Can You Really Run Ads on a Small Budget? What $10/Day Actually Gets You

You've probably told yourself you can't afford to run ads.

Or maybe you've convinced yourself that small budgets don't work and you need thousands of dollars a month to see any kind of results.

So you're grinding away at organic content instead. Posting constantly. Fighting the algorithm. And watching other businesses grow faster than you.

But what if I told you small budgets can actually work? You just need to know what's realistic for the money you have.

In this episode, I'm answering the question I get asked more than any other: "How much do I actually need to spend on ads to see results?"

I'm walking you through what's possible at different budget levels, the one mistake that will burn through your money fast, and how to know if you're actually ready to invest or if you should wait.

Plus, I'm sharing real numbers from my clients so you can see what budgets real businesses are spending a month and how that actually looks in practice.

If you've been sitting on the sidelines because you think you can't afford ads, this episode is for you!

Enjoying the podcast? Follow In the EllaMents on your favorite podcast platform so you don’t miss anything. New episodes drop every other Monday!

If you enjoyed this episode and want to stay connected beyond the podcast, I’d love to have you on my email list.

I send 2–4 emails a month where I share honest thoughts on marketing, motherhood, and building a business that actually fits your real life — encouragement, clarity, and things I don’t always share on social media. I also share when new podcast episodes are live, so you never miss a conversation.

You can join the list here.

You can also find me on Instagram at @socialellaments, where I share behind-the-scenes moments and continue the conversation.

Thanks for being here — I’m really glad you’re listening.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Small budgets can work, like actually work, but you have to know what you can realistically do with the money you have, and you have to be honest about whether you're ready to spend it.

Hey, friend. Welcome back to In The EllaMents. I'm Alishia Egenhoff, digital ad strategist, mentor, and the heart behind Social EllaMents Marketing. Around here, we talk about marketing, motherhood, and what it really looks like to build a business while also being a human with limited time, energy, and capacity.

Okay, can I be honest with you about something? I see a lot of business owners sitting on the sidelines when it comes to ads, not because they don't want to run them, but because they think that they can't afford them. They have convinced themselves that unless they have thousands of dollars to spend every month, ads won't work for them.

So they keep grinding away at [00:01:00] that organic content, posting multiple times a day, trying to beat the algorithm, burning themselves out. Look, I've been there, and meanwhile, they're watching other businesses, maybe even their competitors, grow faster. Here's what I want you to know. Small budgets can work, like actually work, but you have to know what you can realistically do with the money you have, and you have to be honest about whether you're ready to spend it.

So today, I'm breaking down exactly what different budget levels can actually accomplish, what $10 a day gets you versus a $50 a day versus $500 a month or more, when organic makes sense and when it's just slowing you down, and how to decide if you're actually ready to invest or if you should just wait.

This isn't about convincing [00:02:00] you to spend money. It's about helping you make the right call for where you are at right now in your business.

I think that we need to start with the reality of where organic growth is at right now because I don't, I don't wanna sugar coat this. It's slow, like super slow.

If you're trying to scale through organic social media alone, you're talking months, maybe years, depending on your goals. The platforms- have drastically changed how this works over the last ten years. Instagram, Facebook, even TikTok, they control how much of your content gets seen, and they're not being generous about it, guys.

Like, you probably already know this from experience where you're spending hours creating a post, you plan it, you make it look super good, you write that amazing caption, and then maybe, maybe [00:03:00] if you're lucky, twenty percent of your followers actually see it, if you're lucky. That's not because your content is bad.

It's because the platforms want you to pay for reach now. That is their business model. They are in the business of making money as well. So does organic still work? Yes, absolutely. But you have to go into it with those realistic expectations about the timeline. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying don't expect it to grow your business as fast as it used to.

This is where I'm going to sound probably like a broken record, but guess what? I don't care. If you're doing organic marketing, you need an email list. Social media is rented space. You do not own your audience there. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, they own your audience, and guess what? They could shut down your account tomorrow.

They could disappear. Remember [00:04:00] when that happened? The algorithm could change overnight. You-- Your reach could drop to basically nothing. Your email list, though, that is yours. Nobody can take that away from you. When you send an email, it goes straight into that person's inbox, and most people check their email way more than they scroll social media anyway.

This is why even if you're sticking with organic for now, you should be focused on getting people off of social media and onto your email list because that's where you can actually talk to them without begging an algorithm for permission to see your content.

