How much should a small business spend on Facebook and Instagram ads?
Set your test budget from what a new customer is worth to you, not a number you read online. A common starting point is €10 to €20 a day for four to six weeks, enough to gather real data without betting the month on it. What you spend matters less than the ad itself and whether you measure cost per enquiry rather than cost per click.
Start from what a customer is worth, not a magic number
Work out roughly what one new customer is worth to your business over a reasonable period, then decide how much you can spend to win one and still come out ahead. A restaurant where a regular table is worth a few hundred euros a year can justify a different budget than a one-off €50 service.
From there, a daily budget of €10 to €20 for four to six weeks is a sensible first test for most local businesses: enough for the algorithm to learn who responds, too small to sting if the first version does not work. Businesses with a higher-value service, such as a clinic or a home renovation firm, can often justify €20 to €40 a day from the start, because a single booking covers many days of spend.
Whatever figure you land on, treat the first month as a test, not a verdict. You are paying to learn which offer, audience and creative work for your business, and that information is worth more than the leads themselves in the early weeks.
Why the creative matters more than the targeting
Meta's targeting has improved to the point where broad targeting, aimed roughly at your area and interests, often outperforms narrow targeting, because the algorithm finds the right people faster than manual settings do. What separates a good ad from a wasted budget is almost always the creative: the video or image people see in the first second.
A short, honest video of your business, your product or your work stops the scroll far better than a stock photo or a text graphic. This is the part of ads I focus on: making the reels and promo cuts an ad actually runs on, alongside setting up the campaign itself.
Plan for more than one piece of creative from the start. Even a small budget spread across two or three different videos, each with a different opening line or offer, tells you far more than one video run on its own, and stops the ad growing stale after a week or two of repeat views.
Local targeting and realistic first-month expectations
For a local business, keep targeting simple: a radius around your location, a broad age range, and let the platform's own learning phase do the rest over the first one to two weeks. Do not expect the first month to be your best month. Ads typically need one or two rounds of adjusting the offer, the creative or the audience before the numbers settle.
Resist the urge to stack on interest categories, lookalikes and detailed demographics from the start. A tight radius around a physical location, or a broad interest for an online offer, usually beats an over-narrowed audience that the algorithm barely has enough people left to learn from.
- Give a new campaign at least a week before judging it; the learning phase needs data.
- Test one variable at a time: a new video, a new offer or a new audience, not all three together.
- Pause what clearly is not working after a fair test, rather than letting it run out of habit.
Boosting a post versus using Ads Manager
The blue “Boost” button is quick and fine for a small, low-stakes budget, but Ads Manager gives you proper control over objective, audience and, most usefully, the ability to send people to a form or WhatsApp instead of just more likes. Once you are spending more than pocket change, move to Ads Manager: the reporting alone is worth the extra ten minutes of setup.
Ads Manager also lets you run more than one version of an ad at once, so you can compare two videos or two offers against each other properly instead of guessing which one worked from a single boosted post.
Measure cost per enquiry, not cost per click
Clicks and views feel reassuring but they do not pay the bills. Set up a way to track actual enquiries, whether that is a form, a call-tracking number or a simple “how did you hear about us” question, and work out your cost per enquiry from there. A campaign with a high cost per click but a low cost per enquiry is doing its job; the reverse looks busy and achieves little.
- Track form fills, calls and messages, not just clicks and reach.
- Compare cost per enquiry across campaigns, not cost per click.
- Give a campaign real results, not vanity metrics, before deciding to scale or stop it.
Questions people also ask
Is €10 a day enough to see results?
It's enough to run a fair first test over several weeks and learn what works, though it will not flood you with leads. Increase the budget once you see a clear cost per enquiry you are happy with.
Should I boost posts or run proper ads?
Boosting is fine for very small budgets and simplicity. Once you are spending regularly, Ads Manager gives you better targeting, tracking and the option to send people straight to a form.
Do I need a professional video for ads to work?
You do not need a huge production, but a clear, well-shot video usually outperforms a phone clip or a static image, because it holds attention in the first second when the scroll decides everything.
How long before I know if a campaign is working?
Give it at least one to two weeks and a proper budget before judging it, since the platform needs data to learn who responds. Judging after a day or two usually leads to the wrong conclusion.
Want the marketing handled too?
Websites, Google, social media and ads, made by the same person as the video.