What are Facebook and Instagram Ads and are they worth it for small businesses?

Facebook and Instagram Ads (run through Meta Ads Manager, the single platform that controls both) let small businesses show adverts to people based on age, location, interests and online behaviour. They are the most affordable major paid advertising channel and work for almost any business with a visual product, a local service or a clear target customer. Victory Digital's paid media clients typically see Facebook and Instagram deliver the lowest cost per lead of any platform when set up correctly.

How Meta Ads work

Meta Ads Manager is the self-service platform where you create campaigns, set budgets, define audiences and track results. You set an objective: awareness (reach, video views), consideration (traffic, engagement, lead generation) or conversions (sales, sign-ups, bookings). Facebook and Instagram share the same ad system, so one campaign can run across both platforms, Facebook's Audience Network (Reels, Stories, Marketplace, Messenger) and Instagram's Explore tab.

Ad formats include image ads, video ads, carousel ads (multiple images a user can swipe through) and Collection ads (a cover image that opens into a catalogue). Stories and Reels ads run in the full-screen vertical format that most users engage with daily. You can also run ads in Facebook Marketplace and in Messenger conversations.

Targeting options

Meta's targeting is built on user data: age, gender, location, interests, behaviours and connections. You can target people who have visited your website (retargeting) using the Meta Pixel, or upload your own customer list for lookalike audiences that match your existing customers' profiles. Facebook's targeting is broader than LinkedIn's (no job title or company size field), but its reach is massive and its cost is much lower.

Cost benchmarks

Meta Ads are considerably cheaper than LinkedIn or Google Search. Average CPC on Facebook and Instagram runs between GBP 0.30 and GBP 1.50 depending on your industry, targeting and ad quality. CPMs average GBP 5 to GBP 15. The platform rewards well-targeted, high-engagement ads with lower costs through its relevance and quality ranking systems. A monthly budget of a few hundred pounds is enough to start testing.

Who they work for

Facebook Ads work for almost any small business with a visual product or local service. Retailers, restaurants, estate agents, tradespeople, gyms, clinics, salons and ecommerce stores all perform well. Instagram Ads perform best for visually driven businesses: fashion, food, travel, interiors, fitness and lifestyle brands. Businesses selling high-ticket professional services such as corporate law, enterprise software or management consulting are better off on LinkedIn.

Victory Digital's paid media team builds and manages Facebook and Instagram campaigns as part of our digital marketing packages, which start at GBP 849 per month for 25 hours of work. Our work with Home Instead Basingstoke produced a +3,446% increase in ad-driven conversions by moving their budget from Google Display to carefully targeted Facebook and Instagram campaigns. For local businesses, that kind of return is what makes Meta Ads worth the time.

Getting started

To run your first campaign, you need a Facebook Page for your business, a Meta Ads Manager account and a tracking pixel on your website. Start with one campaign, a small daily budget of GBP 5 to GBP 10, and test one audience and one creative format. Let the data tell you what works before you scale up. Victory Digital can manage the whole setup for you as part of a digital marketing package, including audience research, creative production and ongoing optimisation.