Facebook advertising can be an extremely effective way to reach your target audience and promote your business. However, Facebook ads can also get quite expensive, especially when you are just starting out with a limited budget. The key is figuring out how to maximize your reach and conversion while minimizing your costs. Here are some tips on how to get low cost Facebook ads.
Set a Daily Budget
When setting up your Facebook ad campaign, you will need to define a daily budget. This is the maximum amount you are willing to spend per day. The default that Facebook sets is way too high for most small businesses and startups. Make sure you lower the budget to an amount more reasonable for your business. Start very low, even just $5 per day, and you can slowly increase it over time as you test what works.
Target a Niche Audience
One of the biggest advantages of Facebook advertising is the ability to target a very specific audience. Make sure you focus on only your target customers who are likely to be interested in your products or services. Avoid the temptation to target a broad audience to try and get maximum reach. A highly targeted audience is more likely to engage and convert, which ultimately lowers your cost per result.
Use Detailed Targeting Options
Take the time to really dive into the detailed targeting options available in Facebook Ads Manager. You can target by location, demographics, interests, behaviors and more. The more closely you can define your ideal audience, the better your results will be. For example, target people who are interested in your product category, have shopped online in the past 30 days, and live in your city. The more relevant your ad is, the better the response rate.
Test Different Placements
By default, your Facebook ad may show in the News Feed, the right column, and within Instagram (if you have the Instagram ad account enabled). Try turning off the right column placement and see if your cost per click decreases. Placements within Instagram also tend to have higher costs. Turn off placements that don’t seem to be working and focus your budget on the placements getting the most engagement.
Split Test Ad Creative
Never settle on just one ad creative or post. Always be split testing different images, copy, videos, and more. Set up your campaign with an A/B split test or use Facebook’s multiple ad feature. This allows the algorithm to automatically shift budget towards the better-performing ads over time. Taking the time to test ad creative is one of the best ways to decrease your CPC and CPM over time.
Use a Conversion Campaign
If your goal is to drive conversions for an ecommerce store, lead generation, or other action, make sure to use a conversion campaign objective. This tells Facebook you want to optimize for conversions, not just reach or video views. Facebook will automatically favor ad sets that are driving more of your target conversion action, leading to a lower cost per result.
Retarget Engaged Users
One of the most effective tactics in Facebook advertising is creating audiences based on video views, engagement with your posts, website visitors, and more. By retargeting people who have already interacted with your brand, you can drive conversions at a much higher rate and lower cost per conversion. Dedicate a portion of your budget specifically to retargeting.
Use Automatic Bidding
Facebook has gotten very advanced at automatically optimizing bids to help you get the most conversions at the lowest cost. Avoid setting manual bids and instead choose automatic bidding options like lowest cost or target cost when creating your campaign. Facebook will analyze performance and adjust bids frequently to maintain your targets.
Schedule Ads in Advance
Plan out your Facebook campaigns weeks or even months in advance and schedule your ads accordingly. The earlier you are able to book placements for high-traffic holidays and events, the lower your costs will be. Planning ahead also gives you more control over your budget month-to-month.
| Event | Estimated Increase in CPM |
|---|---|
| New Year’s Day | +258% |
| Martin Luther King Jr. Day | +114% |
| Valentine’s Day | +512% |
| President’s Day | +114% |
| Easter | +307% |
| Mother’s Day | +307% |
| Memorial Day | +258% |
| Father’s Day | +307% |
| July 4th | +553% |
| Labor Day | +258% |
| Halloween | +230% |
| Thanksgiving | +615% |
| Black Friday | +307% |
| Cyber Monday | +230% |
| Christmas Eve | +563% |
| Christmas Day | +872% |
| New Year’s Eve | +563% |
As you can see in the table above, costs can more than double on holidays and popular shopping days. Get your ads scheduled ahead of time to lock in lower rates.
Use the Marketing API
For advanced Facebook advertisers who are doing high volume, you can save time and money by using the Marketing API. This allows you to automate campaign creation, bid management, reporting and more. The system can optimize and adjust campaigns on the fly to improve performance. If your monthly ad spend is high enough, the API can help maximize your results. Just be aware there is a learning curve to utilize it effectively.
Avoid the Mobile App Install Objective
If you are running app install ads, stay away from the oCPM bidding model that optimizes for the lowest cost per app install. These tend to be very expensive as Facebook tries to get you conversions at all costs. Instead, manually set a CPM or CPC bid to keep costs under control. Target for app engages or video views first before going for the hard sell.
Create Saved Audiences
As you create highly targeted and optimized custom audiences, save them to be easily reused later. Building up your saved audience asset library over time can save you a ton of work when setting up new campaigns. Just pull in your best performing custom audiences that are relevant and let the algorithms do the work.
Use Tools for Budget Management
Managing daily budgets and pacing can be challenging with Facebook Ads Manager alone. Tools like AdEspresso, SEMrush, WordStream and others can help you visualize your spend over time, spot issues with pacing, and control budgets with higher precision. Automatic rules can pause or adjust your campaigns if needed.
Test Mobile vs Desktop
Check your Facebook Ads reporting to see if you are getting better results from mobile, desktop, or a combination. Often mobile has higher engagement but desktop drives more conversions. You may be able to turn off mobile or desktop placements to focus spending only on what works best.
Run Video Views Campaigns
Getting video views on Facebook is one of the cheapest actions you can drive. Let the algorithm optimize for low cost video views before moving viewers further down the funnel to engagement and conversion focused campaigns. This two-step strategy often results in lower CPAs overall.
Use Dynamic Ads
Facebook dynamic ads that automatically show customized product ads or content to each viewer can drive greater performance. Individual customization makes your brand and offerings feel more relevant. However, be aware that dynamic ads also require you to feed Facebook product catalogs or content APIs to work.
Take Advantage of Split Testing
Never be afraid to try challenger ideas and underdog creative against your control ads. Thanks to Facebook’s powerful split testing capabilities, you can experiment freely. Let the algorithms crunch the performance data to determine statistical winners for your lowest cost ad campaign.
Analyze Campaign Details
Do a deep dive on the detailed campaign analytics Facebook provides within Ads Manager to understand what’s working and what can be improved. Look at performance by age, gender, placement, frequency, device, day and time – then use those insights to refine your targeting and creative.
Choose the Right Bid Strategy
Most of the time automatic lowest cost bidding is the best approach, but also test out manual bidding strategies in some campaigns. You may find that average CPC bidding gives you lower prices in certain cases. Constantly evaluate and refine your bidding method per campaign.
Use Facebook’s Free Resources
Facebook provides a ton of free advertising courses, certifications, blogs, videos, and other resources to help you improve your skills. Spend time learning best practices before diving into ads manager. There are also free tools like the ad creative library full of professionally designed assets.
Follow Best Practices
Always adhere to Facebook’s policies, create compliant ads, and avoid things like clickbait or sensational messaging. Their advertising team is constantly evolving best practices. Follow their lead and recommendations to ensure your accounts remain in good standing.
Conclusion
With these tips, you can stretch your Facebook advertising budget further and achieve more with less. Focus on precision targeting, strategic testing, and letting Facebook’s algorithms optimize for conversions at the lowest cost. Plan ahead, analyze results, and continue refining your strategy over time. With the right approach, you can get your Facebook CPM, CPC and overall CPA down to pennies.