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Every business that decides to advertise on social media channels is taking a risk. As a marketing medium, social media hasn’t been around all that long and there is still a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to the benefits and best use cases for Facebook Ads. When we work with clients, we do our best to educate each one on the social media advertising strategies that work, make sense and ultimately will add value to their brand. In essence, we are seeing past the superficial engagements and looking deeper into what the return on those dollars and cents actually is. This begs the all-too-familiar question: how much should I be spending on Facebook Advertising? The short answer is that it all depends on the goals, conversion rates and other data points a business already has. However, short answers are no fun. Let’s reduce the conversation down to a very basic starting point. What does $1 in Facebook Advertising generate for a business?

To answer this, I will source our own internal agency data from the previous year. These results are across clients in a variety of industries and should be used as contextually helpful guide posts and not data-factual benchmarks.

Let’s consider some key performance indicators of social media advertising – clicks, impressions, engagements and community growth (Followers). I have omitted conversions because that is a much more convoluted conversation and will be explored in another blog. Now, if you are trying to decide where to place dollars in social advertising, consider these possible results:

$1 Spent on Facebook could get you:

• 4 Website Visits
• 2 Page Likes
• 11 Engagements
• 117 Impressions

Now the fun part. If you take that $1 and turn it into $500 dollars, how much impact would social media advertising be generating for your brand?

$500 Spent on Facebook could get you:

• 2000 Website Visits
• 1,136 Page Likes
• 5,556 Engagements
• 58,207 Impressions

Exciting right? The key takeaway from this data is knowing what you REALLY want/need for your brand. Will a spend of $500 to get more Followers make an impact on your business (outside of make your page look rad)? Will a spend of $500 to send 2,000 targeted website visitors to your site make an impact?

The safe answer is a combination of each is important! If you had to choose one, what would you spend $1 on when it comes to Facebook Ads?