How much should I spend on Facebook ads, and how long before I judge the results?
Set enough budget to get about 50 conversions a week. Facebook's algorithm needs about 50 conversion events a week to learn who your ideal client is and leave the learning phase. Below that the campaign can stay in learning mode (Facebook may flag it as learning limited): it does well one day and badly the next, never settles on an audience, and you usually pay more per result. You can still make it work with fewer, even 5 or 10 conversions a week, but each conversion costs more.
Work your budget backwards from the cost of one conversion, which depends on your niche and what you ask people to do. For example, leads at about $10 each means about $500 a week for 50 leads. Selling a $1,000 a month service straight from an ad could cost $1,000 or more per customer, which would mean around $50,000 a week to reach 50 sales. That is why we recommend starting with the cheapest, easiest conversion, such as a lead magnet, a free guide, an audit, a booked appointment or a low-cost trial, and selling the main offer afterwards. As a rule of thumb the minimum is around $500 a week, and the learning phase is the most expensive period.
If you cannot afford 50 conversions a week, the absolute minimum is a daily budget that covers one conversion a day. If a lead costs $10, spend $10 a day. If an appointment costs $100, spend $100 a day. Never go below that, because you need data to optimize.
Choose an amount you are prepared to lose and can leave running for at least seven days. The first three or four days, sometimes the whole first week, are often poor while Facebook experiments, and a bad first three days can be followed by a great fourth day. Do not touch the campaign or judge it before day seven, then review performance weekly. People who say Facebook does not work often turn ads on and off every day and never let the AI do its job.
The daily budget is used to calculate a weekly maximum, it is not a hard daily cap. Spending more mostly gets you the same results faster rather than costing more overall.
Ads alone do not create clients. You need a good offer, good creative and a system behind the ad that closes the lead.