You can technically run ads for a few dollars a day — Facebook lets you set almost any budget. The real question is what a customer costs you, and that depends on things the budget slider doesn't show. Here's the honest math.
Facebook doesn't charge a fixed rate — you bid in an auction against everyone else who wants the same audience. You set a daily or lifetime budget, and costs land as cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand-impressions. Both swing widely by industry, audience, season, and how good the ad is. Anyone quoting you one universal “average CPC” is selling a simplification.
A realistic small-business starting point is a test budget of a few hundred dollars over a few weeks — enough to learn what a lead or sale actually costs you, which is the only number that matters.
The ad itself matters more than the targeting. Facebook rewards ads people engage with by charging less to show them. One specific, true offer with a real photo commonly beats a polished generic ad. And the landing page counts double: if people click and bounce, you pay for traffic that buys nothing.
Competition and timing also move prices — costs commonly spike near holidays when big advertisers flood the auction. A small business testing quietly in an off-peak month learns more per dollar.
Running ads before the foundation is ready. An ad pointing at an incomplete business profile or a slow, confusing website subsidizes a leak — people click, see nothing convincing, and leave. The order matters: complete the free listings, fix the page the ad lands on, pick one real offer, then spend.
Campaigns here start small, track the one number that matters — what a lead or sale costs you — and get killed fast when they're not working. The foundation gets checked first, the same way AO Audit checks it, because running ads on a broken foundation wastes your money and everyone knows it.
Facebook's technical minimums are commonly around a dollar or a few dollars a day depending on the ad type. But the practical minimum is whatever it takes to learn something — commonly a few hundred dollars of test budget over a few weeks. Spending $30 total teaches you almost nothing.
They can be — when there's a specific offer, a landing page that converts, and someone tracking what a customer costs to acquire. They're commonly a waste when the ad says “check us out” and points at a homepage. The platform isn't the variable that decides; the offer and foundation are.
Commonly one of three reasons: the ad doesn't earn engagement (Facebook charges more to force uninteresting ads on people), the audience is too broad or too competitive, or the ad runs during peak season against big-budget advertisers. Fix the ad first — it's usually the cheapest lever.
Google reaches people actively searching for what you do right now; Facebook reaches people by interest and location who weren't searching. Service businesses with urgent-need customers usually start with Google; visual businesses building local awareness usually start with Facebook. Ask your last ten customers where they found you — their answer beats any rule.