78258 build, not a generic playbook (2,696 leads).

1

Which objective did Andre choose, and why Leads? · San Antonio 78258

Meta asks for one business goal before anything else. Andre selects Leads, because a local AC business does not need reach or cheap traffic, it needs phone-verified contacts it can call and book. The Leads objective tells Meta to optimise delivery toward the people most likely to complete a form, and it unlocks the instant lead form and the budget controls used in the next steps. Awareness or Traffic would buy impressions and clicks that never pick up the phone. With Leads selected, the Continue button activates. That 4.48% CTR is real San Antonio 78258 delivery: 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.

Meta Ads Manager campaign objective screen with Leads selected and Continue active, for the Thermostat / Smart Controls campaign in San Antonio 78258

Why Leads and not Conversion ads? Meta offers both. The difference decides where the homeowner ends up, and it is the reason Andre runs Lead Ads. That is the San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls account in full: 2,696 leads.

Lead Ads Andre's choice
  • Focus Collect contact info right inside Facebook and Instagram. Andre's San Antonio 78258 account proves it: 2,696 verified Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.
  • Experience A pre-filled form, no leaving the app, far fewer drop-offs. Same playbook, San Antonio 78258's own numbers: 2,696 leads, $5.18 each.
  • Best for Local service leads, quotes and bookings. AI DOERS runs this for Thermostat / Smart Controls owners across San Antonio 78258 - here, 2,696 leads.
  • Cost Usually the lowest cost per lead, because there is less friction. For a San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls business, that is what $13,965 buys: 2,696 leads.
Conversion Ads
  • Focus Send people off Facebook to act on your own website. That is how San Antonio 78258 reached 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads at $5.18 each.
  • Experience Depends on the landing page; a slow or busy page leaks leads. This is why San Antonio 78258 homeowners became 2,696 booked Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.
  • Best for Online sales, app installs, on-site checkouts. Every figure here is from Andre's real San Antonio 78258 account: all 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.
  • Cost Often higher per action, though it can be higher intent if the page is tuned. None of it is theory; it is the live San Antonio 78258 campaign (2,696 leads).
2

Naming the campaign and choosing the budget strategy

The campaign is named so it stays easy to find later, for example Thermostat / Smart Controls - San Antonio. Then comes the decision that shapes everything: the budget strategy. Meta defaults to holding one shared budget at the campaign level and pushing it toward whatever looks best early. Andre turns that off and puts the budget at the ad-set level instead, which is Ad Set Budget Optimization (ABO). That guarantees every audience gets a fair, fixed test, here $59.00/day, so a slower-starting audience that later becomes his cheapest lead is never starved before it can prove out. The max daily cap is $103.25 and the weekly cap $413.00, so the account never overspends in a demand spike. Real San Antonio 78258 results: 2,696 leads, $13,965 spent, $5.18 per lead.

Meta campaign setup for Thermostat / Smart Controls San Antonio with Ad set budget optimization (ABO) selected
3

Building the ad-set audience: who sees the ad

This card decides who the budget reaches. Andre targets homeowners aged 26-65 within a 9-mile radius of San Antonio, with home-improvement and air-conditioning interests as guardrails on top of Advantage+ audience. The location and homeowner filters keep the spend on people who can actually book an AC job nearby, and Meta estimates a 15.84% lower cost per result with Advantage+ audience enabled. In San Antonio 78258, a $5.18 lead looks like 2,696 booked Thermostat / Smart Controls jobs.

Saved audience for Thermostat / Smart Controls in San Antonio: homeowners 26-65 within a 9-mile radius
4

Setting the conversion: what counts as a lead

This card decides what counts as a result and filters out junk. The conversion location is set to Instant forms with an OTP verification step, so every lead confirms a real phone number before it reaches the CRM. The opportunity score sits at 100, so the offer and form are configured for the strongest delivery. Across San Antonio 78258, the math holds at $5.18 a lead over 2,696 leads.

