Facebook Ads are one of the most powerful tools for business growth, offering unmatched audience targeting and scalability. However, scaling Facebook Ads efficiently without wasting ad spend can be challenging. In this guide, we'll break down the best strategies for scaling your Facebook Ads while maintaining profitability and a high return on ad spend (ROAS).
Understanding the Fundamentals of Scaling Facebook Ads
What Does Scaling Mean?
Scaling Facebook Ads means increasing your ad budget, reach, and conversions while maintaining or improving performance. This can be done in two primary ways:
- Vertical Scaling: Increasing the budget on a single winning ad set.
- Horizontal Scaling: Expanding audience reach by duplicating ad sets, testing new audiences, and leveraging lookalike audiences.
Launching Facebook ad campaigns is a proven method to enhance business growth. However, while initiating ads on social media is straightforward, effectively expanding your Facebook advertising efforts can pose various challenges.
If your daily spend on diverse Facebook ad campaigns ranges between $20 and $100 with a favorable return on ad spend (ROAS), the subsequent step involves strategically increasing your budget to scale your ads.
Scaling Facebook ads entails elevating your spending while ensuring the ROAS remains positive—a significant challenge for businesses regardless of budget size.
To aid in smoothly increasing your daily ad spend from $50 to $500 or more, we have compiled six strategies for effectively scaling your Facebook ads, including selecting new target audiences and boosting the conversion rates of your existing campaigns.
Note: For those new to Facebook advertising, consider exploring a beginner’s guide to Facebook ads. Once familiar, learn how to utilize Facebook for advertising at no cost.
Here are six essential strategies for scaling your Facebook ads:
- Identify and target new lookalike audiences
- Broaden your ad campaigns' geographical targeting
- Properly increase your Facebook ad campaign budget
- Replicate your most successful ads
- Develop a sales funnel
- Create fresh ads to optimize your campaign budget
Recovering from a challenging day is simpler when your daily Facebook ad spend is minimal. However, maintaining optimism becomes difficult when your ads fail to convert despite significant spending. To prevent scaling stress, consider these approaches.
- Identify New Lookalike Audiences:Begin scaling your campaigns by reevaluating your target audience's size. Expanding your audience provides your tracking tools—formerly known as Facebook Pixel, now called Meta Pixel—with more data to locate potential customers.Lookalike audiences are a straightforward method to attract new customers via Facebook ads. This feature is accessible within your ad account’s Facebook Ads Manager.Typically, advertisers start with targeting a 1% lookalike audience—those closely resembling their existing customers. To enhance your campaign’s reach without saturating your audience, consider increasing this to between 3% and 5%.Not broadening your audience while increasing your budget might lead to audience fatigue, characterized by a decline in ad performance when most of your audience has repeatedly seen your ads.Indicators of audience fatigue include:
- High frequency rates (how often an individual sees your ad)
- Rising cost per thousand impressions (CPM)
- Overall drop in performance
Widen Geographical Targeting for Your Ad Campaigns
A straightforward approach to broadening your audience is by targeting secondary markets. For businesses that sell lightweight items, utilize dropshipping, or maintain an international distribution system, reaching a worldwide audience offers a scalable solution.
According to World Bank data, the United States boasts one of the largest online consumer bases, yet it also faces stiff competition. Your advertising might yield better results in other large English-speaking regions like Canada, Europe, and South America. When aiming to expand your campaigns internationally on platforms like Facebook, it's crucial to think outside the box regarding potential markets. While you may be well-acquainted with your domestic market's demographics, venturing into previously unconsidered international markets can reveal new opportunities. Dedicate time to analyze trends and patterns within your ad account to identify these new markets effectively.
Create Global Lookalike Audiences
With sufficient data collected by your Meta Pixel from your domestic market, you can utilize this information to identify potential customers in foreign markets.Establishing a 1% lookalike audience that spans several countries outside the United States can significantly broaden your reach while capitalizing on lower competition and reduced costs per thousand impressions (CPM) in these areas. This strategic use of pixel data is essential for crafting efficient, high-performance ad sets.
Tip: When targeting audiences outside the United States, align your ad and website language settings with the target market’s language to ensure the right demographic sees your ads.
