Facebook ads budget: how much should you actually spend on ads?
Most people ask this the wrong way round. The right question is what you can afford to pay for a customer and still make money — three numbers give you the answer.
How much should a UK business actually spend on ads?
Work the three numbers out in order: what a customer is worth to you, how many enquiries turn into customers, and what you can afford to pay per enquiry.
What a customer is worth
Not one sale — everything they spend with you over the time they stay a customer, minus your costs. This is the number almost nobody has ready.
How many enquiries become customers
Out of ten people who ring or fill in the form, how many actually book? Be honest — most businesses guess high.
What you can pay per enquiry
Multiply the first two, then decide what share of that you're willing to spend on getting the customer. That's your ceiling.
Rough starting points for UK campaigns
These are broad ranges, not quotes. Costs move constantly with competition, season and how well the account is built — treat them as a sanity check on your own maths, nothing more.
| Channel | Sensible test budget | What it buys you |
|---|---|---|
| Meta Ads — local service business | £20–£40 per day | Enough daily events for Meta to learn who converts, over a four-week test |
| Meta Ads — e-commerce | £40–£100+ per day | Room to test several products and creative angles rather than one |
| Google Search — local trades | £20–£50 per day | Steady daily clicks on high-intent keywords in a defined service area |
| Google Search — competitive sectors | £70+ per day | Legal, finance, insurance and cosmetic clinics where clicks are expensive |
| SEO | No media spend | Retainer only — but three to six months before it earns its keep |
From the three numbers to a monthly budget.
The boiler example above ends at a target of about £70 per lead. The monthly budget follows from how many enquiries you want and can handle. Ten enquiries a month at £70 is £700, roughly £23 a day, which sits inside the £20–£40 a day test range for a local service business in the table above. If the same business wants four new customers a month at a 30% close rate, it needs about thirteen enquiries, or roughly £930 a month.
A kitchen fitter works the same way with bigger numbers. Say an average job leaves £2,000 after materials and labour, two enquiries in ten become a job, and you are willing to spend a quarter of the margin to win it: £2,000 × 20% = £400 per enquiry at break-even, so the target is £100 a lead. Two new jobs a month means ten enquiries and about £1,000 of ad spend.
An online shop has no enquiry stage, so the conversion rate takes the place of the close rate. If a customer is worth £60 in margin over their first year and 2% of clicks buy, each click is worth £1.20 at break-even; spend a third of that and the ceiling is £0.40 a click. If clicks in your market cost more than that, the offer or the margin has to change before the budget does.
The goal changes which number you plan from. A launch or a dated event has to spend its budget inside a short window, so plan the daily figure. An always-on campaign for a local service is judged on cost per lead across a full month, so plan the monthly one. To run your own figures, the free PPC ROI calculator shows profit, ROAS and the break-even cost per click before any money is spent.
Once you have your number.
Send me your three numbers and I’ll sanity-check them.
If your affordable cost per enquiry is below what your market charges per click, you will hear it on day one.