How Much it Costs To Advertise on Facebook
Many businesses will consider using Facebook ads to drive new customers. I get asked at least once a week “How to promote my business on Facebook”?
Facebook is a beast when it comes to consumer reach, and it is more than equipped to allow for strict demographic targeting.
An online business may or may not find their footing in Facebook ads. However, all will need to figure out if Facebook ads is a viable marketing strategy.
That said, how much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?
What does the average Facebook ad cost?
If your digital marketing agency replied to these questions by answering, “it depends,” you aren’t alone.
Asking to drill down the cost to advertise on Facebook is a notoriously broad and open-ended matter. But that’s only when we assume the question is being asked to extract exact information.
We can estimate, we can guestimate, and we can discuss issues and more in-depth strategies which serve to influence Facebook ads pricing and investment.
Sure, each business will have its own set of variables influencing the total price. But, we can figure out some ballpark numbers.
So, how much does Facebook advertising cost?
Let’s get into the best sample of exacts as we can so that those of you looking for a short and sweet “guestimate” can get on with your lives.
According to social media stats by Hootsuite, most local businesses should expect to pay roughly .27 per click and $7.19 CPM when they run an average Facebook ads campaign.
Advertise – Don’t Get Lulled Into Averages
Warning, there is a significant danger in using the above estimates to create a full-on Facebook ads budget.
Those numbers should only be used to give you some idea of what you “might expect” in advertising cost related to Facebook ad prices.
So yes, it does depend on a multitude of variables. The above averages only serve to eliminate fears of crazy Facebook ad cost.
Steps To Maximize Your Facebook Ad Spend
Facebook advertising is a fantastic platform.
You can alter a wealth of options that can invariably influence the success or failure of your ad campaign. By manipulating any of these options, you can increase clicks, leads, and sales. The more you sell your product, the more your advertising cost is covered, and the more money is left over for you.
Get your headline right
Your campaign’s headline needs to be catchy. If it sucks, so does your campaign. This will also mean your Facebook ads pricing will skyrocket. If your headline fails to intrigue, no one is going to care to click on your ad. Worse more; the wrong customers might click on your ads.
Make sure your image doesn’t suck
When you run a Facebook ads campaign, you will need to use an image.
You realize that you are more likely to click on Facebook articles that display in your newsfeed when those articles use an attractive image. It is the same for your Facebook ad campaigns.
Choosing the right image means increasing clicks to your ad, therefore lowering your overall CPC.
Refine Your Audience
You can have a fantastic image and super intriguing headline, but put it in front of the wrong audience, and your Facebook ad campaign price falls entirely apart. Being that you own or run your local business, you should already have a good idea as to who might want to see or experience your products and services. So, start there when you filter down your demographics.
Consider the age of your audience, the gender, their location, and what things they are interested in already. The interest demographic can be slightly tricky because targeting people with interest in products such as yours can be self-defeating.
Imagine that you run a business which sells web design services.
You go into Facebook Ads and filter the interest in “web design.”
This means your ads will target users that are interested in web design. Facebook has gathered this data by using people’s statuses, comments, and maybe even messenger conversations to decide that this segment of people are interested in web design.
But in what way are they interested in web design?
Your Facebook picture might end up displayed in front of a slew of other web designers. In this way, it’s important to consider options outside of the norms. For example, you might target “small business owners” instead, or in combination with “web design.”
At the same time, if you leave your audience too broad, you likely will end up paying for many people who aren’t interested in your products or services. Drill down your audience as much as possible. I recommend you brainstorm audience ideas in advance of creating your Facebook ad and then beyond that, test audiences for Facebook ads ROI.
Let The Ad Run Beyond a Hot Minute’s Time
Facebook has internal intelligence which serves the purpose of refining your ads for you.
You need to allow your ad to run all the way, or at least most of the way, of your pre-decided span of testing time. You might be out of the gates at .75 per click, but if that’s on a mere $7 expenditure, it may not be a true and accurate sampling.
Facebook will try to refine who is seeing your ad based on who engages your ad.
This means they will put more and more people in front of your ad that seems more likely to click on your ad as they learn more about the type of people who do click your ad. That’s why pulling your ad too quickly can serve to your detriment.