Strategically Increase Your Facebook Ad Campaign Budget
Setting the right budget—whether daily, weekly, or monthly—is fundamental to scaling your Facebook ads.Investing more in marketing might seem risky without guaranteed returns, but the key is to allocate more resources to your most successful ads. Adhering to Facebook’s budgeting guidelines ensures you use your funds effectively.
Understand the Learning Phase
Facebook's Ad Manager refers to the "Learning Phase," a critical period where the algorithm determines the best audience for your ads based on initial interactions. This phase continues until 50 optimization events are achieved.
Optimize the potential of your ad campaigns by allowing the Facebook algorithm ample budget during this learning period. Typically, you might calculate this by multiplying your average cost per purchase (CPP) by 50 and dividing by the number of days in your conversion window.
For example: If your CPP is $20 and your conversion window is seven days, your calculation would be:($20 x 50) / 7 = $142
Setting a daily budget of $142 enables your ads to complete the learning phase and optimize effectively as per Facebook’s operational guidelines.Facebook advises maintaining consistency through this phase, as performance may vary, and making adjustments can reset the learning process. Patience is emphasized, alongside resisting the urge to reduce spending prematurely.
Implement Split Testing to Optimize Budget Efficiency
Utilizing split testing lets you allocate a significant budget at the campaign level and let your various audiences vie for it. This method allows Facebook's algorithm to swiftly determine and prioritize the best-performing ad set, shifting the majority of your budget to maximize efficiency. Split tests are a practical tool for enhancing your budget efficacy without squandering funds on underperforming ad segments.
Replicate Successful Ads
Before altering your ad creative, consider scaling up by replicating your most successful ad sets and targeting them to distinct, non-overlapping audiences. This allows you to allocate a larger budget to these duplicates, enhancing their likelihood of success.
The Facebook Ad Manager does not automatically prompt you to duplicate ads, but setting up your own rules for duplication is straightforward. You can do this by creating alerts for when an ad achieves specific metrics like impressions, sales, or other key performance indicators (KPIs).Consider Duplicating Underperforming Ads TooSometimes, ads underperform due to poor targeting or unfortunate timing. Giving these ads another chance through duplication might lead to better results in a different context.Since there is no automatic mechanism for replicating underperforming ads, you'll need to establish your own alerts to identify opportunities for duplication.
Develop a Sales Funnel
In addition to targeting new audiences, enhance your conversion rates by investing in a structured Facebook sales funnel.
Beginners often launch their initial Facebook campaigns aiming directly for sales. However, as you increase your daily ad spend from $50 to $500 and more, consider adding layers to your customer journey.
Elevate Your Ad Placement in the Funnel
Enhance your Facebook marketing funnel by cultivating a warm audience—people who have shown interest in your brand or products but haven't yet purchased. This might include individuals who have engaged with your content, such as watching a video or visiting your website.Retargeting ads to this warm audience can significantly boost the performance of your campaigns. Since these individuals are already familiar with your brand, retargeted ads typically yield a higher return on ad spend (ROAS) compared to targeting new, cold audiences.Targeting warm audiences also offers a cost advantage, as bidding on higher-funnel actions like video views, clicks, content engagement, adding items to carts, and initiating checkouts generally costs less.
Segment Your Warm Audience
As you scale your ads, your warm audience will expand. If you're currently targeting all past website visitors within the last 30 days, consider segmenting this audience to enhance efficiency.Divide this large group to identify which segments generate the highest returns. You might create separate ad sets for people based on their interactions:
- Video engagement (25%, 50%, or 75% watched)
- Page interactions (last 30, 60, or 180 days)
- Website visits (last 30, 60, or 180 days)
- Content views (last 7, 30, or 60 days)
- Cart interactions (last 7, 30, or 60 days)
Assign individual budgets to each segment and track their performance. Once you identify the highest-performing segments, reallocate more of your budget to these areas or launch targeted campaigns for these specific objectives.Avoid undifferentiated targeting of your entire retargeting budget to a broad audience, which could lead to suboptimal returns. Focusing on segments like cart abandoners often yields the best ROAS, making strategic audience targeting a key method for effectively scaling your Facebook ads.
Generate New Ads to Maximize Your Campaign Budget
Remember to refresh the ad creative when scaling Facebook ads and targeting your audience. Ad fatigue is a genuine issue, and without a strategy to update your content, your ads may start to lose their impact, particularly if you are repeatedly targeting the same group.
