The $10 Difference - Facebook Ads on a Budget

Overwhelmed by Facebook Ads and feel like you've wasted money in the past? You're not alone this experience is pretty common...

Many people have a view that Facebook ads are 'expensive' or a waste of money.  They absolutely can be, and NZ business owners waste millions of dollars each year on poorly target or poorly written ads. However there is lots of potential for small businesses to reach more people with Facebook Ads, when done well.

​Social media can be a bit of an echo chamber and when you share a post to your page, it's your existing page followers that are seeing it, these are likely friends, family and past customers, not so much new customers. It can be hard to reach new customers on social media without some kind of advertising.

So how much do you need to spend to reach more people? I've seen success with just allocating $10 towards a post to reach significantly more people. Most businesses have $10 to spare.

Just $10? Really?

Yes really, $10 is enough to make a tangible difference to your social media reach (compared to not spending anything). In fact I would argue $10 spent wisely can be more impactful that $100 spend poorly.

With just a $10 spend you can 50x total post impressions, reaching 1,000s of people instead of just 100's.

The trick to reaching as many people as possible on a smaller budget is to go through Ads Manager rather than boosting your posts. This way you can select the Awareness goal which shows your post/ad to as many different people as possible. This goal may not be best for everyone but for businesses wanting to reach as many people as possible within a particular location and maximise their post reach with lower ad budgets this is the way to go.

You can use your existing page post as the ad creative, in theory this is the same as boosting but Ads Manager gives you more options.

To ensure your $10 is spend wisely: 

• Your post should give a good, positive first impression of your business. 
• You should have a well defined target audience.
• You should have a clear and compelling call-to-action.

This approach is ideal for businesses / business owners who: 

•  want to reach people within a specific location or radius.
• don't enjoy social media posting and would rather spend money getting one post in front of more people rather than creating a lot of different posts. 
• have fewer than 250 page followers where organic (unpaid) post reach is likely very low.
• know their competitors are running Facebook ads and want to do the same.
• are confident in their product/service and just need more people to know about their business. 
• want to get more people visiting their website from Facebook.

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If you’d like support with getting started with Facebook Ads feel free to reach out. 

I offer free advice on whether a post is worth boosting or not and a free Meta Ads audience estimate to see how well target options match your ideal customer. 

"Sounds good but I still don't know where to start.... "

​You'll need a Meta Ad Account, or access to one. With small amounts like $10 it's possible to set things up so Facebook charges my ad account and I pass this onto you as a reimbursement - this way you don't need to worry about handing your payment info over to Facebook. I'm only able to do this for a few businesses at a time though so can't guarantee this option.

​If you’d like a done-for-you service, $10 ad runs are included in my social media reporting package from $95+GST/month. This package provides an overview of your online presence and is well worth the investment if you're serious about growing your business.