What's the Ideal Ad Budget to Get Sales Through Your Funnel?

In this episode of Abundant Funnels, Jayne answers one of the most common questions she hears from clients, students and business owners considering Meta™ Ads: what is the best budget to use to get the best results? Instead of giving a one size fits all number, she explains why that is the wrong question and shows you how to work backwards from the outcome you want instead.

Jayne walks through how to start with a sales goal, calculate how many leads you need based on your conversion rate or a benchmark, estimate your cost per lead and then use that information to create a budget that is connected to a real result. She also covers the difference between budgeting for evergreen offers and live launches, and why your opt-in page, webinar watch rate and follow-up emails all affect how well that budget works in practice.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why “what is the best ad budget?” is the wrong starting question.
• How to work backwards from a sales goal to a leads target.
• What benchmark conversion rates can help you estimate early funnel maths.
• How to bring your likely cost per lead into the calculation.
• Why evergreen funnels and live launches need different budget approaches.
• Why your budget only works when the rest of your funnel is doing its job.
• What numbers to look at beyond ad spend when results feel off.

Connect with Jayne:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/webonize

Website: https://webonize.com.au/

FREE Resource - The Facebook™ Ads
$3 Lead Formula: https://learn.webonize.com.au/leadformula

Join Abundant Ads Academy: https://courses.webonize.com.au/abundantadsacademy

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I'm Jane Day and welcome to Abundant Funnels. I help coaches, course creators, and online experts get high quality leads and consistent sales without relying on guesswork, constant content creation, or $10 leads. In fact, I'm known for getting some of the best cost per lead results for quality buyers in the industry. This show is where we break down the ad strategy, the funnel, and the numbers so you can grow your revenue and buy back your time in a way that's actually sustainable. Let's get started. Hi there and welcome back to the podcast. Today I'm addressing one of the most common questions I get from clients, students, and really just about any business owner who is thinking about running meta ads. And the question is, what's the best budget to use to get the best results from my ads? It comes up constantly, and I completely understand why. Because when you're about to put money into ads, you want to know that you're spending the right amount. You want to feel confident that what you're putting in is going to give you something meaningful back. But here's the thing, I actually want to flip the way you're thinking about this question. Because the question isn't really what budget gets me the best results. There is no secret to the right budget that is going to magically get you the results you desire. Every business, every niche, every ad account is different in some ways. The question you should be asking is what budget do I need to reach the goals and the outcomes I actually want? And that question will allow you to come up with the budget you need. So let's work through it. Most people approach their ad budget from the wrong direction. They decide on an amount they're comfortable spending, say $20 a day or $1,000 a month, and then they run their ads and hope that budget produces the results they want. But that's working forward from a number, and I want you to work backwards from a goal. Here's how I think about it. Let's say you're running a masterclass campaign, you're generating leads into a masterclass, and at the end of that masterclass, you're selling people into your program or your offer. The first question to ask is how many sales of that offer do I want to make? Start there and get specific. Not I'd love a few sales, but an actual number, 10 sales, 50 sales, a hundred. Let that number be your starting point. Once you know how many sales you want, the next step is to work backwards through your funnel. To get that number of sales, how many leads do you need? This is where your conversion rate comes in. If you have a history of running this offer before, if you've run a masterclass or a launch previously, and you know roughly what percentage of your leads convert into buyers, use that number. Your own data is always the most reliable. But if you're newer to this or you're running this offer for the first time and you don't have that track record yet, that's completely okay. Use industry benchmarks as your starting point. A general benchmark for a masterclass or webinar funnel is that somewhere between 1% and 5% of the leads who go through the funnel will convert into buyers. The exact number will vary depending on your offer price, your niche, how warm your audience is, and how strong your messaging and funnel is. But that range gives you a working figure to start with. So let's say you want five sales and you're working with a 2% conversion rate. That means you need approximately 250 leads going through your funnel to hit that goal of five sales. Now that you have that lead target of 250, and that leads target is what drives your budget conversation. So once you know how many leads you need, you look at what your approximate cost per lead is likely to be from your ads. If you've run lead gen ads before, you'll have a sense of what you typically pay per lead. If you're newer to ads, a reasonable benchmark for a masterclass or lead