When discussing Facebook advertising, a common question that pops up right after “Are Facebook ads effective?” is “What’s the cost of Facebook ads?” Imagine having just $20 for lunch. How much would it cost? You wouldn’t spend more than you have, and the amount of food you get might vary.

It’s not about how much Facebook charges, but how much your budget can achieve. Marketers who dismiss the platform as too expensive are like those who say fishing’s pointless while casting their line into polluted waters. Approaching Facebook advertising, or any online advertising, with a focused strategy can reveal its cost-effectiveness. However, diving in blindly can drain your budget faster than a high roller in a casino. This post covers:

• Average Facebook advertising costs, including typical cost-per-click (CPC).
• Costly Facebook ad mistakes to dodge, along with
• Best practices to win and optimize Facebook ad costs, whatever your goals may be.

Cost-Increasing Facebook Ad Mistakes

A major pitfall when starting with Facebook ads is lacking a defined strategy. Launching campaigns without a clear targeting and ad copy plan can quickly deplete your budget. It’s like entering a football game unprepared. The reasons for ineffective, expensive ads are often straightforward. Marketers overspend when they:

• Target too broadly
• Ignore custom audiences
• Lack a retargeting strategy
• Don’t test their ads

Overly Broad Targeting

This is a common trap for beginners. Facebook’s extensive targeting options can be overwhelming. While exploring these options, remember that wasted impressions translate to wasted money. Age Range: Define an age range that closely aligns with your target audience. It’s crucial to avoid showing ads to people who won’t understand or need your offerings. Interests: Targeting vaguely relevant interests is ineffective. If you’re selling boats, targeting everyone who likes the beach is too broad. Focus on selecting interests that precisely match your desired audience. Avoid broad thinking and instead, step into the shoes of your target user. Brainstorm topics relevant to them and search for those specific interests. A few highly relevant interests outperform numerous broad ones. Location: Targeting beyond your market is another costly error. Limit your targeting to specific states or regions if your audience is concentrated there. Leveraging Facebook’s granular targeting capabilities is essential for optimization. Language: Incorporate language targeting to further refine your audience. If your primary audience speaks English (or any specific language), include that in your targeting to ensure your ads reach the most receptive individuals. Reach: Monitor the “estimated audience reach” to understand your potential audience size. An excessively large reach for a localized business suggests overly broad targeting and potential wasted spend.

Neglecting Facebook Ad Testing

This is a surefire way to squander your ad budget. It’s disheartening to see marketers invest their resources in unproven campaigns. The good news is you can avoid gambling with your budget. While the pressure for results is real, testing your campaigns before going all-in can prevent disappointing outcomes.

Optimizing Facebook Ad Costs

Navigating Facebook ads without a starting point can lead to financial strain. The solution is simple: a little attention to detail can significantly impact your campaigns.

Average Facebook Advertising Costs

Beyond optimizing your ads, understanding average Facebook advertising costs is important. Let’s explore the different charging mechanisms. The “Optimization & Pricing” section in the ad set creation or editing process offers various options:

Your campaign objective determines how your ads are delivered:

Instead of targeting everyone within your defined audience, Facebook uses your chosen price optimization to display ads to users deemed most likely to take the desired action. For “Website Conversions,” Facebook prioritizes users most likely to convert. Similarly, for “Website Clicks,” ads are shown to users with the highest likelihood of clicking or engaging. Regardless of your objective, you participate in an auction system where various factors, including those outlined for optimization, influence the cost of reaching the segmented audience associated with your desired outcome (e.g., clicks). The number of users taking the desired action affects your cost-per-result and overall campaign cost. Within your objective, you can choose different billing metrics:

CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions) displays your ad to your reachable audience as much as possible. This option suits highly targeted audiences or those likely to interact or convert. However, it requires monitoring frequency, which can rise quickly. Daily unique reach addresses the frequency issue by limiting ad displays to once per day per user. Experimenting with delivery methods often reveals that aligning with your campaign objective yields the best performance. To provide context, let’s examine some 2015 averages (available here): Average Facebook Ad CPC: $0.27 (learn how to lower Facebook CPC here!) Average click-through rate: 1.5% Average CTR for Facebook Website Custom Audience ads: 1.25% Our client data shows similar trends, with slightly higher CPCs and marginally lower CTRs.

