In fact, everyone who is going to use social media advertising should ask a similar question: how much does Facebook advertising cost? And although, as is usually the case in such situations, there is no single universal answer, we will try to come close to it and even provide specific amounts.

We've been wanting to write an article like this for a long time. We know that all data on the amounts allocated for Facebook advertising are approximate and should be adapted to a specific situation. For this reason, even trainers and practitioners who conduct Facebook training avoid dealing with any amounts. It is very difficult to "extract" information about the sample cost per conversion or monthly budget from them. That's why we hope this post will be useful to many people.

Advertising for hundreds or ... 5 dollars

The answer to the headline question is always problematic. Accounting for advertising in the press or even on Internet portals is relatively simple. We can get a price list from the publisher that clearly shows how much an ad costs for a half page or a full page. On portals, it is a bit more complicated because we pay, for example, for 1000 impressions of an advertising banner, but usually we can count on a ready-made package, for example, 50 or 100 thousand views for a certain price.

The problem with Facebook is actually its biggest advantage - the system is just so much more flexible. We can order an ad campaign that will cost us several hundred dollars, but the minimum cost of a sponsored post is (in 2021) about 5 dollars!

No Facebook representative will offer us a specific package at a standard price. We have to decide for ourselves how much we want to spend on advertising, and such a wide range of options makes us confused.

Advertising effectiveness, i.e. conversion

Entrepreneurs who have previously used other forms of advertising, such as in the local press, sometimes believe that if they spend, say, $200 a month on newspaper advertising, they can spend "up to $100" on advertising "on a Facebook like this." But why exactly? Why would advertising on the Internet, even if targeted to a specific area, be cheaper than advertising on another medium?

In fact, the starting point should not be top-down assumptions, but goals and consequences. In the case of press advertising, they are almost impossible to measure, because how would we calculate the conversion from a newspaper ad? There are ways that can help us, such as discount coupons that the customer has to cut out of the newspaper and bring to the company, or you can measure the increase in orders or phone calls and emails from customers during the pre-advertising and during the period. However, most companies don't do this.

Online advertising provides us with much more data, allowing us to measure the number of contacts with advertising and conversion in detail. Conversion - is the achievement of different goals - for example, clicking on an ad or (preferably) acquiring customers. However, as the goals can be different (e.g., visiting a website, subscribing to a newsletter, ordering a quote) and in practice, it is not only sales that are important.

Perfect - In any case, there would be the ability to pay for results. So, if press advertising brought my company 100 inquiries or 10 clients by spending $250, the question about Facebook should be: how much should I spend to achieve the same effect from advertising on this portal.

Calculate the cost of your campaign

If you want to know how much you should spend on Facebook ads, start by asking yourself how many conversions you want to get, for example, in a month. The answer "as many as possible" will not be very good for two reasons. First of all, because in most cases, you simply won't be able to afford maximum efficiency. Secondly, even if you had unlimited financial resources, you might have trouble processing, for example, a million conversions.

You can place an ad on Facebook for $1, $5, $10, $50, or $100. However, the advertising spend that is right for you is usually the result of a compromise between the effect you want to achieve and your financial capabilities. Do you want to spend $100 on advertising? No problem. But in order for us to answer the question of whether this is the right amount, we need to know what your goals are.

Let's say your goal is 1000 conversions per month. Then the price of the ad campaign will be 1000 x X dollars, where X is the price per conversion. If the goal is to attract 1000 followers to a company profile or 1000 transactions, a budget of $50 will definitely not be enough. However, if you set a goal of 100 new Facebook followers, it will be already achievable.

Examples from practice

How do we know this? From experience. We run Facebook advertising campaigns for many companies, and in cases we work with on a daily basis, Facebook ads usually cost between $0.10 and $3 per target (usually, the goal is to please the advertiser's profile and only transaction-oriented operations are performed on it).

The "from - to" range is huge, but this is how it looks like. So until you check it out for yourself, you won't know what kind of conversion value your campaign will achieve. Much depends on the type of product/service, as well as the target group to which the offer is addressed, or simply on its market attractiveness from the recipient's point of view.

However, even such a very large range can already be valuable information for you. To begin with, you can take the average value from the data I provided. Let's assume that the cost per click is $1.50. So, if you want to "get" 100 clicks from Facebook per month, you'll spend $150 on advertising. But if you're interested in 1000 clicks, spend $1500, and if you're interested in 10,000, spend $15,000.

Of course, in reality, the growth of fans or customers will not increase linearly, but such general assumptions will help you start meaningful planning of your Facebook advertising campaign. Then, such ads should be constantly monitored and improved to reduce the average cost per share. The better the ad, the lower its cost should be.

How much other people spend on Facebook

One blogger posted on Facebook that an online learning advertising campaign cost him $150 and helped him sell 217 courses. Thus, the conversion rate in this case was $0.69. A great result! However, we must take into account that we are dealing with a well-known blogger, an influencer, a person who enjoys the recognition and sympathy of his recipients, and advertising was just a supplement to the email campaign (sending a newsletter) to the subscriber base. So in this case, Facebook was more of a supporting character than a "virtual trader."

Advertising budgets for, say, a typical company's advertising can range from a few tens of dollars a month to several hundred a month. In our experience, smaller companies most often decide on budgets in the several hundred range of $100 to $300. Note, however, that these are monthly budgets, so while it's not much individually, the benefits achieved through such campaigns stem from their long-term nature.

In conclusion, we would like to point out a few important things.

Facebook advertising does not have a single price - the cost is determined based on automatic auctions with many parameters. In short, the more popular an ad is, the lower the cost per conversion will be. For this reason, an ad for jewelry (a product that arouses consumer interest) will usually be cheaper per 1000 impressions or 1000 clicks than an ad for a construction equipment rental company (a business offer in a fairly narrow category).

The cost of conversion will also depend on what your goal is. If you're interested in leaving a lead's contact information or completing a transaction, the cost can be several tens of dollars, for example. However, if the goal is to visit a website or like a Facebook profile, the cost can drop to a few tens of cents.

After a few months of running and optimizing a campaign, you can easily link the budget to the effects. If the average cost per conversion over several months is, for example, $1, this gives you a rough idea of how much you need to spend to achieve, for example, 1000 conversions.

A Facebook campaign is best run continuously. In most situations, when promoting a brand or its offer, it is better to spend smaller amounts over a longer period of time than to spend larger amounts at once. The exception is periodic incentives and other actions that need to deliver a "big hit" in a short time.