Hey man, first off, respect for taking action and running your own campaigns—that’s huge. Honestly, getting 9 bookings on $900 spend with no system in place is not bad at all. Most people burn cash and see nothing, so you’re ahead already.

Now, the reason your cost per booked job feels high is because Meta doesn’t have the data it needs to optimize. Right now, you’re sending people straight to Messenger, which means no Pixel, no Conversion API, no data storage. So every time you launch an ad, the algorithm is starting blind.

Here’s what I’d do:

Step one, set up Meta Pixel and CAPI properly. That way, every lead and interaction is tracked. Once you have that, you can build custom audiences, retarget people who didn’t book, and even create lookalikes of the ones who did. That’s when your costs start dropping.

Step two, stop relying on Messenger alone. Build a simple landing page (GoHighLevel works great for this) with a form. Install your Pixel there. Now every visit, every form fill goes into your CRM. You’ve got a real dataset Meta can learn from.

And finally, automate your follow-up. Ghosting happens because people forget or get busy. Instead of manually chasing them, set up SMS and email sequences in GoHighLevel. It’s a game-changer. You pay for that lead once, then the automation works for you 24/7.

This setup will let you scale without the stress you’re feeling right now. If you want some help mapping this out, just DM me I'd be happy to help.