To combat ad fatigue, introduce new Facebook ad formats as your audience progresses through the funnel to prevent them from encountering the same visuals repeatedly. Continually refreshing your creative is essential, even when reaching your target audience consistently.Create Varied Ads for Different Funnel Stages
Operating multiple Facebook ad campaigns helps reduce fatigue, but tailoring your message to meet customers at various points in their journey can increase click-through rates and ROAS even further.Consider launching a brief Facebook video ad to introduce newcomers to your brand. Explainer videos, for example, are effective for engaging a cold audience early in the funnel. By placing a video early, you can cultivate a warm audience from those who have viewed 25%, 50%, or 75% of the video, even if they haven’t visited your website.After you’ve engaged viewers with your video, you can target them with new ads aimed at warming prospects further. At this funnel stage, including customer testimonials to demonstrate social proof or addressing common queries can help propel prospects toward a purchase.For those at the bottom of the funnel, like site visitors or cart abandoners, consider incorporating incentives like discount codes or highlighting a free shipping threshold in your ads. Altering your message at this stage can add fresh value, re-engage your target audience, and encourage them to complete their purchases.
Re-engage Past Customers
An often-overlooked audience includes your previous customers. Using catalog sales or dynamic product ads in this phase shows them products they might be interested in re-purchasing or new items that could catch their attention.If your inventory includes items suitable for repeat purchases, such as consumables, or if you're introducing a new line, targeting ads to existing customers can significantly enhance your ROAS.
Optimize Creative for Various Ad Placements
When you introduce new creative elements into your Facebook funnel, make sure they are optimized for multiple ad placements. As you target customers at different stages of their buying journey, your ads need to adapt to various platforms from mobile devices to desktops, and from Instagram to Facebook.Customizing your creative for all possible placements ensures your ads perform well across different platforms. If your creative is only suited to one type of placement, you might miss reaching potential customers elsewhere.Facebook allows you to tailor your creative for diverse placements, thereby extending your ad budget further. Ensuring your ad creative is versatile for various campaign types is crucial for effective scaling.Select All PlacementsIn the ad creation process, choose the option to “Select all placements that support asset customization” at the ad set level. Specify which Facebook page and Instagram account your ads should run from, ensuring that your Instagram ads appear native to the platform.If you have a single image that performs well on Facebook in a standard 1:9 ratio, consider creating a square 1:1 version for Instagram. Facebook’s ad system permits uploading different image versions for various placements.
Video Variations
Similarly, adapt your video content for multiple placements. Facebook allows the customization of video assets, enabling you to upload square versions for Instagram and even shorter 9:16 versions for Instagram Stories.By tailoring your creative to fit all placements, Facebook can display your ads across devices and platforms, increasing conversion opportunities and reducing CPMs by allowing your ads to compete in less crowded placements.
Develop a Facebook Ad Scaling Strategy
Scaling any aspect of your business carries inherent risks, and the same applies to your Facebook ad campaigns. Learning to scale effectively requires time and can be daunting, especially if you are new to scaling paid ads.Although scaling Facebook ad campaigns presents challenges, the potential for increased sales and expanded audience reach justifies a strategic increase in ad spending. Following a structured strategy, like the one outlined here, will help you scale your Facebook ads with greater confidence and success.
Conclusion
Successfully scaling Facebook Ads requires a strategic approach, leveraging vertical and horizontal scaling, Facebook’s AI tools, creative optimizations, and data-driven decisions. By testing, analyzing, and refining, businesses can achieve sustainable growth and maximize their advertising ROI.
FAQs
How long should I wait before scaling a Facebook ad campaign?
You should wait at least 5-7 days to gather sufficient performance data before making scaling decisions.
What is the safest way to increase my budget without hurting performance?
Follow the 20% rule—increase your budget by no more than 20% every 3-4 days to avoid resetting the learning phase.
How do I prevent my cost per acquisition (CPA) from rising when scaling ads?
Monitor frequency metrics, refresh ad creatives regularly, and exclude past converters to maintain efficiency and control costs.
Should I scale with Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) or Ad Set Budget Optimization (ABO)?
Use ABO for testing smaller audience segments and CBO for scaling winning campaigns with automated budget distribution.
What’s the best way to test new creatives before scaling?
Use Dynamic Creative Testing to let Facebook automatically determine which creative elements (images, headlines, CTAs) perform best before scaling.
