How much should I be spending on my Facebook & Instagram ads?

Aug 1

Written By Sophie Griffiths

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How much should I be spending on my Facebook & Instagram ads?

What's this episode of the lionhearted ceo podcast about?

Work out your ideal ad budget and maximize ROI with this strategic approach!

Are you puzzling over your Facebook ad spend? You're not alone! In this episode, I'm tackling the budget question that would make me a millionaire if I had a pound for every time I heard it. Let's unravel the ad spending mystery together!

Here's what you'll discover:

Why there's no magic number for ad budgets (and what to focus on instead)
How to tailor your ad spend to different business goals and offer types
The truth about launch ad budgets and why they might seem eye-watering at first
My recommended starting points for engagement, lead gen, and retargeting ads

You'll learn how to approach your ad budget like a true Lionhearted CEO, considering factors like your offer price, audience size, and conversion rates. Whether you're just starting out or ready to scale your spending, this episode will give you the confidence to make strategic budget decisions.

Ready to transform your ad spend from a guessing game to a growth strategy? Tune in now!

Hi! I’m your host Sophie Griffiths, a Meta ads expert and business growth strategist.

The LionHearted CEO podcast is designed for impatiently ambitious women who are ready to scale and often juggling motherhood alongside their thriving online businesses in coaching, course creation, or service-based business.

If you enjoy the podcast, here are some ways you can continue the conversation:

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Love Instagram? Click here to watch a video I made on the Warm audience trap (hint, it's something almost every client struggles with!)More of a LinkedIn fan? I'm there too! Come and follow me here: Sophie Griffiths

Free Resource:

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Read the transcript:

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.

[00:00:00] Hello and a big welcome to Lionhearted CEO, the podcast for unapologetically, impatiently ambitious women who know they want to stop being the bottleneck in their business and become the Lionhearted CEO they know they are meant to be. I'm Sophie Griffiths, a tea enthusiast, marketing and Metis ad specialist and firm believer.

[00:00:24] The chocolate should never be kept in the fridge. Join me every Tuesday and Thursday for bold, imperfect, fun approach to marketing and scaling your business without burning out every few months. We'll dive into practical strategies and have inspirational conversations that will support you to create a thriving, sustainable business that brings you joy as well as financial freedom.

[00:00:45] Okay, let's jump in. Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the lion's share my , my short, actionable episodes, that answer your common questions about ads and give you something tangible to take away and get started on. . So this week I'm answering the question that [00:01:00] would make me a millionaire. 

[00:01:01] If I had a pound for every time someone asked me how much they should spend on ads. Now as you can imagine. The answer is how long is a piece of string. And that's the end of today's. 

[00:01:12] No's not really. I'm joking. There's so much that goes into how much you need to be spending on your ads. I'm going to try and break it down for you because there isn't an answer. I can't say to you specifically need to spend 10 pounds a day on your lead ads, because I don't know what your goals are. I don't know how many people you need to add to your list every month. Are. I don't know what your offers are or how many people you need to enroll every month. I don't know what your revenue targets are. 

[00:01:36] I don't know how much profit you make from each of your offers. Okay. There's so many things that go into creating an ads budget. So today I just want to take you through some of the key considerations that I make. When I am advising clients on their ads budget. 

[00:01:48] So the first thing to consider is what you're asking the person to do. So, if you were just asking someone to come over and view your Instagram profile, for example, So if you're running ads to, to grow your Instagram, [00:02:00] following the button will say something like view Instagram profile. 

[00:02:03] Okay. Or if you're running engagement ads and you just want someone to watch your video. Like your post, you know, just basically seeing your content. That's a relatively low ask. Okay. For someone to do that, it's quite low. For instance, for someone to interview Instagram profile or engage with you, you might be looking at somewhere between like 10 and 50 P. 

[00:02:22] so your overall budget then can be much lower. If you're asking someone to sign up to your lead magnet. I signed up to your freebie, especially if it's like a PDF or something quite easy to consume. 

[00:02:33] That's probably like the next level up. So that's like a mid ask. Maybe we're looking at maybe somewhere between one to three pounds. You know, par action for someone to do 

[00:02:42] then the next level up is maybe something free, still like a lead magnet, but it could be a private podcast series. It could be some sort of immersive community event, like, you know, three day. Event, it could be a book, an ebook, a guide, something that's just a little bit more. Time intensive. 

