Charging for Client Facebook / Instagram Ad Management

Hey All

I’m looking for some new ways to charge for managing Facebook / Instagram ads (or Youtube, Google Adwords, etc). Currently I charge 20% of whatever the ad budget is. I create a variety of ads to a/b test and I get creative with ad groups to find the best ROI for the client. I give them a recap after the campaign is over with statistics, conversions, impressions, etc. This can be lucrative for my bigger clients (who spend $30-$50K per year) but doesn’t really make sense for a small account to hire me.

Just curious how other people go about charging for ad management. Flat rate? Based on pixel conversions? Per impressions?

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This is standard unless you are trying to gain marketshare, or it’s a competitive market.

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Cool. Good to know I’m on the right track. Just curious if anybody has innovative methods that could be more efficient / beneficial.

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Defining a “small client” might get you more info.

I have a lot of clients for IG growth that want to experiment with FB ads. Most likely monthly minimum $150 up to $500 per month to start. 20% would be $30 to $100 bucks. I should take them on as I know my strategies would be great ROI and they would increase their spend monthly.

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If you can deliver and they are small time, waive the first month and keep on them about the second. If you can prove a decent ROI that justifies the ad spend, they won’t care about forking it over.

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This is the key. 20% is standard but if you can get them better ROI then you can get higher up the scale however, consistency is key. The second you cost them money, they’ll be looking at the next guy. It’s a very fine rope we walk when a big portion of the population doesn’t understand IM.

I don’t like doing anything for free. Maybe just eat the small commission to start and build it up.

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Or that. But if they are prexisting clients, it won’t hurt either way.

And I didn’t mean pay for the ads. I meant the commission.

We deal at the moment with £1,000,000+ a year Facebook ad budget with ourselves and our clients. Our standard pricing model involves a flat fee and then tiered percentages of spend. This seems to be well accepted by the clients and also covers us as our agency hourly rate is £100. See example below.

Make sure to work out how many hours you actually spend setting these things up. I notice in one of your posts you say management is sometimes $30 a month. That is fine if you spend 1/2 hours per month working on it, but that really wouldn’t get great results. Don’t be scared to say no to a client, your time is valuable if you can get them results.

Client Budget: £10,000 per month

Our Pricing
Flat Fee: £1,000 per month
Percentage of spend: 20%
Spend Fee: £2,000 per month
Total Income: £3,000 per month

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Ok, that’s is helpful. Thank you for your input and giving an example.

Maybe a flat fee and then my usual 20% on top.

Above I said $30 would be my usual 20% on these small accounts, but I don’t take them on for the reason that that is too little money. So maybe $100 flat fee plus 20% for the small guys (they wouldn’t pay a $1000 flat fee). For the bigger guys that spend $5K+, I’ll try $500 - $1,000 flat fee plus 20% of ad spend.

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That seems reasonable. Once your management shows its worth, they are likely to reinvest their new earnings to get more and thus making you more. Youll do fine, your head is already in the right path

Flat fee + 15% of ad budget is how I work normally

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Thanks Alex. Yeah I think flat fee is what I’m going to start with new clients.

Flat fee + 10% of budget

Great thread, will chime in here in a bit.

curious to read your “chime in”

We charge between 30-10% of adspend. just depends on how much they spend. When we started doing ads though, we started pretty damn small just trying to get people to spend 1k ad spend and $300 management until we got about 10 clients. Then we upped it to minimum 750 in management fee. Now after about 30 clients or so spending a total of 500k+/mo, we just upped it to 1500/mo minimum to get rid of some of the smaller clients who werent scaling.

Granted, we provide all content creation for ads in house and control/own copyright to it. This is our “IP” if you will… but also our direct expense and investment for every client. We only take on a client we feel can scale

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Thanks for this

Thanks for this answer. I got this client who potentially wants to start with FB ads to get new clients for his business but he definitely doesn’t like spending for ads already so he will be hard pressed to pay a fee for me and probably not scale that much.

Thinking about that, 20% seems awfully small especially at smaller ad spends of just a couple hundred bucks. I always thought you’d charge a lot more tbh especially after watching these YouTube guys speak about 1k per month clients etc but I always wondered how a small business owner can pay this +ads. But is this 20% of ad spend really industry standard?

Generally speaking, would you say ads work to generate clients for small businesses and traditional industries or is it simply not worth it for everybody?