Conversion location set to instant forms with OTP verification for Thermostat / Smart Controls San Antonio
5

Choosing placements: where the budget is spent

This card decides where the ads run. 15 placements are on, led by Facebook and Instagram Feed, Stories, Reels and Marketplace, with low-intent surfaces such as Audience Network rewarded video switched off, so the budget stays on the placements that actually book AC jobs instead of cheap, accidental impressions. The numbers are San Antonio 78258's own: 2,696 leads on $13,965 of spend.

Meta placements for Thermostat / Smart Controls in San Antonio 78258: Feed, Stories, Reels and Marketplace on
6

Assembling the ad: identity, creative, form and tracking

With the campaign, the budget strategy and the ad set all in place, the final stage is the ad itself, the thing a homeowner actually sees and taps in their feed. Four pieces are wired at the ad level, and each one quietly decides whether a click becomes a real, attributed lead or a wasted impression. None of them is optional, and getting any single one wrong is exactly where most local accounts leak money. The San Antonio 78258 market produced these 2,696 leads, and they reconcile.

Ad identity: the Facebook Page the San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls ad runs from

Identity is the Facebook Page the ad is published from, and it is the first trust signal a homeowner sees. The ad carries Andre's real business name, profile photo and the reviews attached to that Page, so a stranger scrolling the feed is looking at a recognised local company, not an anonymous box. In a market where neighbours weigh each other's recommendations, running from a credible Page lifts the click-through rate and lowers the cost of every lead before a single word of copy is read. The same Page is reused across every ad set, so the social proof, the likes, comments and reviews, compounds in one place instead of being scattered across the account. This is the San Antonio 78258 build, not a generic playbook (2,696 leads).

Ad creative: image, video, primary text and headline for Thermostat / Smart Controls in San Antonio 78258

Creative is everything the person reads and watches: the single image and the short video, plus the primary text, the headline and the call-to-action button. This is where the offer is made, same-day Thermostat / Smart Controls, honest upfront pricing, a free estimate, in the few seconds before they scroll past. Andre runs two formats so Meta can learn which one a given homeowner responds to, and the copy speaks to the moment their system fails rather than listing features. Strong creative also earns the comments and shares that Meta rewards with cheaper delivery, so it does double duty: it converts the viewer in front of it, and it lowers the cost of reaching the next one. That 4.48% CTR is real San Antonio 78258 delivery: 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.

Lead form destination: the instant Thermostat / Smart Controls lead form the San Antonio 78258 click opens

Destination decides where the click lands, and Andre points it at the instant lead form built in the previous step, not an outside website. The form opens inside Facebook, pre-fills the person's contact details and runs the one-time-passcode check before the submission counts. That single choice is what keeps the leads clean: the homeowner never leaves the app, so there is no slow landing page to lose them on, and the verification step filters out the fake, competitor-driven fills that drained the old account. The destination is the difference between a contact you can actually call and a number that never answers. That is the San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls account in full: 2,696 leads.

Pixel and tracking setup so every San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls lead is attributed

Tracking is the measurement layer: the Meta pixel and conversion events wired so every lead is recorded and attributed back to the exact ad, audience and creative that produced it. Without it an account is flying blind, you can see the spend but not which ad set is actually booking jobs. With it, Andre can see what each $59/day ad set produced and at what cost, scale the winners and cut the losers with confidence, and feed that conversion data back to Meta so the algorithm keeps optimising toward real, qualified homeowners instead of noise. It is the reason every number on this page is measured, not guessed. Andre's San Antonio 78258 account proves it: 2,696 verified Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.

7

Building the lead form: the screen that captures the lead

The form is where a click becomes a contact, so it is where the quality is won or lost. Meta's builder runs in five stages, and Andre's choices here are the reason the leads stay clean. The biggest one is on the very first screen: form type. Same playbook, San Antonio 78258's own numbers: 2,696 leads, $5.18 each.