[00:02:59] It's a little bit more [00:03:00] time intensive and requires more from the person those leads are probably going to cost slightly more. Maybe you're looking at more like five to eight pounds per person per lead. Then you've obviously got people buying from you. Now this is again, the higher we go up there. 

[00:03:14] More and more variable variable. It gets depending on how good your sales pages, the price of your, the price of the thing you're selling how compelling an offer is. But generally speaking, the one that will cost you the most is to get a sale because obviously you're getting direct revenue and you're asking the most of the person. 

[00:03:31] You're not just asking them to quit the pop their details in. You're asking them to go through to a sales page, read the sales page and sign up and pay cases. Quite big ask. So first of all, you've got to consider what you're asking the person to do. Then the next thing you want to consider is how many of this result do I want? 

[00:03:49] So for example, let's just take lead ads, for example, let's just say you want a hundred new people on your email list every single month. Over the year, that's going to be about 1200 people. Obviously you're going to have [00:04:00] unsubscribes, but you could probably get about a new thousand new people on your list every year. 

[00:04:04] If you went for about a hundred people a month.

[00:04:06] Now when you start running lead ads, I do generally say you can like start at 10 pounds so if you're feeling a bit cautious, you want to test the water, start at 10 pounds a day. So that's 300 pounds a month. And then if you want a hundred people, you've got up to about three pounds, a lead to make sure that that happens. 

[00:04:23] So if every lead that comes in and costs you three pounds of ad spend to get that person to sign up, you know that if you spend 300 pounds, you'll get a hundred leads. Now once you've done that for a month or two, you might say, okay, well, actually miley's actually coming in at two pounds. And at that point, you can either adjust your budget down so that you're spending less, or you can keep your budget where it is, and have more leads coming in. Or you catch, you can say, do you know what I'm actually making sales? 

[00:04:47] I'm getting more clients. I'm feeling well momentum in my business. I'm actually going to increase my budget. And get more leads on at two pounds a lead, but you need to understand that data first, you need to understand . Are they coming in at two pounds or [00:05:00] actually are they coming in at full pounds? 

[00:05:01] And if they're coming in at four pounds and you're not hitting your a hundred people a month target with your 300 pounds, you need to decide, do you need to up your budget? Do you need to improve your ads? Or actually, are you happy with having slightly less people come onto your lit onto your list? 

[00:05:15] Because you know that they really high quality leads. So it's really about understanding what is your goal here? And that's probably the biggest thing people struggle with. It's like, well, how many people do I want on my list every month? Do I want a hundred? 

[00:05:26] Do I want 50? Do I want a 500? And that really comes down to your offer. So, if you are running a business where you are just running one, maybe high ticket offer. Done for you. So you maybe need two or three clients a month maximum then? Absolutely. I would say anything from like 50 to a hundred people a month. 

[00:05:45] We'll probably will be absolutely fine for you because you're not looking to convert a lot of people very quickly. The likelihood is you're going to be building relationships over time. They're going to be getting emails. They're going to go into Instagram and actually it's over time that you're going to build those [00:06:00] relationships. 

[00:06:00] You don't need high volume. Remembering that conversion rates from an email list are really. A much higher than Instagram, and they're still only between two and 5%. So you really need to make, if you have a hundred people on your list, you're still only going to be converting between two and five of them. And that goes down even more. 

[00:06:17] If it's a high ticket offer. So you've really got to think about what your goal is. If you, for example, have a low ticket offer that you're trying to sell, then a hundred might be okay. You might test that. I don't say yet, I'm getting like one or two sales. And that's fine. That covers my ad costs depending on how much the local Stauffer is. 

[00:06:35] Or you might say, do you know what, actually, I want more volume here. I want more people . Buying my low-cost offer. So I'm going to up the ad spend and up the amount of people that are coming in. Or you might have something that's quite audience hungry. 

[00:06:49] So things like memberships or evergreen courses that are like sort of low to mid ticket. So I'm talking somewhere like under the 500 pound mark. If [00:07:00] you want to be filling them up consistently over time, then you need to think about what your conversion rate is. 

[00:07:05] So if you want to get in. Say 20 people every single month to your membership or your low to mid ticket offer, then how many people do you need to bring in your world? Like, what's your conversion rate on email? You're probably not having sales calls. 

