Facebook Forces Us to Spend More to Get Site Clicks

When Did Facebook Change the Minimum Daily Budget for Site Clicks?

The million dollar question (at least for me today). I have researched and cannot ascertain why or when the change was made. I do know that as of today, I have received this error message numerous times stating that Facebook has changed their minimum daily budget to $5.00 a day for website click campaigns. I must admit, this really infuriated me multiple times today.

While it is understandable that transitioning a viewer from Facebook to a website can potentially provide more value to a company or organization than “just another page like”, the perplexing dichotomy of allowing boosted posts with no minimum budget requirements that lead to the SAME pages on a website as the site clicks campaigns means that there is a seeming ulterior motive in the change.

Does Facebook want the auto-generated posts from such CMS as HubSpot, Marketo, Wordpress, and Eloqua to better feed into the user experience? Is that the reasoning behind leaving alone the minimum budgets for boosted posts?

Conversely, it is easiest for an advertiser to start fresh (with much less headache and frustration than with the less malleable “boost post”) and create an ad that does everything an advertiser wants accomplished with a site clicks ad or another original work. 

Does Facebook want to circumvent the easy way for advertisers to make their organic content better(effectively forcing the better organic posts)? Maybe.

Do they want more money for what many businesses want most (site clicks)? Maybe.

What a Minimum Budget on Facebook for Website Clicks Means

As an agency, we have numerous clients who seek to target with a more “laser focused” approach to their target audience for Facebook ads rather than taking a “spray and pray” tactic with ad spend. This frequently results in a very low number of people in the daily reach, and there is absolutely no need for such a big spend (I realize how ludicrous this can sound at $5/day being a big spend … but $5/day for 365 days totals $1,825. Some of our clients simply don’t want to pay that to Facebook or anywhere).

The enablement of Facebook for advertisers to use the largest demographic data aggregator, in a single platform, means that they have a HUGE value to both multi-billion dollar companies and mom-and-pop shops on the corner. I have no hesitation in stating that we will continue to advertise on Facebook for our clients, but this will force a re-vamp of methodology within our agency and additional conversations with clients.

As an agency, I am ultimately responsible for the (sometimes meager) advertising budgets of our clients. We represent large, national companies and small, local business to consumer shops. Everyone has different needs, target demos, and budgets for marketing in traditional, digital, and social streams. It kills me that this implementation has taken place with no announcement whatsoever.

Facebook does have quite the upper hand in marketing to defined demographics, but this change seems to be one that is being subtly implemented. My interpretation is that Facebook wants to see how much backlash they will get from this change before making an announcement, not that it will change anything that they do, ultimately.

For now, our agency will be boosting better posts in order to work around the rich demands of Facebook’s minimum budget change to website clicks.

Your thoughts?

BlinkJar Media wants to hear what you think on this in the comments. Don’t leave us hanging…..

If this makes you overly angry, you can calm down with some pugs and bulldogs running in the 4th South German Pug and Bulldog race earlier this week.