It’s one of the most common questions we get, both when we’re writing up proposals and when we’re onboarding new clients.
“How much do I actually need to spend on Facebook ads?”
And we get it.
Nobody wants to chuck money into a black hole and hope for the best.
You want to know what return you’re going to get, or at least what kind of budget gives you the best shot at results.
But the honest answer?
There’s no single magic number.
(Sorry. We know.)
Like most good marketing questions, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve, and how well it’s working.
First: What’s Your End Goal?
Before you even think about ad budget, ask yourself this:
What’s the actual outcome you’re aiming for?
Your goal determines everything, including how much you’ll need to spend and what results to expect.
Here’s how that breaks down:
Want more sales? → We’re tracking Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Want more likes? → We’re looking at Cost Per Like.
Going for brand awareness? → You’ll be measuring Reach or Impressions.
Driving traffic? → Then Cost Per Click (CPC) is your metric.
Each of these goals has different benchmarks, different audience behaviours, and different ad strategies, which means they’ll also perform differently at different budget levels.
Facebook Ads Aren’t Plug-and-Play
One of the biggest mistakes we see is treating Facebook Ads like a one-time vending machine.
“Let’s just put £100 on it and see what happens.”
But it doesn’t really work like that.
Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram) are more like a slow-burn experiment:
Test. Learn. Tweak. Repeat.
One month your £10/day campaign might fly.
The next? It might dip, not because it’s broken, but because something in the algorithm, audience behaviour, or creative has shifted.
Good ad strategy isn’t about gambling. It’s about paying attention.
What’s the Minimum Budget to See Results?
This is where we get a bit more specific.
As a rule of thumb:
£300/month is the absolute minimum we’d recommend spending on Meta Ads.
Less than that, and you’re simply not going to get enough data to make smart decisions.
The ads won’t have time to optimise properly, and your results will be all over the place.
Can you spend more?
Sure, but only once you’ve got a proven setup that’s actually working.
Will Spending More Get Me Better Results?
Not necessarily.
We’ve seen:
Campaigns where increasing the budget lowered the cost per click.
Campaigns where increasing the budget had the opposite effect.
That’s why we never guess. We track.
If it’s working, we scale it. If it’s struggling, we:
Test different audiences
Refresh the creative
Adjust the objective
Rebuild the campaign from scratch if needed
But throwing money at a struggling campaign won’t fix it.
In fact, it’ll just drain your budget faster.
If something performs well at £10/day, it’ll probably perform just as well at £20/day, you’re just reaching more people.
A/B Testing: Your Best Friend
If you're serious about getting the most bang for your buck, you need to be testing. Constantly.
Facebook makes this easy.
In Ads Manager, you can duplicate your ad and change just one thing, maybe:
Swap the call to action
Try a new headline
Adjust the graphic colours
Add a border, tweak the copy, shorten the caption
You’d be surprised how much impact these tiny changes can make.
Once the data rolls in, you keep the winners and switch off the underperformers.
Rinse and repeat.
It’s Not About Spend. It’s About Return
We’re not here to say “spend more.”
We’re here to say spend smarter.
It’s not money going to your agency, it’s money going to Mark Zuckerberg.
We don’t benefit from how much you spend.
If anything, bigger budgets just make the job harder, because now we need to deliver bigger returns.
Sometimes, a tight, well-targeted £300 campaign will outperform a £3,000 one.
Other times, if you need more reach, more data, or faster results, you may need to scale up past the £1k+ mark.
And if budget is limited? No problem.
We can help you narrow your targeting, refine your audience radius, and stretch what you’ve got further.
Still Not Sure Where to Start?
If you’re not sure how much you should be spending, or what kind of results to expect, drop us a message.
At Surge, we’ll help you:
Set realistic goals
Choose the right ad format
Build a budget that makes sense for your business
Track, test, and optimise everything
Because Facebook Ads aren’t about spending big, they’re about spending smart.
Let’s figure it out together.