Where a small marketing budget should go
The common mistake with a small budget is spreading it: a little on every channel, too little on each to show what worked. Enter your monthly budget and this funds at most two channels at the spend each needs to produce a readable result.
Newsletter sponsorship
$300
Needs at least $100 to learn anything
Meta (Facebook / Instagram)
$200
Needs at least $200 to learn anything
Display / programmatic
skip
Needs $200 — more than is left
Google Ads (search)
skip
Needs $300 — more than is left
What this means
Put the whole budget into Newsletter sponsorship and Meta (Facebook / Instagram). Spreading $500 across every channel buys too little on each to tell which one worked.
How it works
Each paid channel carries a minimum useful spend from the same sourced benchmarks the ad budget calculator uses. Channels are funded cheapest-minimum first, at most two, with the remainder going to the first.
Two is deliberate: it is enough to compare and few enough that each gets a real test.