We regularly get prospects reaching out to us seeking information or quotes on Facebook Ads. This could be for a set campaign or a monthly retainer. Either way we’re happy to help.
We feature a range of indicative Social Media Ad packages on our website, which are based on what we know it takes in terms of time to set up ads and the ad spend required to get results, based on years of running hundreds of ad campaigns for clients.
In order to make recommendations on which package may suit any given client, we first need to understand a client’s objectives or goals.
For instance recently a building company in a regional Queensland location reached out, and mentioned they wanted to launch in another regional Queensland location, and could we help them with some Facebook ads.
We said we certainly could, but first asked what exact objectives they had. To be specific we asked them:
- Do you wish to grow your existing social audiences and have them from x area (the new area they wished to expand into?
- Are you seeking more engagement from people in x area?
- More traffic to your website?
- More leads from social media?…
We also asked them if they were currently running advertising and if so whether they were just doing boosted posts or other strategies and what their monthly social media advertising spend was if so, as this helps us understand where any given business is on the social media ads journey.
They let us know that they had never run ads before and were thinking that our Starter Package may be suitable, which includes $420 in management and $500 in ad spend per month and which allows us to run x1 objective to x1 target audience set only.
We let them know that each of the objectives we outlined above would typically command a budget of around $300/month per objective i.e. $300 to grow your audience, $300 to get traffic per month etc.
And similarly if they wished to test a range of audiences (which we would recommend), we would generally suggest $300 per audience also. Why this figure?
$300 roughly equates to $10/day and with actions typically costing $1-$3 on Facebook. So in raw terms, this would mean a likely 3-10 actions per day i.e. likes, clicks to the website etc, or better.
The prospect let us know that their main objective was to get leads and that they had never run ads before.
Knowing this was helpful, as we were able to advise them that it is very difficult to go straight to the ‘bottom of the funnel’ and get leads or sales for any given client, if there is no existing awareness, engagement (top of funnel) or other consideration activities ie website traffic, messages (middle of funnel) coming from ads already.
You can liken trying to achieve that (get leads or sales immediately from an ad) to going to a networking event and someone trying to immediately trying to sell you something before introducing themselves, or explaining what they had to offer for you to consider working with them. You’d find it rude wouldn’t you? And pushy? And salesy? So too it is with social media! You need to be ‘social’ first before you can close a sale.
Sometimes talking about real examples helps to best illustrate a point.
Here’s an example of what we have been able to do with a building company on the Gold Coast that we are currently working with who are currently spending up to $1000 a month on ads and a fee of $700 to us to set up the ads, manage the ads and report on a monthly basis on results.
In Month 1 here are their results:
- Spent $795.95 in the period (-$204.05 under budget)
- Reached 64,464 people for this budget (unique people who saw the ads)
- Impressions hit 148,453 (people who saw the ads, potentially more than once)
- Average frequency varied per campaign but averaged 1.86 (we like to get to 3-4 times over time for brand/messaging reinforcement)
- Total Clicks = 1,440
- Average CPC (cost per click) = 0.55c (usually $1-$3)
- CTR = 0.97% (we like to aim for 0.5 – 2%)
Importantly, goal completions on the client’s website (which we designed) are up significantly month on month with over 300% more contact forms submitted in August 2020 than July 2020 and Facebook producing 29 Contact Us Forms (versus 7 in July) and 53 Quick Enquiry vs 10 in July and 12 phone number clicks versus 9 in July.
This company are so overwhelmed they are currently trying hard to hire more staff to cope with the demand!
With this in mind, I advised the prospect in question from another regional Queensland centre, that though we could start on the Starter package if their budget was limited, expectations on what would be likely to happen should be in line with this.
For instance on that package with a $500 a month ad spend and noting there had been no prior ads, we’d recommend $200 on top of funnel activities month 1 and $300 on middle of funnel driving traffic to their website. In Month 2, subject to results, we may spend less at the top of the funnel and more at the bottom, as we gradually nurture leads through the funnel.
How many leads the client get, will get will also hugely depend on how well their existing website converts (we can always take a look at that for any given clients and suggest or make tweaks where required leaning on our in-house web developers).
But working on averages, a cost per action on Facebook is generally $1-$3 per action and a CTR (click through rate) of 0.5-2% (sometimes much better), so from a $500 spend, subject to the exact objectives and audiences we settle on, for a $500 a month spend, this client could expect somewhere between 200-500 people to their website.
Noting that a good performing website will convert at 1-2% of those landing on it into an actual lead or enquiry, the prospect would likely get 1-6 leads a month IF (and only if) their website is converting at these expected rates.
To up the ante we therefore recommended that the prospect start on a Standard package and go from there, because it allows us more scope to test more things and get results quicker (audiences, placements, ad formats etc).
What results we’ll be able to get will also depend on the prospect’s number and quality of images and videos they have available.
One ads are mobilised, we actively manage the ads and are mainly monitoring frequency (the number of times the ad is seen) and aim to get to 3-4 before switching things up.
Also we see what are the best performing ads after month 1 (we need to let it run to see what works first) then we make recommendations at our first monthly meeting.
It’s important to understand that… social… media… ads are not free and you cannot expect to get results without a reasonable investment of spend allocated to the networks to get any results.
So there you have it. To get started with social media advertising (not just boosted posts) you’ll likely need a minimum ad spend of $500 per month, ideally more like $1000. If you would like to schedule a no obligation chat about what a social media advertising campaign or ongoing activity, Contact Us