What a Facebook ads agency costs a small business

Say the quote is 1,500 a month, and next to it sits the ad budget it would manage: 2,000 a month. The fee is three quarters the size of the ads, and the proposal asks you to find 3,500 a month before a single sale.

A Facebook ads agency for a small business sells someone's attention on your account: the set-up, the tracking, the buying and the reports. It charges a monthly fee, a share of your ad spend, or both. Starting fees on the five agency pages read for this post run from $285 to $6,500 a month.

Whether that pays starts with one division, the fee over the ad budget. At 1,500 against 2,000 the fee is 75 per cent of the budget, and at 1,500 against 10,000 it is 15 per cent.

What a Facebook ads agency does for a small business

Agencies typically describe the job in five parts: a plan, set-up and tracking, the ads, daily buying and reporting. The pages read for this post agree on most of it and part ways on the ads.

SmartSites says its analysts set up the Meta Pixel and Conversions API from day one, then move budget toward the ads with the highest return on ad spend. WebFX's plan table lists campaign testing, optimisation, a monthly report, and monitoring of clicks, conversions and fraud activity.

On the ads, Top Growth Marketing's own page says creative is included in its monthly fee. SmartSites builds ads from the photos and footage you supply and offers new designs through creative packages. WebFX's Pro plan lists up to two sets of social ad creative.

Some agencies carry Meta's Business Partner badge. Meta's page on the programme says eligibility is typically a mix of the quantity and quality of a company's work across Meta technologies like Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. The page names no fee and no minimum budget, so check both on the quote.

How much do Facebook ad agencies charge

Five agencies that publish their prices start between $285 and $6,500 a month. WebFX charges $975 or 15 per cent of ad spend, whichever is greater, and Top Growth Marketing charges $2,000 to $10,000. These are list prices from each agency's own page, so read them as a range, not an average.

• LocalAdHelp, which sells to small local businesses, lists plans at $285 and $389 a month, sized by impressions.
• LYFE Marketing lists $500 a month for image ads, $800 for video ads and $1,400 for both.
• WebFX's Pro plan lists $1,975 for the first month, then $975 or 15 per cent of ad spend, whichever is greater, with required ad spend of $1,000 to $30,000.
• Top Growth Marketing, which works on Meta ads for online stores, lists $2,000 to $10,000 a month for brands spending $5,000 to $500,000 or more on ads, with creative included.
• Structured, a paid media agency working across Meta, TikTok and Google, lists pricing starting at $6,500 plus a percentage of spend.

Credo, which matches businesses with marketing providers, ran a pricing survey with 507 respondents. By its own account the sample skews towards experienced, higher-priced agencies. Its Facebook page, last updated in June 2022, puts the average US Facebook ads agency at $136.69 an hour.

A list price covers the scope an agency describes, so compare two fees only after you know what sits inside each.

When the fee is bigger than the ads

The sum is the fee divided by the ad budget. This is arithmetic on your own numbers, and no industry rule. A fixed fee of 1,500 a month takes:

• 75 per cent of a 2,000 ad budget
• 30 per cent of a 5,000 budget
• 15 per cent of a 10,000 budget
• 10 per cent of a 15,000 budget

Because WebFX charges whichever is greater, its 15 per cent only beats the $975 minimum above $6,500 of ad spend ($975 divided by 0.15).

The fee comes out of profit. Say you keep 40 on every 100 of sales after the product and delivery, which is what one order leaves you after costs. A 1,500 fee then needs 3,750 of sales you would not otherwise have made (1,500 divided by 0.40).

Two agencies draw their own lines. Top Growth Marketing says 5,000 a month in ad spend is its floor, and that the sums stop working in the brand's favour below it. WebFX's Pro plan asks for at least $1,000. No page read for this post gives a floor that holds for every agency.

A small budget also limits what anyone can learn from it, because it buys few results. The sums are in the post on what a small budget cannot learn.

What to ask before you sign

A quote that lists a fee and nothing else leaves these open. Ask for them in writing.

• Whose business portfolio holds the ad account. Meta's help page says a business with full control of its portfolio can share its ad accounts with an agency as a partner, with full control or partial access.
• Whether the fee includes the ad budget. SmartSites says its fee comes plus your ad spend, and WebFX lists ad spend as a range beside its fee.
• What month one costs. WebFX lists $1,975 for month one and $975 or 15 per cent after, and SmartSites says its set-up is free.
• How long the contract runs. In Credo's survey, 23.93 per cent of social ads providers had no minimum contract length and 30.49 per cent asked for six to twelve months. Top Growth Marketing says it works month to month.
• How many new ads a month the fee covers, and who makes them. Ads wear out, and how to check an ad for creative fatigue shows when one is due.

Keeping the account in your own portfolio is judgment, not Meta's rule. Meta's page on removing a partner says you can remove an agency if you have full control of the portfolio.

When hiring one is the right call

Hire one when the fee is a small share of the ad budget and your time is worth more than the fee. Someone watching the account every working day is what you are buying, and LYFE Marketing lists Monday to Friday ad monitoring in its plans.

Hire one when the tracking is missing or broken, when you sell across channels that need running together, or when the budget has outgrown the hours you have. Those are judgment calls, not rules.

An agency cannot fix an offer buyers do not want. If the sum shows the fee as most of your ad budget, run the ads yourself first, so a report from an agency later is one you can read.

The part of the job Nomi takes

Whoever buys the media, the ads still have to be made. How a store owner uses Nomi starts with your site. You give the address once, it drafts your brand, products and buyers for you to correct, and you ask for a campaign in a sentence.

Nomi plans the campaign, writes the copy and makes the creative in the shapes Meta's placements take.