Guide

Online advertising on a small budget: where to start

10 August 2026 · 6 min read

A modest advertising budget does not rule out good results. What prevents them, almost always, is launching a campaign before preparing what comes after the click.

First: where does the visitor land?

Paying to send someone to a general home page wastes half the budget. The landing page must talk about the same subject as the ad, show the advertised price or offer, and offer a single obvious action. A visitor who has to work out what is expected of them leaves.

That is why we build one page per service rather than a catch-all page: each campaign has its destination.

Two different approaches, not to be mixed

• Search (Google) captures demand that already exists: someone is looking for your service, right now. Volume is limited by the number of searches, but intent is strong.
• Social media (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) creates demand among people who were not looking for you. Volume is large, intent weak at first.

With a small budget, it is better to succeed at one than to do both by halves. For a service people actively look for — repairs, accountant, lawyer, company formation — search is generally the starting point. For a product people discover, social media.

Knowing what a campaign brings in

Without measurement, a campaign becomes a comfort expense. The minimum is being able to answer: how many enquiries did this campaign generate, and how much did each one cost me? That requires tracking set up before launch, not after.

Beware of flattering metrics: impressions, likes and even clicks do not pay the bills. The only figure that counts is the cost of acquiring a customer, compared with what that customer brings you.

The most expensive mistakes

• Targeting too broadly: “Morocco, 18-65” dilutes the budget. A specific city and profile produce more with the same amount.
• Changing the settings every day: a campaign needs a few days to stabilise. Constantly changing it prevents any reading of the results.
• Stopping too early — or too late. The first days always cost more than average. Conversely, a campaign that produces nothing after a reasonable observation period should be stopped, not hoped for.
• Forgetting to reply: enquiries left waiting two days are lost enquiries, and the budget with them.

What we do, and what we do not promise

We set up tracking, build the landing page, structure the campaigns and report on actual results, with figures to back them up. We do not guarantee a number of sales: nobody controls what a competitor or a platform will do next month. What we guarantee is that you will know exactly where your money is going.