Somebody in a Facebook group told you to start with $5 a day. It sounds responsible. It’s actually the slowest, most expensive way to learn nothing. So what is a good budget for Facebook ads when you run a small business? Can I shoot straight with you? There’s no magic number. But there is a real floor, and most small businesses budget under it. That’s why the ads “didn’t work.”
Here’s how to find your number in about ten minutes.
What Facebook Ads Actually Cost Right Now
WordStream’s Facebook ads benchmarks pull from real campaign data across industries, and three numbers are worth taping to your monitor. The average cost per click for traffic campaigns is $0.70. The average cost per lead is $27.66, up from $22.87 the year before. And if you’re in home services, it’s steeper: home and home improvement businesses average $41.26 per lead.
Read that again. One lead. Forty-one dollars. That’s not a broken campaign. That’s the going rate.
Now run the $5-a-day math. $150 a month at $27.66 per lead buys you five leads. Five. If two of them book, was that the ads or luck? You’ll never know, because five data points can’t tell you anything. You didn’t run a cheap test. You paid $150 for noise.
The Real Floor: Work Backward From Cost Per Lead
Stop asking “what can I spare?” and start asking “how many leads do I need to judge this fairly?”
My rule: budget for at least 20 leads a month. That’s enough data for Facebook’s system to optimize toward the right people, and enough for you to see a real pattern in what those leads actually do.
The math is simple:
- At the $27.66 average, 20 leads runs you roughly $550 to $600 a month in ad spend.
- In home services at $41.26, 20 leads costs $800 to $850 a month.
- Then add management, whether that’s an agency or your own nights and weekends. At The Reach Company, ad management is $500 a month per campaign with no setup fees. It’s on our pricing page because you shouldn’t have to book a sales call just to learn a price.
So a real starting budget for most service businesses lands between $1,000 and $1,500 a month, ads plus management. If that number makes you sweat, that’s useful information, not failure. It means Facebook ads shouldn’t be your first move yet. Which brings me to the part nobody selling ads will tell you.
When the Right Budget Is Zero
Can I be honest? Some businesses shouldn’t spend a dollar on Facebook ads yet.
If your website doesn’t turn visitors into calls, ads pour water into a leaky bucket. If nobody responds to a lead in the first five minutes, that $41 lead goes cold and hires whoever answered first. Fix the bucket before you fill it: a page built to convert and a follow-up system that texts back instantly. We build ours on GoHighLevel for exactly this reason.
When the system’s in place, ads amplify it. Our client Chin Up Aesthetics pulled 1,300+ leads from Facebook ads because every single one dropped into automated follow-up instead of a voicemail box. And if you’re a contractor wondering whether the platform even fits your trade, read whether Facebook ads work for home service businesses before you spend.
So what is a good budget for Facebook ads? Enough to buy 20 leads a month at your industry’s real cost per lead, plus management, and zero dollars until your follow-up can catch what the ads throw. Run that math for your business tonight. It takes ten minutes, and it’ll save you from six months of $5-a-day disappointment. You got this. And if you want a second set of eyes on the numbers, we got you too.