These are just averages, and this post aims to help you surpass them. By implementing the mentioned tips, I’ve achieved CPCs as low as $0.05 and cost-per-conversions around $2.00. Expect some CPA fluctuations during a campaign’s lifespan. However, a significant CPA increase signals the need to pause the campaign. Building a successful ad account is like constructing a house. A solid foundation is crucial to prevent collapse. Leveraging your existing assets is key. Utilize Facebook to find users similar to your existing or ideal customers. Center your strategy around retargeting. A website tracking pixel and custom audiences are fundamental to a robust retargeting strategy. If you haven’t implemented the Facebook pixel on your website, prioritize it. For help implementing the pixel, refer to this blog post about Facebook for lead generation. Allow the pixel to collect data for a week or two, depending on your website traffic, and you’ll soon be able to create custom audiences from it.

Leads & Lookalike Audiences in Facebook Advertising

Next, upload a custom audience of either customer emails or leads. This refines the guessing game of interest-based targeting. Define the base profile of your desired audience before layering interests and behaviors. To upload a custom audience, navigate to the “Tools” section in your Ads Manager:

Select “Audiences” and click the “Create Audience” tab:

You have several options for importing your customer or lead list:

When uploading a file, ensure it’s in .txt or .csv format. It’s natural for businesses to feel apprehensive about sharing customer data. However, uploading customer lists to Facebook enhances the experience for both parties. Facebook uses these emails to connect with existing users, meaning they likely already have the information – you’re simply finding them.

After uploading your customer audience, exclude them from your targeting to prevent wasted impressions.

The primary purpose of uploading your customer list is to create a lookalike audience. Facebook utilizes its vast data to identify users similar to those in your uploaded list. The option to create lookalike audiences is located below the custom audience creation section:

Choose the uploaded custom audience and your target country:

You can only create one lookalike audience per country. Repeat the process for each target country:

Start with the smallest possible audience size for the highest precision and best lookalike quality. Repeat this process for your collected website visitors (no upload required, just select the audience). However, DON’T exclude this audience from your targeting. Create a lookalike audience from your website visitors to expand your reach. These audiences are easily accessible during ad set creation:

Regularly update these lists as you gain more customers and website visitors. Now you can layer interests and behaviors to further refine your lookalike audiences…

(Perfect)

Efficiency Tests

With your audiences set up, the most effective way to optimize costs is through testing. Create multiple ad sets with similar but slightly varied target audiences. Allocate a small daily budget to each ad set and design 1-3 different ads per set (with varying copy and visuals). Facebook automatically favors higher-performing ads, simplifying the process of identifying winners. Focus on optimizing and allocating your budget to the ads and ad sets that have proven effective.

Relevance Score

Achieving the lowest possible ad costs hinges on your Relevance Score. This score reflects your ad’s engagement level within a specific ad set. Each ad within an ad set receives its own Relevance Score based on its copy, creative, and user interaction. Running ad variations helps identify high-performing ads, refine your copywriting and creative skills, and ultimately lower your costs.

Attention to Detail

Create visually appealing and attention-grabbing ads. Remember, you’re vying for user attention in a crowded space. Craft compelling ad copy to complement your visuals. Striking visuals with weak copy won’t yield optimal results. Invest time in your ads. Don’t cut corners, as it significantly impacts your chances of success.

So… What Does Facebook Advertising Cost?

The cost of Facebook advertising directly correlates to your ability to reach and engage your target audience. While “cost” depends on your goals and definition of success, the strategies outlined here provide a solid framework for achieving optimal results.