How much should I spend on digital marketing?
Start from the profit you make on one sale and the number of sales you want, not from a round monthly figure. Your budget is simply how many attempts you can afford to pay for while you find out what a sale costs.
ShoaibUpdated 3 min read
How do I work it backwards?
- Profit per sale — what's left after product, delivery and payment fees
- Sales you want this month — a real number, not "more"
- Cost per sale you can accept — always less than your profit per sale
- Budget = sales wanted × acceptable cost per sale
If that budget looks impossible, the problem is usually the margin or the offer, not the platform.
Why not just copy a percentage?
Because a percentage of revenue assumes you already know what a sale costs. Early on you don't — you're paying to find out. Google Ads Help describes pricing as an auction where your bid, ad relevance and landing page quality decide the cost, so your real number is discovered, not looked up.
What's the minimum that teaches me something?
Enough to collect a meaningful number of results in a few weeks on one platform. Meta's help centre explains that campaign budgets are spent to get the most results at the lowest cost, which only works when the budget is concentrated rather than split six ways.
| Situation | Where the budget should go |
|---|---|
| Brand new, no data | One platform, one offer, one audience |
| Some sales already | Add retargeting before adding platforms |
| Steady cost per sale | Increase slowly, in steps, not jumps |
For the platform numbers themselves, see how much advertising costs in Kuwait and how much budget to start Meta ads.
Want the maths done on your actual margins? See our Meta ads service.