Pay Attention To Your Bid Pricing
Remember, Facebook ad cost is directly correlated to the amount your ad bids for placement. It’s easy to forget that you are competing for ad placement with other competitive businesses.
If you already know your profit levels of concern with bidding, you can easily manipulate what you are willing to pay for a click or lead.
Consider The Vertical
Don’t just go by any random site’s average Facebook advertising rates.
Bloggers, even myself, will often disclose what you can expect in ad spend.
However, I work in the SEO vertical. If you work in the local Chicago plumbing vertical, it is most likely that your Facebook ad prices will vary from mine.
Test, test, and then test again
One of the most remarkable things about Facebook ads is that you can limit potential damage by limiting your total spend.
You should never launch a Facebook ads campaign without putting in place spend limits.
A spending limit does two essential things:
- It prevents you from getting screwed overall. If you fall asleep at the wheel, your campaign continues to run and spend money. If your ad is completely ineffective, it continues to run. In both scenarios, you are probably bleeding money. You can put in for an overall spend limit on campaigns to make sure you control the total amount you can lose on a single advertising campaign.
- Limiting spend serves as a test. You can set up a Facebook campaign to run for one week and place a spending limit at $100. At the end of the week, look at your overall stats. If the campaign was successful, duplicate it and increase the total spend amount. You can keep doing this and eventually, you are using the revenues from the current campaign to fuel increased campaigns.
Testing is essential to keep Facebook ads cost from exploding to out of control spends.
It’s the best way to find out if a particular marketing idea will fly. It allows you to tweak ads until you get your spend, for example, your CPC, right where you want it.
If you run a $100 test and get a CPC of .27, you can make some adjustments and hopefully get it down to .19. I’ve typically got my CPC numbers down to sub-.10. It can be done if you just pay attention to what’s happening. Testing Facebook ads is the key to keeping your revenue high.
You should always test your headline, your image, your description (located above the campaign’s post), your demographics, the interests field, and anything else you might come across that seems pertinent.
Types Of Facebook Ads Impact Costs
The kind of ad you run is sure to influence your Facebook ads cost.
If you select a smaller audience via the Facebook ad campaign filters, your cost is likely to inflate.
Let’s look at the three main subsections of Facebook advertisements:
You will see that there are three sub-sections in the ads manager tool that you need to choose to run a campaign.
Awareness ads are a branding strategy.
If you plan to run a branding strategy Facebook ads campaign, measuring your ROI is going to be a lot more complicated. Branding generally has no efficient way to track ROI. You can always look at averages regarding sales, leads, and traffic to see if you notice spikes, but it isn’t always that easy to relate branding plays to exact stats.
Consideration ads are a favorite Facebook campaign type. The most popular form is lead generation. With lead generation ads, you are running campaigns with the ultimate goal of collecting leads. Leads could be email addresses or phone numbers.
Facebook lead ads are incredibly powerful because they pre-populate the Facebook users email or phone number leaving them only to have to hit a submit button. You can import the leads automatically using a service such as Zapier, or, you can do it manually. In any case, you can segment those leads in your email list and then circle back to see how profitable those leads are. This can tell you the overall health of your campaign.
Video views can also be incredibly powerful.
When videos show up in user newsfeeds, they often attract a lot of engagement.
You can have a call to action in your video that asks the people watching to take action. You can track that action and later assess ROI on your Facebook ad campaign.
App installs are another favorite consideration ad that can be explosively profitable depending on your app’s functionality and upgrade funnel.
Conversion ads are essentially “call to action” ads. Easily trackable and undeniably powerful ways for stores, such as ones built on Shopify, can sell more product.
Good Facebook Ad Prices Take Time
Don’t get discouraged if you come out of the gates with poor Facebook ads prices and costs.
You’d be a genius if you could roll out profitable ads on the first try every time. It takes a lot of research and deep-dives into Facebook advertising best practices to make this stuff work. You also need to be willing to test various schematics patiently.
In the end, hiring a digital marketing company such as mine is the easiest way to proceed with a business that’s hyper-focused on their goods.
Contact me for more information and to see if your company qualifies for my services.
