Budgeting for Success: Maximizing ROI in Facebook Advertising

Worried about wasting money on Facebook ads? You’re not alone! In this episode of the New School of Marketing Podcast, I'm tackling the topic of budgeting for success in your ad campaigns. Learn how to set realistic goals, allocate your ad spend effectively, and make every dollar count. From testing strategies to scaling winning campaigns, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you maximize your ROI and achieve your business goals. Tune in to discover how to market smarter, not harder, with Facebook ads!

Resources mentioned in this episode: 

• MailerLite
• Felter Unfiltered - 10 things I've learned from running Facebook ads for 18 months
• Free guide to set up ads in hours

Connect with me

Website: www.newschoolofmarketing.com
Facebook: @newschoolofmarketing
Facebook group: @newschoolofmarketing
Instagram: @bianca_mckenzie

Learn from me:

🟣 FREE MASTERCLASS: Sell more of your online course with Meta Ads
https://www.biancamckenzie.com/masterclass

🔵 AIMFUL ADS ACADEMY: Tools, resources & 1:1 support to attract more ideal clients and make more sales with proven, easy to follow Facebook & Instagram ad strategies for any budget. https://www.biancamckenzie.com/aimful-ads/

🟢 FACEBOOK ADS PREP SCHOOL: Find out what you need to know and do before spending money on ads. https://www.biancamckenzie.com/prep-school/

🟡 INVISIBLE AD FUNNEL PLAYBOOK: A practical step-by-step guide to making a big impact with a tiny budget. https://www.biancamckenzie.com/playbook

🟠 FUNNEL FUNDAMENTALS: Building effective sales funnels that drive conversions and grow your business. ...

Transcript

Hey, welcome back to the New School of Marketing Podcast. I'm so grateful to you for tuning in. Before we dive into this episode, I would love to pay my respect and acknowledgement to the Palawa people of Lutruwita, who are the traditional owners of the land on which my business operates.

And I pay my respect to the elders, past and present.

Okay, if you have ever felt unsure about how much to spend on your Facebook and Instagram ads or you're worried about wasting money, tune in, stay around, because this is for you.

I'm going to dive into budgeting for actual success with ads. How to set up your ad spend in a way that maximizes your return on investment and that helps you achieve the goals that you're setting for your business.

So let's dive in. So let's start with the big picture. Why does budgeting actually matter? And I'm not just talking about Facebook ads here, although that's the thing I'm going to talk about.

But you know, setting a budget matters now. Facebook ads. And just for the record, I'm going to say Facebook ads, but we know it's meta ads, Instagram ads, it's all the same thing, right?

I'm going to say Facebook ads because that's what I'm used to. But but it also means Instagram ads.

So Facebook ads can be incredibly powerful, but it can also be a place where money can disappear super fast if you don't have a plan.

And many businesses either spend too little and they don't see results or they completely blow their budget on the wrong campaigns.

Having a proper budget ensures that you're getting the best value for your investment.

And you know, I really don't want you to make rookie mistakes. So let's dive into this so that you don't.

Now, your budget should always tie back to your goals.

So what are you trying to do here? Are you trying to build brand awareness? Are you actually trying to drive traffic to your website?

Are you trying to generate leads? And each of these requires a different approach.

So for example, if your goal is brand awareness, you want to focus on reach campaigns, but if you're after conversions, you'll want a larger budget for retargeting bottom of funnel ads.

So clarity on your goals will help you allocate your budget wisely.

Now let's talk numbers.

One of the biggest questions I hear is how much should I spend on Facebook ads? Honestly I wish I could paid for that every time I got asked.

And it really the answer depends on a few key factors.

It depends on your customer acquisition cost, it depends on your lifetime customer value, and it depends on how much you're actually willing to invest to get results.

If you're unsure, I would say start small, let's say ten twenty dollars a day and then you can scale up once you see what's working.

Keep in mind though, a small budget like that, it will take some time to take off.

So don't go three days later going I spent 30 bucks, nothing's happened, I'm going to turn it off because that doesn't work.

It's going to take time.

So if you are going to dedicate a budget, dedicate a budget for at least, at least three to six months and stick with it.

Look at the numbers daily and then fine tune. I would say if you have a small budget of like ten twenty dollars a day, let it run for a week at least so that you can then look at the numbers.

And testing is crucial in the early stages.

So don't forget to review your numbers regularly and make adjustments. But I also want to say don't go in too early. Like I said, don't turn off after three days because you haven't got enough data.

Your budget is too small to have even collected any of that. So I would say be prepared to invest $500 and potentially see nothing in return because you need a testing budget.

And if you do not have that, if you're not willing to, let's say risk $500, then don't start with ads because yes, you can see return, you can see results, but there's also that potential that you don't.

