This is the first question almost every business owner asks us, and most answers online are useless because they begin with “it depends” and stop there. It does depend. But there is a sensible way to reach your own number, and it takes about ten minutes.
The short answer
For a small business testing Facebook and Instagram ads for the first time, a realistic starting budget is somewhere between $10 and $30 a day. At $20 a day you are spending about $600 a month. That is enough for Meta to gather real data and for you to learn something useful. Below roughly $10 a day you are usually paying to learn nothing: the platform never collects enough results to find the people who actually buy from you.
That first number is not your permanent budget. It is the cost of finding out whether ads work for your business at all.
Work out what a customer is worth to you first
Your ad budget should come from your own numbers, not from a figure you read somewhere. Two questions decide it:
- What does one new customer earn you? Not the price of one sale. What they are worth over the time they stay with you. A dental clinic patient who comes back twice a year is worth far more than one appointment.
- How many do you want this month? Be specific. “More customers” is not a target you can budget against.
If a customer is worth $400 to you and you want five more a month, you have $2,000 of value to play for. Spending $600 to chase it is a reasonable bet. If a customer is worth $30, that same $600 is not.
What your money actually buys
People assume the budget buys customers. It buys attention, and attention only turns into customers if three other things are right:
- The offer. A reason to act now rather than later.
- The creative. The image or video that stops the scroll. This is where most small budgets are wasted.
- Where they land. A WhatsApp message, a booking page, a phone call. If that step is awkward, the ad money is gone.
We have seen a doubled budget do nothing while a new video at the same spend changed everything. If results are poor, the budget is rarely the first thing to fix.
How long before you know
Give any new campaign at least two weeks before judging it. The first few days are Meta working out who responds, and the numbers in that window are not representative. Switching things off on day three is the most common and most expensive mistake we see.
When to spend more
Increase the budget when the maths already works, not in the hope that it will start working. If you are spending $600 and getting $2,400 of business back, more spend is sensible. Raise it gradually, around 20% at a time, so the campaign is not reset while it is learning.
If the maths does not work at $600, it will not work at $1,200. Something other than the budget needs changing.
The part nobody mentions
Your ad spend and your agency fee are two separate things. Ad spend goes to Meta directly from your own ad account. An agency fee pays for the strategy, creative and management. If anyone quotes you one combined number without telling you the split, ask. You should always be able to see exactly what reached the platform.
A realistic first month
A sensible first month for a small business looks like this: $15 to $20 a day, two or three different creatives running against each other, one clear offer, and one easy way to respond. At the end you will know your cost per inquiry, which creative worked, and whether the number is worth repeating.
That is worth far more than a guess.
If you want us to run it, that is what Meta ads management covers. If you already have a campaign running and want to know why it is not working before you spend anything more, our free social media audit is the cheaper place to start.