Facebook & Instagram Ads for Lehigh Valley Businesses: A Beginner's Guide

By Maylon, founder of Emerald Media & Marketing · November 3, 2026 · 2 min read

Facebook and Instagram are still two of the best places for a local business to find new customers. Your neighbors are on them every day, and you can show ads only to people in the towns you serve. But the setup can feel overwhelming. Here's a plain-English starting point.

Start with one clear goal

Before you spend a dollar, decide what you want people to do: call you, fill out a form, book online, or walk through your door. Every choice after this, from the campaign type to the ad itself, follows from that one goal.

Target the towns you actually serve

One of the biggest advantages of these platforms is location targeting. A Bethlehem restaurant doesn't need to pay to reach people in Pittsburgh. Set your targeting around the area your customers come from, whether that's a few miles around your shop or the whole Lehigh Valley, from Allentown and Bethlehem to Easton.

Lead forms or landing pages?

This is one of the most common questions we get, and the answer is often "both."

• Lead forms let people send you their info without leaving Facebook or Instagram. They're quick and easy, which usually means more leads, but some will be less serious.
• Landing pages send people to your website first. Fewer people finish, but they've learned more about you, so the leads are often warmer.

Many local service businesses start with lead forms and test a landing page alongside them. Let the results decide.

Creative matters more than settings

You can get every setting right and still fail if the ad itself doesn't stop the scroll. The platforms are very good at finding people; your job is to give those people a reason to stop. Video works especially well: it shows your business, your work and your face, and it builds trust before the first call. Read our list of hooks that stop the scroll for ideas.

Give it time, and keep it fresh

The first few weeks are for learning. Expect to test a few ads and audiences before you find what works, and plan to add new ads regularly so your audience doesn't tune out. We explain why in how many video ads you need per month.

Track what matters

Likes and views are nice, but what you really want to know is how many leads or customers came in, and what each one cost. Keep it simple: ad spend, number of leads, cost per lead, and how many became paying customers.

Want it done for you?

Our Full Service package covers everything in this guide: we make the video ads, set up the campaigns, handle the targeting and budget, post to your social media and send you a monthly results report. For one local service company, that meant $75k in closed deals from $1,880 in ad spend.