The thing is though, even if you do not see a monetary return on your investment, you will be getting data and that data will help you make changes so that you can make improvements and potentially get that monetary return.

Just want to want you to be really clear on that. It's not going to happen overnight.

So once you've set your overall budget, it's time to divide it across your campaigns and I recommend thinking about the customer journey. So you've got your top of funnel tof as we often talk about, a top of funnel for awareness, you've got your Middle of funnel for engagement and then you've got your bottom of funnel for conversions.

Generally speaking, we spend the most amount of money at the top of the funnel. If you think about a funnel that's wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, so there's more people going in at the top and coming out at the bottom, bottom.

So generally the top of the funnel is a bigger audience. So that's where we usually spend the most amount of money.

So I will kind of look at spending at least 50 to 70% on awareness ads or lead generation ads and then some at that middle, like some engagement ads to sort of add to that trust building.

And you can leave the middle of funnel out if you don't have that budget.

And you can literally go top of funnel and bottom of funnel. It does help with getting people sort of like to trust you more. So if you can at all set some money aside for that middle or funnel budget, that's really good.

And then at the bottom, I would say at least 10 to 20% on retargeting ads. Now, you don't need as big a budget there because the audience will be smaller than it would at the top of the funnel.

But retargeting is especially powerful because you are reaching people who already know your brand somewhat. So try to at least have, you know, 50 to 70% at the top of the funnel and then 10 to 20% at the bottom of the funnel and then some at the middle of the funnel.

Okay. Finally, let's make sure that every dollar you spend is working hard for you. You want to keep a close eye on all of your numbers. You want to look at your cost per click.

And I tend to look at my like cost per link click and cost and link click through rate. So there's all these abbreviations. So cost per click. CPC click through rate.

Ctr. I generally look at my link ctr and you want to look at your return on ad spends. So your roas, roas, all of these numbers will show up in your ads manager dashboard.

They will only show up if you actually have installed your data sets or pixels as they used to be called on your website.

So make sure that you have all of that installed. So your website or your landing pages are actually communicating back to Facebook and telling them, yes, someone's come through as a lead kind of thing.

So keep an eye on all your numbers. If a campaign isn't performing well, you can pause it, you can analyze the data and potentially test some new ideas. Or you might need to make some Changes on your infrastructure.

For example, you might want to test a different landing page at some point.

Scaling successful campaigns is where the magic happens. So once you have cracked that nut, that elusive Facebook ads nut, that's where you can go, okay, let's put some fuel on the fire now.

We can blow it up kind of thing. As in like expand it, amplify it. But you have to start with a solid foundation so you can start with a small budget.

Start testing, look at your numbers. What is it telling you? Lots of people clicking but not actually signing up. That's a sign of your landing page not converting. It's got nothing to do with the ads.

So another one is, are lots of people signing up to your freebie but not converting to your paid thing? You have to start digging into your funnel. Like, where are they dropping off?

Where is the disconnect? So it's got, again, nothing to do with the ads. It's actually your funnel or potentially your offer. So every single piece of data will tell you some what of a story and it's up to you to figure out what that means.

Like, what does it mean that lots of people want your freebie, but they're not paying you to work with you and it's not to do with. You just want to put that in there.

It's somewhere along the lines. So maybe at some point, you know, along email 4, the subject line isn't strong enough and people, not enough people are opening your email and then like they're dropping off.

You need to investigate every single piece of your funnel and figure out where the bottleneck is.

Okay.

Budgeting for Facebook ads doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be overwhelming. With the right, right approach, you can literally make sure that your ad spend delivers results and supports your business goals.

Remember, you can test things. You can start small, you can start with no, 20 bucks, 10, 20 bucks a day and look at the numbers and then you can adjust along the way.

I will share in the show notes. I will share an episode of one of my students who has run ads for 18 months. And in her episode, she literally shares what's working, what's not working, what happened along the way, where she needed help, what literally it's looking at basically her journey of getting ads to work for her.

I will share that in the show notes. Thank you so, so much for tuning in to the new School of Marketing podcast. I hope it was helpful and I'm always excited to share marketing tips and strategies with you.

So I'll be back next week to share more. And if you are ready just to take your business to the next level with Facebook and Instagram advertising, make sure that you head to new schoolofmarketing.com

where you'll find practical free resources. And if you want to grow your business but you don't want to spend all of your time on slow and unpredictable organic social media, then the Aimful Ads Academy is for you.

It's literally the place to learn how to be seen by your audience, how to attract the right people as leads and turn them into paying customers. With my proven for ad style stack method plus as a part of the program, you'll have one on one access with me.

I'm a marketing strategist with over 10 years experience so that you don't have to navigate ads alone.

I'm here to help you be seen, attract leads and get more paying customers.

And remember, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. I can't wait to keep this journey going with you until next time. Take care and market your business every day.