Start with what a customer is worth
The right budget comes from your own numbers, not from what other businesses spend. You need three figures:
- The profit you make from a typical new customer.
- How many enquiries it takes to win one customer.
- How much of that profit you are happy to reinvest in winning them.
A worked example
These figures are made up to show the method. Use your own.
A new customer brings in £300 of profit. One in five enquiries becomes a customer. So each enquiry is worth £60 of profit on average. If you are willing to spend half of that to grow, your target is £30 or less per enquiry.
That target tells you whether your adverts are working. Without it, any budget is a guess.
Set a test budget
Meta's system needs time and results to learn who responds to your adverts. A budget that only produces an enquiry now and then gives it too little to learn from, and gives you too little to judge.
- Choose a daily amount you can sustain for several weeks without touching it.
- Put it behind one clear offer, not five.
- Decide in advance what result would make you continue, change or stop.
When to spend more
Increase the budget when enquiries are arriving at or below your target cost and you can handle more of them. Raise it in steps and watch whether the cost holds. If enquiries are too expensive, fix the offer or the advert first. More money rarely fixes an advert that is not working.
Questions answered
Is there a minimum spend for Meta Ads?
Meta sets small minimum daily budgets, which vary by campaign type and currency. In practice the useful minimum is whatever lets your adverts produce enough results to learn from.
How long should I run Meta Ads before judging them?
Give a new campaign a few weeks at a steady budget. The first days are often uneven while the system learns, so avoid making big changes too early.
Should I boost posts or use Ads Manager?
Boosting is quick but limited. Ads Manager gives more control over who sees the advert, what you are optimising for and how results are tracked, so it is the better choice once you are spending regularly.