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One of the most common things I hear from business owners is that they’d love to start running Facebook™ and Instagram™ Ads, but they don’t have the budget.
They’ve been told they need at least $50 or $100 a day. Or they think they need thousands of dollars a month for Meta™ Ads to work.
I want to challenge that today, because not only can you start with a smaller budget, in the majority of cases I actually recommend it, even if you have more to spend.
Why I recommend starting small
Here’s the question I’d be asking before putting a significant budget behind any campaign: do we actually know this funnel converts?
Do we know the messaging resonates? Do we know people want the lead magnet? Do we know the landing page converts? Do we know the leads coming in are the people who are likely to buy? And do we know the offer at the end converts?
If the answer to those questions is no, why would we spend thousands of dollars finding out?
Spending more money doesn’t automatically make your ads more successful. In fact, spending too much too quickly can make your results worse. And if something in your marketing isn’t working, a bigger budget just makes that problem more expensive.
Starting small lets you test your messaging, learn what your audience responds to, make sure your funnel converts, and then increase your budget once you’ve got something that’s working. That’s a much smarter way to build a profitable advertising strategy.
The two campaigns I’d focus on first
If you’ve followed this podcast for a while, you’ll know I teach a complete Meta™ Ads system with four campaign types. But you don’t need all four from day one. If you’re starting with a smaller budget, trying to spread it across four campaigns will stretch your money too thin.
Instead, there are two campaigns I recommend starting with.
Campaign One: Audience Building
This is the campaign a lot of businesses overlook because they’re focused on getting leads and making sales. An audience-building campaign takes valuable content and deliberately puts it in front of more of your ideal clients.
This might be a Reel, a teaching video, or a piece of content that challenges a common belief your audience holds. You’re not asking them to download or register for anything. You’re simply giving people a reason to pay attention to you.
As people engage with that content, you build warmer audiences you can continue marketing to. And the best part is that you can start an audience-building campaign for as little as $1 a day. That’s $30 over 30 days.
It won’t build an enormous audience overnight, but it gives your content additional distribution beyond your existing followers and organic reach.
Campaign Two: Lead Generation
For most coaches, course creators and online experts, this is where I’d put the majority of your initial marketing budget.
Whether it’s a checklist, a guide, a quiz, a free training or a masterclass, the format matters less than whether your ideal clients really want what you’re offering and whether it connects to what you ultimately sell.
We’re not just trying to get cheap leads. We’re trying to get quality leads who are a good fit for our offers.
Think about the entire journey: what are you offering in exchange for their email address? What happens after they opt in? How are you building trust? And how does that lead someone towards your paid offer?
Use your smaller budget to learn
Starting small doesn’t mean switching on your ads and leaving them. This stage is about gathering information, testing and making improvements.
Look at which ads are getting attention. Which hooks are attracting the right people. Whether your leads are a good fit for your offer. And then look at what happens after someone clicks. Are people attending your masterclass? Are they watching? Are they buying?
If leads aren’t moving through your funnel, I’d much rather identify that issue while spending $10 or $20 a day than after spending thousands.
The smaller your budget, the longer it takes to gather enough data to make confident decisions. That’s the trade-off. But the goal is to use that initial spend strategically to establish what’s working.
Make sure the whole funnel works
This is where I see a lot of businesses get caught out. They focus so heavily on the ads that they forget to look at the rest of their marketing.
Someone might have a lead generation campaign running, leads coming in, and a great cost per lead, but not enough sales. The immediate assumption is the ads aren’t working. But what if the ads are doing exactly what they’re supposed to do, and the problem is somewhere else?
Maybe the lead magnet isn’t creating a strong enough connection to the offer. Maybe people aren’t watching the training. Maybe the follow-up emails aren’t getting opened. Maybe the sales page isn’t converting. Maybe the offer itself needs work.
Before you increase your budget, understand what’s happening throughout the entire journey, not just inside Ads Manager.
When should you increase your budget?
Once your messaging is resonating, your landing page is converting, people are moving through your funnel, and you’re making sales, that’s when we can start increasing the budget.
Because now we’re not guessing. We have actual data. We know what it costs to generate a lead, what percentage move through the funnel, and roughly what it costs to acquire a paying client.
Prove the strategy before you put more money behind it. Then scale in a controlled way, testing new creative, improving the funnel, and adding the other campaigns that support your overall system.
Final thoughts
A bigger budget isn’t the solution to a strategy that isn’t working. If your messaging isn’t resonating, spending more won’t fix it. If your lead magnet is attracting the wrong people, increasing your budget brings in more of the wrong people. If your funnel isn’t converting, pushing more traffic through it won’t make it profitable.
Start small. Test. Learn. Make improvements. And once you’ve got something that’s working, that’s when you start increasing your investment.
The goal isn’t to spend as much money as possible on ads. The goal is to build a profitable marketing system that you can scale.
I would love to hear your thoughts...