"How much should I be spending on Facebook ads?" is one of the first questions almost every store owner asks us — and it's the wrong first question. The right first question is: how much can this business afford to spend to acquire a customer, and how much data do we need to find out what's actually working?
Here's the framework we use with clients at every stage.
Start with your numbers, not a budget
Before you set a dollar figure, you need three numbers: your average order value (AOV), your gross margin, and a realistic estimate of customer lifetime value (LTV) if you have repeat purchase data. These determine your maximum acceptable cost per acquisition (CPA) — the ceiling you can spend on ads and still run a healthy business.
A store with a $40 AOV and thin margins has a very different ad budget ceiling than a store with a $150 AOV and strong repeat purchase rates, even if they're the same size.
The testing budget vs. the scaling budget
We separate ad spend into two phases, and conflating them is where most first-time advertisers go wrong.
Testing budget: This is what you spend to find out which audiences, creatives, and offers actually work. It should be treated as a learning cost, not a guaranteed-return cost. For most small stores, this means budgeting at least a few weeks of consistent spend — even before you expect strong returns — because Meta's algorithm needs real conversion data to optimize.
Scaling budget: Once you have creative and audiences that are proven to convert profitably, this is what you spend to grow that volume. Scaling too early (before you have reliable data) usually just means losing money faster.
A rough starting range
For early-stage stores, we typically recommend starting with $1,500–$2,500/month in ad spend — enough to generate meaningful data within 3-4 weeks without being reckless. Established stores with proven offers often scale into $10,000+/month once the fundamentals (creative, audiences, landing pages) are dialed in.
These are starting points, not prescriptions — your actual number depends on your margins, your average order value, and how aggressive you want to be about growth versus profitability in the short term.
What matters more than the number
A bigger budget spent on weak creative and a poorly optimized landing page will underperform a smaller budget spent on strong creative pointed at a fast, conversion-ready storefront. Before we ever recommend increasing spend, we look at:
- Whether the storefront itself converts (page speed, product pages, checkout friction)
- Whether creative is being refreshed regularly (ad fatigue is real and it's fast)
- Whether post-click experience matches the ad's promise
- Whether email/SMS flows are capturing and converting the traffic paid ads are sending
How we manage this for clients
Every Growth Plan and our standalone Facebook & Paid Social package includes ongoing testing, creative direction, and optimization — we manage the account, you keep control of your ad account and your spend. We're never incentivized to inflate your budget; we're incentivized to hit a CPA that makes the math work for your business.
Not sure what your number should be? Book a call and we'll build out the numbers with you before you spend a dollar.
Want results like this for your store?
Book a free strategy call with Trevor and Kristin — no scripts, no sales reps.
Book a Call