There are two costs when it comes to Facebook Ads for chiropractors.
The first is ad spend, which is the money that you spend with Facebook, no matter who runs your ads, whether you do it, a staff member does it, or an agency does it. You’re going to have to spend money with Facebook so they show that ad to their audience.
The second expense that can come along with Facebook ads for chiropractors is if you hire an expert to run them for you. Those agency fees can range anywhere from $500 up to $3,500 a month. It depends on what the agency is offering. I’ve found the market has started to settle. Someone running Facebook ads for you saves you some time, and maybe you don’t have the expertise, and they can get better results than you could for yourself. I think an agency fee for running Facebook ads of $500 to $1,000 is probably worth the cost; anything above that, and you’re just buying someone really good at selling you on Facebook Ads.
Ad spend is usually what most chiropractors are interested in when asking this question, and that amount can vary widely. I’ve seen chiropractors spend $10,000 a month on Facebook ads, and I’ve seen chiropractors try to get by with $100 a month. The average is in the $500 to $750 a month range. $500 a month will probably get you around 30,000 to 40,000 impressions, meaning your ad was shown 30,000 to 40,000 times. There are variables if you’re in a big city versus a small town, but $500 is the minimum that I would recommend to create an impression volume that will make a difference.
You need to know your metrics. If you’re spending $500, and that’s getting you 40,000 impressions, 20 leads, 10 appointments, and five care plans, reverse engineer the math to ensure the ROI is in the black. If five care plans are worth $7,500, and you spent $500 on your ad spend, maybe you spent $1,000 on an agency to run ads for you, you got a five-to-one return on your investment – you spent $1500 to make $7500. If, on the other hand, you’re spending $500, getting five leads, two of them show up, and only one is converting to a $1,500 care plan, is it worth it to just get our money back? Most people would say no.
If you are successful, you have to start to spend more incrementally. As you spend more, does your cost per lead begin to go up? Do you not convert as well? Or are things staying the same? Eventually, you may hit the law of diminishing returns.
At some point, you can only spend so much and keep getting the same return. If you just brought it on an associate and they need to get fed with some new patients, then you want to be spending more if the campaigns are successful, and that works for any paid advertising, but especially for Facebook ads.