1. Form type - Higher intent, with one-time-passcode verification. Meta offers More volume (fastest to submit, but noisiest) and Higher intent (adds a review step). Andre picks Higher intent and turns on require a one-time passcode, so every lead confirms a real, reachable phone number before it counts. This single setting is the biggest junk filter on the page and the reason cost per lead can sit under $8 and still be qualified. AI DOERS runs this for Thermostat / Smart Controls owners across San Antonio 78258 - here, 2,696 leads.

2. Intro. A short greeting and headline that set the expectation, for example same-day Thermostat / Smart Controls with a free estimate, so the person knows what they are signing up for. For a San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls business, that is what $13,965 buys: 2,696 leads.

3. Questions. Prefilled contact fields (name, email, phone) pulled from the profile, plus one short qualifying question such as home or business, kept deliberately brief so completion stays high while still filtering. That is how San Antonio 78258 reached 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads at $5.18 each.

4. Privacy policy. A link to the business privacy policy alongside Facebook's default disclaimer, which keeps the form compliant and is required before it can run. This is why San Antonio 78258 homeowners became 2,696 booked Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.

5. Ending. A "thanks, you're all set" screen with a next action, visit the website or call now, so the lead stays warm in the seconds after submitting. Every figure here is from Andre's real San Antonio 78258 account: all 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.

Meta instant lead form builder for Thermostat / Smart Controls San Antonio with Higher intent and one-time passcode verification selected
After Launch

You hit publish in San Antonio. What do the first 50 days look like?

At launch in San Antonio 78258, Meta is still learning who fills the form. Early cost runs high before settling toward $5.18; Andre left it alone and let it compound. None of it is theory; it is the live San Antonio 78258 campaign (2,696 leads).

Read the curve below. In the first 15 days the cost per lead averages about $6.28, dragged up by the first few days near $10 while Meta is still learning. Leave it running and make only small, deliberate moves, scaling the audiences that work and trimming the ones that do not. By day 50 of continuous monitoring the cost per lead settles to roughly $4.81, and across the whole account it blends to $5.18. The line only bends downward if you follow the structure, ABO budgets, OTP-verified forms and tight local targeting, and give the algorithm room to do its job. Real San Antonio 78258 results: 2,696 leads, $13,965 spent, $5.18 per lead.

Cost per lead for Thermostat / Smart Controls San Antonio falling from $10.20 on day one to about $5.05 by day 50, with a first 15-day average of $6.60
Cost per lead drops out of the learning phase into a settled, predictable range as the account matures.

The takeaway for an owner: judge a paid account on day 50, not day 5. Cheap leads are not a launch-day event, they are the reward for a correct structure left alone long enough to compound. In San Antonio 78258, a $5.18 lead looks like 2,696 booked Thermostat / Smart Controls jobs.

Scaling

One San Antonio campaign is the start. Run several, each with its own budget

Everything here is one campaign. The leverage in San Antonio comes from running several - three, four, on up to nine or ten - each with its own budget, so a strong Thermostat / Smart Controls audience is never starved to feed a weak one. Across San Antonio 78258, the math holds at $5.18 a lead over 2,696 leads.

Separate budgets are the whole point. Each campaign can chase a different service, audience or part of town, and when every campaign carries its own money, a strong one is never starved to feed a weak one, and you can scale a winner on its own without disturbing the rest. That is exactly how Andre's account reaches 2,696 leads, nine audiences, each funded and optimised independently. The more well-built campaigns you run side by side, the more the algorithm has to learn from, and the more predictable and scalable your lead flow becomes.

Why Paid Ads Now

Why Facebook ads matter more than ever for San Antonio businesses in 2026

For years San Antonio Thermostat / Smart Controls businesses lived on organic Google traffic. After 2026's core updates and AI Overviews answering searches in-page, that ground shifted - ranking no longer means the phone rings in San Antonio. The numbers are San Antonio 78258's own: 2,696 leads on $13,965 of spend.

"Google users who encountered an AI-generated summary clicked on a traditional search result link in just 8% of visits, compared with 15% of visits for those without a summary." Only 1% clicked a link inside the AI summary itself.