And this is also why small ad budgets work super well. Let me show you what I mean. Let me break down what different budget levels can actually accomplish because I think this is where people [00:05:00] get confused or overwhelmed, or maybe they just talk themselves out of even trying it.

So if you've got just five to ten dollars a day That's totally fine. This is actually perfect for building your email list. You are going to create something valuable, could be a checklist, a guide, a quick training, whatever makes sense for your business. Then you're going to run ads to that freebie, and the key is, is that that has... That freebie that you're giving away, it has to actually be valuable, not some generic thing you threw together in 10 minutes.

Give them something that they'd pay for if it wasn't actually free because when you give real value up front, you're building trust, and right now there is a trust recession in marketing, and that's what makes them more likely to buy from you later is building [00:06:00] upon that trust. I'm not about the spammy stuff, never have been, never will be.

Okay. If you are... You've got 20 to even $50 a day, okay, now we can do some real damage and strategy. We're talking multi-level campaigns with retargeting people who visited your site but didn't buy. We're talking testing different audiences, running ads with actual purchase intent behind them. That's at your bottom of funnel. They've, you know, maybe added to cart, but they didn't complete the purchase. This is where you start seeing faster results because you have room to test, and you have room to optimize, and you have the budget to spend.

If you've got 500 or more per month, this is usually where I like to tell people to start if they want to see meaningful results in a reasonable timeframe, and I'm [00:07:00] talking $500 on one platform. With all of this, this is for one platform. This is not across all your marketing channels. So now, that number depends on what you're trying to do. A local business targeting people in a 100-mile radius, $500 can work really well. But $500 trying to run a national campaign with multiple products or a multi-tiered campaign, you're, you're gonna need more. That's just the reality of it.

But the principle is still the same. The more you can spend, the faster you're going to get results. That's just how the math works. It's just how it happens because you're able to test quicker, you're able to get results quicker, and you're able to tweak. So it all kinda flows together. So the more you spend, the faster results.

Okay, so here's a question you're probably asking. Should I I be spending money on [00:08:00] ads right now, Alisha? Like, is my business at that stage? And there are a few things you need to have in place before it makes sense. And these are things that I look at when somebody hires me to be an ads manager. And if these things aren't in place, then we have to figure it out.

So first, you really need a proven offer. If you haven't actually sold your product or your service yet, don't go throw, throwing money at ads. Just don't. Uh, test it organically first. Make some sales, get some feedback, figure out what's working, what they like, what they don't like, um, because your ads are just going to amplify whatever you already have. So if your offer doesn't convert, ads aren't going to fix that. They'll just burn through your budget faster.

Okay. Second, you need a budget you can actually afford to test with. This can't be money that you need for rent, for groceries. It [00:09:00] has to be money you're okay potentially losing while you figure out what works.

Marketing, a lot of it is testing, and if you are not comfortable spending money, then we need to go back to square one. If spending $500 is going to stress you out, please wait. Go back and listen to episode seven where I talk about profit first. Get your finances sorted first, and then come and start running ads.

Okay, third, you have to be ready to learn and to adjust. Ads are not something that you set and you forget. You need to monitor them. You need to watch them. You need to see what's working, what's not working. Turn off what's not. Test new things. If you're not ready to do that yet, then save up your money and get to the point where you are ready for that.

I wanna talk about what the gurus are telling you to do with organic content because I [00:10:00] see so much of this content on social media. Um, the post three times a day, be on every platform, create endless amounts of content. I don't know about you, but for me, that is not a sustainable business model. That's a fast track to absolute burnout.

I would be exhausted if I was on social media that much. I do not have the capacity for that, and I'm guessing that you probably don't either. We are busy business owners. But here's what does matter, showing up enough that people know that you're still in business. If I follow a business and they haven't posted in six months, I'm probably going to assume that they're done, like they shut their doors.

I think a lot of people feel that way. So you do need some level of presence. I mean, post at least a couple posts a week, uh, some stories here and there, something that shows that you're still, you know, [00:11:00] alive. Um, but you don't have to go viral. You don't have to post every single day. You definitely don't need to be on TikTok if you don't want to be on TikTok. Just show up consistently enough that your audience knows that you still exist, that you're still around, and that is it.

Okay, let me give you some real examples so that this isn't just some theory that I'm throwing out there.

So I actually work with a local business, and they are currently spending about $1,000 a month across Meta and Google Ads, so that budget is split. And that works really well for them because they're only trying to reach people in this certain area, in their area, um, because they're a service-based business.

They don't need national reach. Like, somebody in New York isn't going to want to come visit them because that would be thousands of miles away. So just people within driving distance who need their service. [00:12:00] And then on the other hand, I've got another client who were running ads nationwide and even out of the country to, like, Canada and to the UK, and they're on Google, they're on Microsoft Ads, and they're on Meta, and they're spending closer to $3,000 a month on ad spend. Their goals for their business is completely different than the previous one. They're selling a service that you can purchase online, and it can serve anybody from anywhere. So different business, different goals, different ad budget. But the point is, is that there's no magic number that works for everyone.

Your budget depends on who you're trying to reach and how fast you need results. But both of these clients started smaller than where they are now. They didn't jump straight to these budgets. They tested, they learned what worked, then they scaled, then they added. They started with [00:13:00] one platform, added another platform, and that's what I'd recommend if you were thinking about getting started with paid ads as well.

So if you came to me and said, "I've got $500 a month, Alishia, and I want to spend it on ads. Is that enough?" Here is what I tell you. It can work, especially if you're just trying to grow your email list or you're targeting a very specific local area. But if you want to do anything more complex, I'm talking multi-step campaigns, some retargeting, testing multiple audiences, you're going to feel limited at that budget.

That doesn't mean- It doesn't-- like, don't do it. It just means you need realistic expectations about what five hundred dollars a month can accomplish. The more you can spend, the faster you'll see results. It's just math again. But here's the other part of what I'd tell you. Do not [00:14:00] spend money on ads because you think that you are supposed to.

If your offer isn't proven yet, wait. If your finances are not in order yet, wait. If you're not ready to actually watch and adjust your campaigns, wait. Build organically. It's going to be slow, but prove your offer works, get comfortable with that sales process, then come back to ads when you're ready to scale.

There's nothing wrong with that approach. That's where most businesses start. That's where my business started.

Here's what I think works best for most small businesses. Don't pick one or the other. Um, when you get to that point, do both. Use organic to build relationships, to show up consistently, to prove that your offer works and get your first few sales. Then add on paid ads to scale what's already working because organic alone is, is slow.

That's the reality of it. It'll get you there, but it's going to take [00:15:00] time. And ads without a foundation are just expensive. You are probably going to burn through money trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. But when you combine them, organic builds the foundation, paid ads amplify it, and that's really just the sweet spot.

So post a couple times a week, build your email list, make some sales, figure out what messaging actually converts, what your audience is resonating with. Then once you know it works, once you have a budget to invest, turn on ads and grow faster. That's the approach that makes the most sense to me.

Here's what I want you to do after listening to today's episode is if you're currently only doing organic, I want you to ask yourself if that pace is working for you, if you're hitting your revenue goals, or if you are like, "Okay, I want to grow faster." [00:16:00] If you need to grow faster, start getting ready for ads.

Get your finances in order if you haven't already. Make sure your offer a- is already converting, um, and build the foundation. If you're thinking about starting ads, answer these three questions honestly. Do I have an offer that's proven to convert? Do I have budget I can afford to actually test with? And am I ready to watch my campaigns and make adjustments?

If the answer to all three is yes, start small. Test with $10 a day for list building. See what happens. Learn from it. If you're already running ads but they're not working, it's time to either get help or go back to the foundation and figure out what's missing. Don't just keep spending money and hoping something changes.

And as always, I am here for [00:17:00] you if you want somebody to take a little audit of your ads if you're already running them, or if you wanna talk strategy, or if you wanna hire somebody to, you know, just take the reins from you. That's what a lot of business owners that hire me do is they say, "Hey, I've got this set up. Can you just take it over for me and manage it for me?" And I'm happy to do that for you too. So I will meet you where you're at in your business.

Look, I run ads for a living, so you'd think I'd be pushing everyone to spend money on them, but it's not what it's about. Some of you should be focusing on organic right now, building your foundation, improving your offer, getting comfortable with that sales process, and some of you are ready to scale, and ads are going to help you get there faster.

There's no right or wrong answer, just what makes sense for where you are right now. So be honest with yourself. Be honest about your budget, about your offer, about [00:18:00] what you're actually trying to accomplish. Then make the decision that fits your business and your needs. And if you want to stay connected, I'd love to have you on my email list.

I send two to four emails a month with honest thoughts on marketing, motherhood, and building a business that fits your real life. You can join through the link in the show notes. And as always, thank you for spending time with me in the EllaMents. Until next time, keep building with intention and give yourself grace as you grow.