How Instagram advertising is billed
Instagram belongs to Meta and billing is usually per thousand impressions (CPM). Meta does not publish official benchmarks. In practice, Swiss campaigns land somewhere between the mid single digits and the low double digits in francs depending on audience, industry and season, and clearly higher in competitive fields like finance or insurance. In the end, only the number in your own account is reliable.
There is barely a technical minimum, ads will run on a few francs a day. But running is not the same as working.
Boosting or Ads Manager?
The blue boost button under a post is seductively simple, and that is exactly its problem. Boosting restricts the most important levers heavily: audiences can only be chosen roughly by location, age and interests instead of custom lists or lookalikes, placements are preset, and the goals rarely go beyond reach and engagement. If you want enquiries, work in the Meta Ads Manager. Same money, much more control.
What starting budget makes sense
For meaningful results we recommend a media budget from around 1,500 francs per month, higher on LinkedIn. That sounds like a lot, but there is a reason: below that, Meta collects too little data to optimise delivery and you are testing blind. Expect two to three months before the numbers are reliable.
Just as important as the budget: a clear goal. Enquiries are a goal, followers are just a number. And without clean tracking, everything we wrote about ad budgets and tracking problems applies here too.
Why Instagram campaigns actually fail
Rarely because of the budget. Usually because of the creative: an image that looks like an ad gets swiped away. What works are honest glimpses, short videos, faces, a concrete offer. And a landing page that delivers what the ad promises.
If you want to know whether social ads make sense for your offer, have a look at our social ads page or ask us directly. Sometimes the honest answer is: fix the website first, then advertise.