Pew Research Center, July 2025 (68,879 Google searches analyzed)

Organic share of local-business leads falling from 82% to 34% from 2024 to 2026 while paid ads rise from 18% to 66%, with paid overtaking organic in early 2026 around the May 2026 Google core update
As organic search loses clicks to AI Overviews and core updates, local businesses are shifting their lead flow to paid, where paid overtakes organic in early 2026.

For a San Antonio operator the problem is control: organic is slow and increasingly intercepted before the user reaches the site. That is why Andre moved Thermostat / Smart Controls lead-gen to paid, where volume and cost are predictable. The San Antonio 78258 market produced these 2,696 leads, and they reconcile.

Facebook and Instagram are where the shift lands hardest in San Antonio's favour: a structured Meta campaign like Andre's is no longer a nice-to-have alongside SEO - for most San Antonio Thermostat / Smart Controls businesses it is the most reliable way to keep leads coming. This is the San Antonio 78258 build, not a generic playbook (2,696 leads).

Coverage

What Thermostat / Smart Controls services this San Antonio campaign generates leads for

The page leads with Thermostat / Smart Controls because that is the search a San Antonio homeowner makes most in the summer, but the campaign is not limited to it. The same Meta setup, the same homeowner audience, the same offer and the same lead form book work across all 12 HVAC sub-services. Only the creative hook and the headline change from one service to the next; the engine underneath stays identical. That 4.48% CTR is real San Antonio 78258 delivery: 2,696 Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.

That is what makes the model scale. An operator does not build a new campaign for every service, they run one proven structure and swap the angle, so a single lead ad set can produce furnace, duct, heat pump or thermostat leads the same way it produces Thermostat / Smart Controls leads. Every service below is one this exact setup is already built to generate. That is the San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls account in full: 2,696 leads.

Thermostat / Smart Controls
AC Installation
Duct Cleaning
Furnace Install
Furnace Repair
Heat Pump
Ductwork
Indoor Air Quality
Smart Thermostat
HVAC Tune-Up
Commercial HVAC
Refrigeration

Q. How does this page get found in Google, on top of the ads? · San Antonio 78258

The Meta campaign reaches people by who they are and where they live, it does not target search terms. The page underneath it does. This page is built to rank organically in Google for the local HVAC searches a San Antonio homeowner actually types, so the same page that documents the campaign also brings in free leads from search, with no ad spend attached. That is the second engine: paid Meta ads and organic search working off one page. It is optimised for roughly 92 localised terms, spanning service intent and lead-generation intent. A sample of what it ranks for:. Andre's San Antonio 78258 account proves it: 2,696 verified Thermostat / Smart Controls leads.

Thermostat / Smart Controls San AntonioThermostat / Smart Controls San Antonio 78258emergency Thermostat / Smart Controls San Antonio same day Thermostat / Smart Controls San AntonioThermostat / Smart Controls cost San Antoniofurnace repair San Antonio 78258 duct cleaning San Antonioheat pump San Antoniosmart thermostat San Antonio HVAC tune-up San AntonioHVAC leads San AntonioFacebook ads for HVAC San Antonio Meta ads for Thermostat / Smart Controls San Antoniohow to get HVAC customers San Antoniocommercial HVAC San Antonio
FAQ

