Are you thinking of using Facebook ads to grow your business? If so you made a great choice. One thing you are probably wondering is just what are the Facebook Advertising Costs? In this article I will show you just how much it costs to run ads on Facebook and how to get your ads to show as cheaply as possible. I mean why spend money if we do not have to?
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How Facebook Advertising Costs Work:
The first thing you need to know is Facebook basically works on two types of ad models. CPM and CPC.
CPM – Cost Per Thousand Impressions
With this model Facebook bills you every time they show your ad. It doesn’t matter if someone clicks on it, shares it, or likes it. You just pay per impression. Many people like this option because if you ad gets a lot of engagement and you really know your audience you can get some really cheap clicks.
CPC – Costs Per Click
This model is more like other ad models on the web. You pay only when someone clicks your ad. Keep in mind Facebook will still bill you for ANY click on your ad. It will make you upset to see that you are paying for these “clicks” when you really only wanted to pay for website clicks. This is generally not a good way to get low Facebook Advertising costs. Just know that when you pick this option you will be paying for clicks you do not really want.
My Advice – Use Conversion Tracking:
My Advice is to not pay very much attention to these models. Why? Because Facebook will still bill you for under preforming ads. This is one of the best ways to get great Facebook Advertising costs. If you choose CPC and do not get many clicks Facebook will still bill you for impressions. Crazy I know. It’s just how they roll.
Instead think long and hard about your Facebook Ad Campaign goals. Then set up a conversion for it. This is one of the best ways to get good Facebook Advertising costs. If you are selling something (which I DO NOT recommend) add a conversion on your check out page so Facebook knows when they made you a sale. If you are getting email leads set up your conversion on your “thank you” page.
By approaching it this way you will be focusing on conversion costs. You won’t really care how much you paid for your ad to be seen by 1,000 people. You will only care that you paid $1.50 for an email sign up. Or may $27.63 to sell your latest widget on Facebook. As you can see this is how you go about lowering your Facebook Advertising costs. It works really well.
How Much To Start Running Ads:
The great thing about Facebook ads is you definitely have enough money to get started with them. You will be pretty surprised at what your Facebook Advertising costs really are. You can run a single campaign for as little as $1 per day. Basically you can spend as little or as much as you want on Facebook Ads.
When you set up your ads you give Facebook a budget like $5/day and pick and audience. Facebook will start showing your ads to that audience until they get to $5. Then your ads stop. Facebook does space them out so the $5 will last you all day.
My Advice:
Start slowly. Make one campaign and set it to $5 per day. Then make 3 more with different audiences. This is a trick I use to lower Facebook Advertising costs. Let them run for a few days and turn off the ones that have higher ad costs. Then you can slowly increasing the campaigns that are giving you good results.
What you do not want to do is start up a campaign and give it a $50/day budget. You need to watch and adjust your campaigns slowly.
Real Life Examples:
Let’s look at the example below and see how your ad campaign will probably look. Let’s look at what’s important and what is not. This will show you how to lower your Facebook Advertising Costs.
In this screen we see all the different metrics Facebook gives you about your ads. Here are the columns and what they mean:
REL – Ad Relevance score. You want this number to be as close to 10 as possible. Ads with a score of 6 or less are not connecting with your audience very well. You are paying a surge-charge just to reach people. Consider picking a better audience or writing a better ad.
CPM – Cost Per 1,000 impressions to reach people. Notice they include this on all campaigns even if you are not using it or not. This is not like Google Ads where you are not charged for impressions. Your CPM will usually be around $10.
FREQ – Frequency. How often was my ad shown? Keep this under 7. If your frequency starts getting above 2 or 3 your audience is probably too small. Lower your ad spend or make your audience larger.
Impressions – Number of times my ad was shown to someone
Actions – People taking any action on your ad. This can be a like, share, or click. The higher this number the higher your Ad relevance score.
Website clicks – Number of people that click on you ad and went to your website.
Now most of these metrics shouldn’t mean much to you. Why? Because they really don’t matter much for helping you lower your Facebook Advertising costs. If you have a goal for your campaign you should be able to tell Facebook what a conversion is. Then Facebook can go to work to get your cheaper and cheaper conversions.
So here are some of the metrics you SHOULD be looking at:
Results – They results you actually want from your campaign. How many people bought your stuff or signed up for your offer?
Cost – How much did it cost you to make that sale or get that email?
Frequency is also important but I did not include it in the screen shot above. If people see your ad too many times they will become blind to it. Your ad costs will creep up.
Ad Relevance Score – Again keep this 7 or higher to get good ad costs.
Really you just need to set a reasonable budget, have a goal, and watch the 4 metrics above closely. That is how you will get a good rate for your Facebook Advertising costs. You should feel pretty comfortable with knowing that you do have enough money to get started with Facebook ads. Start with just $5 or $10 per day and scale it up from there.
If you want to learn more about how to grow your business with Facebook check out my Free webinar where I show you 7 proven steps to grow your business Facebook: