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Start with what a result is worth
Your budget should follow from what a customer is worth to you, not from what feels affordable this month.
- Online stores: work out your break-even cost per purchase: average order value × your contribution margin (gross margin, minus shipping and payment fees as a share of the order). Pay more than that for a first order and you lose money on it. The break-even ROAS calculator does it in a minute.
- Local businesses: work out what a lead or booking is worth. Take what a new customer brings in, multiply by how many enquiries become customers, and decide what share of that you’ll spend to win one.
If Meta’s likely cost is higher than what a result is worth, more budget makes it worse. That’s an offer or price problem to fix first.
Then check what the budget can buy
Meta flags an ad set “Learning limited” when it’s unlikely to get about 50 optimisation events in the week after its last significant edit. Our plans won’t optimise for an event that gets fewer than about 10 a week at your budget.
So turn the monthly budget into a weekly one:
| Monthly budget | About a day | About a week |
|---|---|---|
| A$500 | A$16 | A$112 |
| A$1,000 | A$33 | A$231 |
| A$2,500 | A$82 | A$574 |
| A$5,000 | A$164 | A$1,148 |
That’s the monthly figure ÷ 30.4 for a day, × 7 for a week. Now divide the weekly figure by your cost per result.
Hypothetical example. A restaurant spends A$1,000 a month, about A$231 a week. If a completed booking costs it around A$20, it can buy about 11 bookings a week. That clears 10, so it can optimise for bookings, in one ad set. At around A$40 a booking it couldn’t, and would optimise for booking clicks until it could.
There’s no published Australian benchmark for cost per booking at restaurants and cafés, and costs vary widely by industry. Use your own first two weeks as your baseline, then reset your targets from them.
How the budget shapes the build
Our plans set the structure from the budget and the results it buys:
- Under A$600 a month (about A$20 a day): one campaign, one ad set, 3–4 ads. Retargeting is folded in.
- A$600–2,500 a month: room for a separate retargeting campaign.
- Over A$2,500 a month: prospecting, creative testing and retargeting as separate campaigns.
A bigger budget only earns more campaigns when each ad set can still learn on its own. Until then, everything goes into one. One campaign or many? explains why.
Off Retainer plans are built for businesses spending A$500–5,000 a month on Meta, from online stores to restaurants and builders. See every industry.
Australian set-up details that affect spend
- Currency: AUD. Set it when you create the ad account. You can change it only every 60 days, and only with no balance owing.
- Time zone: pick yours when you create the account. Changing it later closes the ad account and creates a new one. Your schedules and 12:00 am starts run on this clock.
- GST: Meta adds GST to your charges unless an ABN is on the account. Check with your accountant.
- Verified advertiser: new ad sets that target Australia can be refused until you select a verified advertiser and payer. Meta usually reports a result within 2 business days, so start before build day. The names you choose can be shown publicly with your ads.
How Meta spends a daily budget
On days with better opportunities, Meta can spend up to 25% more than your daily budget, but it won’t spend more than 7 times your daily budget in a calendar week (Meta’s help article “About daily budgets”). It evens out over the week.
Start every new ad set at 12:00 am. A daily budget that starts mid-afternoon tries to spend the whole day’s money in the hours left.
When to spend more, and when to spend less
Spend more after 7 days under your target cost per result. For online stores, MER (store sales ÷ ad spend) must also be at or above target. Raise the daily budget by 20%, once a week at most. If results drop below target after a raise, go back to the last budget that held.
Move money before you add it. Venues can fill one quiet night, then shift the same budget to the next one that needs it. One of our own venues did exactly that, shown below.
Spend less when you’re full. Booked out, or can’t quote more jobs? Lower the budget rather than switching off. A pause of 7 days or more can send an ad set back into learning. Don’t buy more leads than you can call back.
The short version
- Know what a result is worth to you.
- Make sure the budget buys at least about 10 of your chosen event a week.
- Keep it in one ad set until each ad set can get about 50.
- Scale by 20% after 7 good days.
The free 3-minute quiz runs this check on your own budget and goal, and tells you whether your budget is too thin for the event you’re optimising for.