The True Costs of Facebook and Instagram Advertising – Revealed

If you’re a regular reader of the Space Digital blog (thanks by the way), you’ll already know that social media advertising is a great way to reach new customers, spread brand awareness and boost the growth of your business. But one common question we often get asked is “How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook and Instagram?”

The short answer is – it completely depends on your business, budget and end goal. But that’s probably not the answer you wanted to hear. So for those of you who want to dive a little deeper into understanding the true costs of your online marketing, we cooked up this blog just for you!

How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook and Instagram?

Firstly, you can run ads on Facebook and Instagram (and most other social media platforms for that matter) on any budget. You can begin with a budget as small as $2 per day if you really want to, though there are minimum daily budgets determined by ad variations and the scale of your audience.

Speaking of scales, Facebook and Instagram are both highly scalable platforms to work with. This makes it super easy for advertisers (like you) or marketing agencies (like us) to see what’s working on the ads we are running.

For example, you may choose to start your ads on a $50 budget per day. From here you can test difference audiences, ad types, artwork and ad copy to determine which ad is performing best and which demographic is responding well. Once you know which ads are the most effective, you can pause the rest and drop your budget down to, say, $35.

Have we lost you yet?

Now, that’s not to say you should start your ads at a high budget, nor must you start them at their minimum daily budget. The latter may be plenty for someone targeting a very small niche of people, but to reach a larger scale or test different variations, you will need to aim higher than this.

The difference between Facebook and Instagram marketing

Just like Facebook, Instagram is also a powerful marketing platform to advertise on. You can use the same tools to set up and track your campaigns and you can optimise them in similar way.

But the two platforms also have their differences. On average, Instagram posts tend to get 10x more engagement than Facebook posts, and this does come at a cost. A recent study by AdEspresso found Facebook has an average cost-per-click (CPC) of $0.35, determined by multiple factors. Whereas Instagram’s average CPC was around $0.80. 

When it comes to determining which platform to spend your advertising budget on, you need to consider who you are targeting, which platform they are most likely to be and which type of ad will generate the better ROI.

Another difference between the two platfroms is Instagram ads will never cost you more than the daily budget you set. If your budget is $10 per day, you will never go over $10 per day. Simple.

Facebook, on the other hand, can go 25% over your daily budget. It will only do this at times they think you will achieve a good result (i.e. when your target audience are online), and they will even out your budget over the calendar week.

For example, if Facebook has spent 125% of your daily budget on the Monday, they will only use 75% on the Friday, or at a time when your ads won’t be so successful.

Self-managed vs. agency-managed advertising

The wonderful thing about Facebook and Instagram marketing is you can spend as little or as much as you like. But as you can imagine, the consequences of altering your daily budget (and knowing what to do with it) are huge.

The person who spends thousands of dollars a day on online advertising won’t necessarily get better results than someone who spends $10 per day and optimises effectively. This is why it is important to review your ads frequently to ensure your formula is working well.

It can be very easy for beginners to eat through their advertising budget quickly, especially if they don’t know how to optimise their ads properly. So that’s where professional marketing agencies (like Space Digital) come into play.

Agencies will create, budget, track, boost and optimise your ads for you. They will also use A/B testing methods to determine the best formula and ensure your ads perform to the very best of their ability.

Working with an experienced team that has extensive marketing skills means you’re already one step ahead of the competition. Marketing professions already know what works well and what doesn’t, so you don’t have to waste your own budget figuring that out for yourself (as James mentions in the video below, we work with a budget of approximately $50,000 for Facebook ads per month, so you best hope we know what we’re doing 😉).

Another benefit of working with a marketing agency is their ability to create professional looking ads – including photo ads, video ads, slideshow ads and carousel ads. You will get access to a solid design team, skilled in-house copywriters and experienced marketing professional who will have your ads looking and sounding spot-on!

So, while running your ads yourself may initially seem like the cheapest option, agencies can save you from wasting valuable advertising budget and increase your ROI through high-performing, quality ads.

You can take a look at our services pages to learn more about Facebook and Instagram advertising. If you would like some help using social media ads to reach a big audience for your business, please feel free to reach out to our team on 07 3724 0469.