[00:07:17] So what's your conversion rate of your sales page? How many people do you need to get on that sales page to make one sale? So if you have an offer that is audience hungry. You need to know your numbers inside out, and I can't stress that enough. But if you are playing a numbers game, then you need to know your numbers. Because what I see so often is people playing a numbers game. And having to get a lot of people in about having no idea how many people they need to add to their audience every month, what their conversion rates are, how many people need to be on the sales page, how many people need to be opening their emails? They know none of that stuff. 

[00:07:51] And then it's really hard because it's hard to get, to get people in that it doesn't feel consistent. They don't want to spend money on ads because it feels like, well, I don't wanna spend money on us. [00:08:00] Cause I don't know how many people are coming in. I want to spend as little as possible, but if you're only spending 10 pounds a day and you're expecting to get 20 people into your membership, then you need to have a think about that. Relative value, especially something about like a membership where it's recurring. And you're actually your average customer value might be different to someone who's selling a one-off course. We only going to get that one sale initially.

[00:08:20] And then lastly, if we're thinking about high tickets, so something that's scalable slightly different to the monthly done for you, where you've got a cap on how many people you want to bring him. Maybe something where you're doing a bit of a launch into group program or a mastermind or something like that. And maybe you've got a masterclass or you've got an event.

[00:08:38] Now the budget you might want to have on your ads for that. 

[00:08:40] Might seem disproportionate when you're spending it. And this is the challenge that you have with launch ads, because you have to spend the money up front and hope that your event converts. So it's why I'm a massive, massive advocate for running your ads all year round. Testing what works with your audience, testing your messaging with your audience, growing your email list, growing your organic. 

[00:08:57] So you've got people there as you go into the launch, you don't [00:09:00] need these new people from the ads, but obviously they're there and hopefully you can convert them as well. Now let's say your high ticket thing is 5k. Okay. So you go into this hoping that you're going to get 10 people that sign up from the launch. 

[00:09:12] So you're hoping for a 50 K launch. And then when someone comes to me and says, I only want to spend 10 pounds, but I don't want to spend more than like 10 or 15 pounds a day on my ads. And we're doing maybe a 10 day ads period. So they're spending between a hundred and 150 pounds. Can you see how hoping to spend 150 pounds on ads and then, but have a 50 K launch. Is it slightly disproportionate and actually, I'm not selling, going to start saying you need to spend thousands a day when you haven't tested it. But over time, each each launch testing the budget. 

[00:09:41] So how much did we spend? How many conversions did we get do next time? Do we want to increase that budget? Do we think we can get more conversions if we get more people to the masterclass or if we have more ads running afterwards to get them to book a call with you. So always reviewing that. 

[00:09:56] Just as a benchmark for this one of my clients that does a three-day event to [00:10:00] get people into her high ticket group program. We spend about 2000 pounds on the ads in the month in the lead up to that. But her program is between seven and nine K. So even one person signing up additionally is more than covering the ads. 

[00:10:15] And that's really what you've got to think about is proportionally. What does this look like? But it's incremental. So we're not just going to go in with a two grand ad spend. We're going to build up to that over time.

[00:10:25] So if you're just starting out and you just want some baseline, I would be spending somewhere between three to five pounds a day in your engagement ads or ads that are going to grow your Instagram account. And for leaders, I recommend somewhere between 10 to 15 pounds a day. But as I've said, there are so many things that go into this, start here, see what your benchmarks are, see what it's costing, you see what the return is. So how many people are actually then buying from you. And actually it's why. The audience builder calls, like the group calls are over four months. 

[00:10:56] When I work with clients, one-to-one is a minimum of three months [00:11:00] because actually we have to start spending to see what the benchmark is to then refine and either increase or decrease the budget over time. So it's not a one size fits all budget, but it's also not one time either. 

[00:11:10] So some points of the year I will dial the budget right down for clients are the times we're going to ramp it right up. But one client that does incredibly well in Q4. So we will dial the budget right down in Q3. And then in Q4, we will kind of go right back up again to make sure we make the most of those sales over Q4. 

[00:11:27] So it's thinking seasonally. As well as all the other things I've mentioned today. 

[00:11:32] I hope that was helpful as always come over and find me on Instagram. If you want to chat. Share with me any light bulb moments or ask any questions at all at. I hope you have a lovely day and I will see you next week. Thank you so much for listening today. Before you go, if this episode struck record with you, I'd be over the moon. If you could take a moment to rate, subscribe, and leave a review, your words not only brighten up my day, but they are also the magic that helps others [00:12:00] discover this lion hearted community.

[00:12:02] Again, thank you so much and I will see you next week.