How Much Should You Really Budget for Ads? A Practical Guide for Nigerian Businesses

How much do you really budget for ads? If you’ve ever run ads and muttered, “Ads don show me pepper,” you’re not alone. For many Nigerian businesses, ads feel expensive and unpredictable. Sometimes you spend big and see little. Other times you underfund campaigns and wonder why nothing moves.

At our recent webinar, Clarity Beats Budget: How Much Should You Really Spend on Ads?, we unpacked this frustration. The truth is simple: budget isn’t about how much money you’re comfortable spending, it’s about how much it takes to meet your goal.

This post breaks down the 3-step framework we shared, the real-life scenarios we tested it on, and answers from the audience Q&A.

READ: How to Budget for Ads in Nigeria

The Real Problem with Ad Budgets

Many businesses make two common mistakes when budgeting for ads:

1. Underfunding ads

Imagine spending ₦20,000 to target 500,000 people. That’s like whispering in a stadium and expecting everyone to hear you. Your message is too thinly spread to make an impact.

2. Misaligned goals

Not every ad is for sales. Some ads are for awareness, some for lead generation, and some for actual conversions. Each of these has different costs. Sales ads are the most expensive — especially with cold audiences — because you’re paying for customer acquisition.

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The 3-Step Framework to Budget for Ads

When planning your ads, follow this framework:

Step 1: Decide your customer goal

Start with how many customers you want. For instance, a restaurant targeting 50 new daily customers needs about 1,500 new customers per month.

Step 2: Work backwards from your conversion rate

If your average conversion rate is 2%, you’ll need to reach 75,000 people monthly to land 1,500 customers.

Step 3: Factor in CPM and frequency

Reach alone isn’t enough. People need to see your ad multiple times (frequency). With a CPM of ₦600 and a frequency of 3, you’d need 225,000 impressions. That equals ₦135,000 monthly spend — not ₦20,000.

Key takeaway: Budget must fit your goal, not your comfort zone.

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Campaign Scenarios: What Real Budgets Look Like

We applied this framework to three scenarios during the webinar. Let us see how you can budget for ads for your business.

1. Flash Promo (3 days)

🍲 Scenario 1: Restaurant Running a 3-Day Flash Promo

• Audience: 50,000 in Ibadan (Akobo +3km).
  
• Goal: 500 orders at ₦10,000 each.
  
• Profit per order: ₦2,000.
  

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Option A — Moderate Push

• Conversion rate: 1% → need to reach 50,000 people.
  
• Frequency: 6 (each person sees the ad ~6 times in 3 days).
  
• Impressions = 50,000 × 6 = 300,000.
  
• CPM = ₦600 → Cost = 300 × 600 = ₦180,000.
  

👉 Budget: ₦150k–₦200k.

• If 500 orders land → ₦5m revenue, ₦1m profit.
  
• Minus ads = ₦800k–₦850k profit.
  
• ✅ Lower spend, but higher risk fewer people see it enough times.
  

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Option B — Aggressive Push

• Conversion rate: 1% → need to reach ~20,000/day (60,000 over 3 days).
  
• Frequency: 10 (because you want the ad to follow them everywhere in 3 days).
  
• Impressions = 60,000 × 10 = 600,000.
  
• CPM = ₦600 → Cost = 600 × 600 = ₦360,000.
  

👉 Budget: ₦360k total (₦120k/day).

• If 500 orders land → ₦5m revenue, ₦1m profit.
  
• Minus ads = ₦640k profit.
  
• ✅ Much stronger guarantee you’ll hit the order target, but higher spend.

2. Drip Campaign (3 months)

Option A — Moderate Budget

• Goal: 1,500 leads in 3 months.
  
• CPL: ₦1,000–₦1,500.
  
• Budget: ₦1.5M total (~₦500k/month).
  
• Delivery: ~500k impressions/month at frequency 3 → ~150k–170k unique reach/month.
  
• Over 3 months → covers ~300k–350k people.
  

At 1% conversion = 15 paying customers.

• If each pays ₦300k for treatments → ₦4.5M revenue.
  
• If they only buy ₦10k creams → ₦150k revenue.
  

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Option B — Aggressive Budget

• Same setup, but Budget: ₦2M total (~₦670k/month).
  
