Facebook Advertising Costs How Much?
Facebook. They might have changed the parent company’s name to Meta, but they haven’t changed what it is:
A digital archipelago holding a fifth of the planet’s population.
If you’re not already advertising there, you should be.
But how?
Social networks like Facebook offer free exposure and interaction with customers, but it takes time to build a following organically.
Facebook makes money by charging businesses to get their brands and messages in front of interested users faster. Faster impressions hopefully translate into quickly growing followings.
This boost is useful because the pace of business is only accelerating. If you don’t move quickly your competition might take the lion’s share of your market.
So how much does it cost to advertise on Facebook?
The Quick Answer
Businesses typically spend between $1000 and $2500 a month on professional campaign management on Facebook.
The average monthly ad spend is $200-$1500 a month, with an average cost-per-click (CPC) of $0.97.
But those are only the averages. How do you stand out, what will that take, and how do you manage it?
Here’s how advertising works on Facebook.
What Options are There on Facebook and What Do They Each Cost?
Facebook has three avenues for getting your brand in front of a potentially interested user.
These roads are named Ads, Likes, and Boosted Posts.
Ads are the devoted panels that feature inside and next to your newsfeed. If you’ve used Facebook before, you’ve certainly come across them.
They are designed to channel a user’s attention into liking a page, visiting a website, or performing an action like installing an app.
After you’ve picked what you want your ad to do, you decide how much money you’re willing to allocate for it.
Facebook’s ads operate on a pay-per-click model like Amazon’s and Google’s, but Facebook provides different options.
You can choose to have Facebook find you the best conversion at the best price, or you can allocate a specific amount as a limit and let it ride.
Facebook also lets you choose between CPC and the CPM, or cost-per-mille, model.
Mille is Latin for “thousand,” and cost-per-mille means cost-per-thousand impressions.
With CPM, you’ll pay Facebook every time 1000 users see your ad, whether they click on it or not.
CPM is cheaper than CPC, but that’s because with CPC you’re only charged when someone proves they’re interested.
Your CPC depends on your industry, the creativity in your ad, and the effectiveness of your targeting, but $0.97 is the average cost. It’s useful as a starting estimate.
Facebook Likes are social proof that broadcasts your brand’s popularity and usefulness to other potential customers on the platform.
Likes are a visible and organic feature of the platform, and a great way to build a following quickly is to already have something of a following.
Getting the most out of paying for Likes depends on rigorous targeting and a well-managed, engaging page to wow user’s when they visit it.
The average cost-per-like is $0.57, which is worth it if you target well and get truly interested users to support your brand.
The third avenue is Boosting Posts. This involves paying Facebook to show a post you already made to more users based on targeting options that you define.
Page boosting uses the CPM model, and the cost depends on how many people you’re aiming to reach as well as how narrowly you define the targeting.
The average cost of boosting pages is $6.35 per 1000 views.
So What About Reaching Users for Free?
Paid ads accelerate your brand’s growth on Facebook, but they’re best used together with a sustained, organic approach.
One that also happens to be free.
First, fill out your page with all the information you can.
Your page is like a physical storefront: if it looks blank, bare, and with no personality, people won’t want to find out what’s inside. They’ll think you’re boring or, worse, creepy.
In contrast, if you keep your storefront current, with the windows open and customers filing in and out, then people will be curious to learn more.
Include your operating hours, location, and links to your website, along with your company’s story, your mission, and anything that tells a user who you are and why they should care.
Update your page regularly.
Post stories about new breakthroughs you’ve had, a new recipe, or someone you helped recently.
Schedule these out so that your page remains active.
Respond to users. This doesn’t mean getting in fights in the comment section. It means responding to questions, getting excited when they compliment you and ignoring them when they don’t.
If you want to get the most out of your paid ads you need to keep your Facebook page humming.
Think of it like the quality of your soil. Ads are like fertilizer: they can boost the productivity of already fertile land, but if you dump them onto a desert you’re not going to grow much of anything usable.
Take Control of Your Facebook Advertising
Facebook provides you with several ways to control costs.
When you set up a budget, you can limit how much you want to spend per day or per campaign.
They also provide you with precise tools to help you tightly define your target audience.
Target correctly and you avoid spending money on people who are unlikely to ever be interested in your product or service and focus instead on the ones who will clamber to get it.
The ad creation process works like this:
After you click the ad creation button, Facebook will ask you what you want to achieve.
Do you want more website visits? People to download your app? See a video ad?
Once you pick your goal, Facebook will ask you how many people you want to reach and what qualities they share.
You can target by location, gender, interests, age groups, and more.
Once you’ve dialed in who you’re trying to reach, Facebook will let you test your ad.
This is a great cost-saving tool because you can set your budget very low and then see how your ad performs over time before you commit real money to it.
If it flops, you go back to the targeting board. If it hits, you can increase the budget and watch the likes/impressions/conversions/whatever desired results roll in.
Interested in Boosting Your Results With Facebook Ads?
Facebook is one of the largest communities on Earth. Whoever your customer is, they likely have a presence there.
It’s reaching them the right way that’s the hard part.
There’s an ocean of content out there generated by a menagerie of competitors hoping to scoop up as much fish as they can.
Brands big and small need to find ways to cut through the clutter and ensure their message reaches the consumers who matter most.
From website development to social media strategy to creative communications, UX design, and more, Cobblestone works with high-velocity brands and companies to create powerful cross-platform experiences that resonate with their target audience and deliver results.
At Cobblestone, we learn who your target market is and then leverage our years of experience and expertise to build your brand.
We can work in tandem with your team, bringing our own expertise to your branded social media. Our strategic, solutions-oriented approach will help you find ways to create partnerships with your customers and connect and interact with your audience in ways that have never been possible before.
Chat with a strategist today and begin your Facebook growth journey!