How much money should you spend on Facebook Ads?

Sometimes when speaking to clients I’ve heard people say “oh, I can’t afford to spend thousands each month on Facebook ads!”

The truth is, however, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on Facebook ads when you’re just getting started.

Instead, I actually recommend it’s best to start with a small budget first and when you start getting results, you scale up and spend more.

WHAT IS A SMALL FACEBOOK BUDGET TO START OFF WITH?

This does depend from client to client, but for the majority of our clients (who are businesses with a professional service targeting other businesses) we recommend around £300 to £500 (or $300 to $500) as a good starting point.

For best results, if you can, I’d aim for £500 (or $500) as your Facebook budget to get started.

WHAT SHOULD YOU SPEND YOUR FACEBOOK BUDGET ON?

When you’re creating a Facebook paid advertising campaign you’ll see lots of different ways you can spend your money. You can increase your traffic, video views, engagement and leads.

My recommendation is to focus on what will bring you the best results.

In most cases, that is more leads.

So in your Facebook campaign, choose “Lead Generation” or “Conversions” as your campaign goal.

Then, focus on creating an offer where you give away a highly valuable free piece of content, in return for your potential clients contact details (such as their name and email).

MEASURE YOUR RESULTS

If this is your first time running Facebook ads, then don’t expect perfect results. It will take some time to measure what works and what doesn’t and it takes a little bit more time to test your offer so that you get the most amount of leads by spending the least amount of money.

One of the most important numbers to look at is your cost per lead.

You want to try to get this as low as possible.

The lower your cost per lead, the more leads you can generate (without paying more money).

HOW CAN YOU IMPROVE YOUR COST PER LEAD?

There are many variables but it’s mainly to do with your competition, your message and who your targeting.

In particular, if your message (your free piece of content) is going to be highly relevant to your target audience, Facebook will notice your good results and will reward with a higher “relevance score” which in turn reduces your cost per lead and your advertising costs.

SCALE UP ONCE YOU GET GOOD RESULTS

By testing different offers, target audiences, images, text, etc in your adverts, you can see what one’s perform better and get you a lower cost per click.

Once you’ve tested it to a reasonable level (where you’re getting a good amount of leads that you’re happy with and you’re happy with how much you’re paying per lead) then you can scale up and spend more (if you want to get even more results).

THINK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU GENERATE LEADS

Generating leads is the first part of a successful social media strategy, but the second part, which is lead conversion is also very important.

Once you start generating leads on Facebook, make sure you also have a plan for converting these leads into paying clients.
You can do this through email marketing, content marketing, live events, webinars, and so on.

As always, if you need any help with running your Facebook ads (through training or our done-for-you services) you can reach out to me here.