• Delivery: ~650k–700k impressions/month at frequency 3 → ~220k–230k unique reach/month.
  
• Over 3 months → covers ~450k–500k people (a deeper slice of the 5M pool).
  

At 1% conversion = 15–20 paying customers.

• If each pays ₦300k → ₦4.5–₦6M revenue.
  
• If they only buy ₦10k creams → ₦150k–₦200k revenue.

Note on Scenarios

Audience pool can be very large — often much bigger than what you actually need to reach. For example: Lagos + Abuja women aged 18–40 might show up as 5 million people on Meta. But if your goal is to effectively reach 300k of them, you don’t need to force the targeting down to that exact number.

Here’s how it really works: you match your budget to your objective — say ‘Sales’ — and then layer in interests and behaviours to point the algorithm in the right direction. Meta will only spend enough to reach the slice of people your budget can afford to activate.

👉 The key insight is this: you don’t need to shrink targeting to 300k. If your budgetfor ads is sized right, Meta will naturally find that 300k inside the larger 5M pool.

3. High-Ticket Item Sales

Step 1: Awareness Layer (Cheap Reach Ads)

• Objective: Reach & traffic → put the brand in front of as many of the right businesses as possible.
  
• Audience: Mid-tier companies earning ₦5–50M/quarter.
  
• CPM = ~₦1,500.
  
• To reach 100k people per month at frequency 2 → 200k impressions.
  
• Cost = 200 × ₦1,500 = ₦300k/month.
  

👉 This is your “billboard” in the digital space. It keeps you visible.

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Step 2: Lead Layer (Value & Conversations Ads)

• Objective: Leads/Messages → get people into conversations.
  
• Goal: 30–50 quality conversations/month.
  
• CPL = ₦2,000–₦5,000 in B2B (Nigeria market).
  
• Budget = ₦150k–₦250k/month.
  

👉 This is where the Visibility Booster comes in — conversations are the raw material of sales.

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Step 3: Sales Layer (Conversion Ads)

• Objective: Conversions → retarget warm audiences (site visitors, engagers, webinar attendees).
  
• Cost per booked strategy call = ₦10k–₦15k.
  
• To book 10–15 calls/month → Budget = ₦100k–₦150k/month.
  

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📊 Total Budget for Ads for High-Ticket Funnel

• Awareness = ₦300k
  
• Leads = ₦200k
  
• Sales = ₦150k
  Total = ₦650k/month (Minimum)
  

👉 That’s what it takes for a business like Slvr Wlf to consistently attract and close high-ticket clients.

READ: The Three Types of Ad Goals and How to Budget for Them

Audience Questions Answered

Our attendees asked sharp questions during the session. Here are some highlights:

Q: What’s the CPM for a branding agency?
👉 Between ₦5,000–₦30,000 depending on service tier and audience.

Q: What about businesses that only want exposure/followers?
👉 Awareness ads are cheaper: ₦2,000–₦5,000 CPM per day depending on niche.

Q: How do you set CPM?
👉 You don’t. CPM is determined by platform auction dynamics and research in your niche, not by guesswork.

Q: What if I can’t wait till January to start with Slvr Wlf?
👉 We recommended a “stop-gap strategy” — minimal resources to sustain visibility until our next intake.

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Key Takeaways from the Webinar

• Budget is about fit, not comfort.
• Underfunding = wasted spend. Overspending without clarity = wasted resources.
• Clear goals → smart spend → higher ROI.
• Clarity always beats budget.

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What’s Next?

From October to December, we’ll be sharing more deep dives on ad budgeting — including how to budget for different ad types (awareness vs nurture vs sales) and how high-ticket brands should think about layered campaigns.

Meanwhile, here’s an exclusive: Slvr Wlf audits will become a paid service starting January 2026. But for the rest of this year, we’re giving away 2 free audits each month.

👉 Want one? Comment “Audit” on our social posts or DM us directly.

And if you’d like to secure a January spot for strategy and campaign management, DM us “January spot” today.

I would like to signup for your January Visibility Sprint

Watch How to Budget for Ads Webinar Replay

Closing Line

Remember: Ads don’t fail because of budget. They fail because of lack of clarity.

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