magnet campaign sits anywhere from a few dollars per lead through to $15 per lead. Now I know that is a wide range and it varies quite a bit depending on your niche, your audience, your creative, and how competitive your space is. And of course, your expertise and knowledge in running ads makes a difference here as well. But that will give you an idea of what it's going to cost you per lead. So let's keep working with our example. You need 250 leads. Let's say your cost per lead is around $8. You're looking at approximately $2,000 in total ad spend to hit your leads target of $250. Now you have a budget figure that is connected to a real outcome. Not a number you picked out of thin air, but a number that is directly tied to the goal you want to achieve. Now here's where your approach will differ depending on what kind of campaign you're running. And this is really important because the strategy for an evergreen funnel and a live launch with a set date are quite different. If you have an evergreen offer, something that's always available, not tied to a specific launch window, then you have time on your side, and I'd encourage you to use it. In this case, I recommend starting at a lower daily budget. Give yourself the space to test your ads, find what's working, optimize your funnel, and dial things in before you start spending more. Once you've found your winning creative, your strongest copy angles, and you can see that your funnel is converting the way it should, then you scale. You increase the budget with confidence because you know it's going into something that works. Starting lower and scaling up is almost always a smarter approach than starting high and burning through budget while you're still trying to figure things out. But if you're running a live masterclass, a specific event on a specific date, you don't have the luxury of time to slowly test and scale. You have a window and you need a certain number of leads inside that window to reach your goals. In this case, go back to your mass. You know your leads target, you know your approximate cost per lead, that gives you your total budget. Then divide that total by the number of days you have to run your campaign, and that becomes your daily budget. For example, if you need to spend $2,000 total and you have 20 days before your masterclass, you're looking at $100 a day. So that's your starting point. And from there you watch your results as they come in and you adjust. If your cost per lead is coming in lower than expected, great. You may not need to spend the full amount. If it's coming in higher, you'll need to either adjust your ads or reconsider your targets. The key is that you are managing your spend against a real goal, not just running ads and hoping for the best. I want to make one more really important point here because this conversation is not just about your ad budget. It's about your entire funnel. And your budget only makes sense in the context of a funnel that's actually working. Your ads get people to your opt-in page, but if your opt-in page isn't converting well, your cost per lead is going to look bad, and no budget in the world is going to fix that. Your ad budget has to work hand in hand with the rest of your funnel. So as you're thinking about your budget and your leads target, also think about the other pieces. Is your opt-in page converting? A strong opt-in page for a masterclass or lead magnet should be converting at 30% or better. If it's significantly lower than that, optimizing the page can have a meaningful impact on what you're actually paying per lead. Even a 1% improvement in your conversion rate can make a big difference to your cost per lead in your ads. Are people who opt in actually watching your masterclass? I talked about this in a recent episode. The watch rate is one of the most overlooked stats in a masterclass funnel. Because if people are opting in but not watching, your sales numbers won't reflect your lead numbers at all. And no amount of ad spend will fix a low watch rate. Is your email sequence doing its job? Your follow-up emails after opt-in are a crucial part of moving people from lead to buyer. If those emails aren't nurturing people toward the offer, your conversion rate will be lower than it should be, regardless of how many leads you generate. All of these things connect. Your ad budget is one variable in a system, and the system has to be working for the budget to produce the results you want. So the next time you find yourself asking, what's the best budget to get the best results from my ads, I want you to stop and reframe the question. Ask instead, what budget do I need to reach the outcome I desire? Start with your sales goal. Work out how many leads you need to hit it using your conversion rate or industry benchmarks. Calculate your estimated cost per lead to get your total budget. And then work out your daily spend based on your timeline. Whether that's a slow, steady scale for an Evergreen offer or a focused campaign with a fixed daily number for a live launch. When your budget is connected to a real goal, you're not guessing, you're planning. And planning is what turns ad spend into an investment rather than an expense. If you want help working through this for your specific business, looking at your funnel, your numbers, and building out a strategy that makes sense for your goals, this is exactly the kind of work we do inside Abundant Ads Academy. You can find the link with all of the details in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening in today. I hope this conversation has been helpful, and I'll see you in the next episode of Abundant Pumps.