“How much should we spend on ads?” is usually the first question in a strategy call, and the honest answer is that the budget should come from your numbers, not from a round figure. A budget that is too small never produces enough data to learn from. A budget that is too large burns money before the funnel is ready.

Start from what a customer is worth

Before choosing a budget, write down three numbers: the average order or contract value, your gross margin, and how often a customer buys again. Together they tell you how much you can afford to pay to acquire one customer and still make money. That figure is your ceiling for cost per acquisition.

Work backwards to a monthly budget

  1. Estimate your conversion rate. What share of leads usually become customers? If you do not know, track it for a month before scaling anything.
  2. Estimate cost per lead. Run a small test campaign and use real results rather than industry averages, which vary widely between sectors and cities.
  3. Multiply. If you need 20 new customers a month, convert one in five leads, and a lead costs a known amount, your minimum budget is simply 100 leads times that cost.

Give the platforms enough data

Google and Meta optimize on conversions. Campaigns that only produce a handful of results a week stay in a learning phase and perform unevenly. In practice, a realistic starting budget for most local businesses in the Kingdom is in the low thousands of riyals per month per main channel, and it is better to run one channel properly than three channels on scraps.

Scale what proves itself

Once a campaign is profitable at a stable cost per acquisition, increase spend gradually and watch whether the cost holds. When performance dips, pull back and find out why before adding more. This disciplined loop protects your budget far better than a fixed monthly number decided at the start of the year.

Do not forget what happens after the click

Ad spend is only as good as the page it lands on and the speed of your reply. A slow WhatsApp response or a generic homepage can double your real cost per customer. Fixing the funnel is often the cheapest way to make the same budget work harder.