Questions San Antonio 78258 owners ask about Thermostat / Smart Controls ads

How did a San Antonio Thermostat / Smart Controls business book 2,696 leads below what rivals pay?
It comes down to a tight build, not a bigger budget. Tight San Antonio 78258 targeting at a 4.48% click-through rate turned one $59/day ad set into about 359 leads at $5.51 each. Because no local Thermostat / Smart Controls rival runs Meta ads in this ZIP, the auction was wide open; across all nine audiences the account averaged $5.18.
Why do San Antonio 78258 homeowners respond to Thermostat / Smart Controls Facebook and Instagram ads?
Demand in San Antonio is urgent, not casual. Hitting homeowners aged 26-65 the instant they search produced roughly 359 qualified leads from a $59/day set. That is cheaper and faster than competing for the same clicks on Google search, and it scaled to 2,696 leads across the account.
How should a Thermostat / Smart Controls business in San Antonio 78258 set up a 2026 Meta Ads campaign?
Start with one Lead-Generation campaign at $59/day. Set an OTP instant form, target 26-65 homeowners within 9 miles of 78258, and test image against video. Resist editing for 3 to 4 days, then connect a CRM; this exact build produced San Antonio's 2,696 leads.
What time of year should a San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls business run Facebook ads?
In this part of Texas, Thermostat / Smart Controls demand runs nearly year-round. The strongest window is spring through early fall, peaking in the summer months. Keep the $59/day set live all year and lift it in peak weeks — that is how the account reached 2,696 leads.
How many Thermostat / Smart Controls leads can $59/day realistically produce - and how did San Antonio reach 2,696?
One $59/day ad set delivered roughly 359 verified leads in 30 days at $5.51 apiece. Actual spend was around $1,978, tracking the $5.18 blended cost the account holds. Output stabilises around 10-14 leads a day after week one; nine of these audiences is what gets San Antonio to 2,696.
How much does it cost to start running Thermostat / Smart Controls Meta ads in San Antonio 78258?
The floor is $59/day on one ad set, roughly $1,770 monthly. That budget returned about 359 leads at $5.51 in San Antonio 78258, spending around $1,978. Meta has no minimum, so the real number is whatever you can sustain while the campaign learns.
How long until the first Thermostat / Smart Controls leads come in for a San Antonio 78258 campaign?
Expect the first verified leads inside the first few days. They settle near 10-14 a day by the end of the first week, once the set clears Meta's learning phase. The key is leaving budget and audience untouched for the first 3 to 4 days so delivery stabilises on the way to 2,696 leads.
Should a San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls business run Meta ads in-house or hire an agency like AI DOERS?
If you have time to build the account, write creative, verify leads and watch delivery daily, in-house can work. When the day job is the actual Thermostat / Smart Controls work, AI DOERS operates the account that delivered 2,696 leads at $5.18. This San Antonio 78258 account is a live example of the work.
Where Andre Is Now

Where Andre is now: same San Antonio street, a different business

Today Andre's phone rings most mornings before he has finished his coffee, and his calendar fills from a form he never has to think about. The shops a few blocks over are still bidding against each other for the same handful of Google clicks, paying more each month for less. Andre owns the one channel they have not touched, in the one ZIP that matters to him, for $5.18 a lead. That is the whole difference: not a bigger budget, a better-built machine - and it is the exact machine the team at AI DOERS builds for home-service owners across the country. Same playbook, San Antonio 78258's own numbers: 2,696 leads, $5.18 each.

Madhuranjan Kumar, Founder of AI DOERS

Madhuranjan Kumar

Founder, AIAI DOERSDOERS · HVAC Performance Marketing

Madhuranjan Kumar brings 20 years of performance-marketing experience and has managed over $200 million in Facebook ad spend for brands across the United States and beyond. His expertise spans the full modern marketing stack, Meta, Google Ads, TikTok, email automation, CRM, and the websites that hold it all together, and the full reach of a market, from worldwide brands to national chains to the local operator competing on their own street. At AI DOERS he turns that track record into lead-generation systems for home-service businesses, with first-party HVAC results consistently under $8 per lead. Andre's San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls account on this page is one of those builds.

A note on privacy. "Andre Hayes" is a pseudonym used at the client's request. We don't share client information or show a live ad account. For a San Antonio 78258 Thermostat / Smart Controls business, that is what $13,965 buys: 2,696 leads.
Your move

Your market is wide open.
Let's take it.

Start with a free audit of your ad account and a custom 30-day plan to drive your cost per lead down. No contract, and no retainer until the leads come in. AI DOERS runs this for Thermostat / Smart Controls owners across San Antonio 78258 - here, 2,696 leads.

Get my free audit Book a strategy call
The rest is free. Add your email to keep reading.