Tip Tuesday Ask an Expert: “How Much Should I Be Spending on Social Media Ads?
Without relying on an “it depends” answer, determining how much you should be spending on social media ads really does depend on a multitude of variables, this is the general approach we utilize to start to creating ad budgets.
Start small, tweak, and then scale
When first developing and launching a campaign, you may not get your audience targeting, your ad creative, or written messaging just right on the first try. Don’t just dive feet first in with your campaign and blow your budget! Take some time to start the budget small to gain sample data (like a baseline conversion rate) to help you make the first round of tweaks.
You don’t want to tweak things right out of the gate or make too many tweaks at once either since you’ll want to understand which exact change leads to improvement. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram need some time to learn. They learn which types of people are most likely to perform your call-to-action that you’re measuring performance off of. If you don’t give it enough time to learn, or enough dollars to distribute to enough people, then you are moving forward pretty blind.
We recommend starting with around $250 over the course of a month* to test your ads (a/b testing is best), targeting, and call-to-actions. Don’t be afraid to repeat this testing period if you still haven’t fully dialed in your campaign for desired results.
Once you get your campaign converting at the rate you want, it’s time to scale! At this point, you’ll have a conversion rate and you’ll know that generally speaking – with X number of dollars, y number of people saw your ads, and Z number of people followed through on the action you’re wanting. From that formula, you can start to calculate a realistic budget to start from to give you the ideal return on investment.
* This recommendation is for Facebook/Instagram Business Manager ad campaigns or would work similarly on Twitter. Linkedin is a little different and much more expensive to advertise on. The $250 starting budget would be spent much quicker, so plan on shortening your testing timeline OR increasing overall budgeting including your test budget.
Don’t Miss Out on Tip Tuesday!
For more marketing and business-related tips, sign up for our weekly #tiptuesday email newsletter here:
Want to Catch up on Past Tip Tuesdays?
Find them all here
