There’s a lot to keep in mind when scaling Facebook ads. Increasing your ad spend without a solid strategy can lead to a spike in cost per action.
How much should you scale your Facebook ads? It’s a question many marketers are grappling with. It’s easy to think all you have to do to scale your Facebook ad campaign is boost your budget, especially when you’ve had some success. But at what cost? And how can you make sure the added budget will improve ROI?
Those are questions marketers must address to make sure they gain the maximum return on investment (ROI) on Facebook ad campaigns. Increasing your ad spend without the right strategy can easily lead to a decrease in return on ad spend (ROAS) and an increase in cost per action (CPA).
There’s a lot to consider. To be successful on the platform, marketers must understand how Facebook Ads Manager’s algorithms work. You also have to know how Facebook’s custom rule options and automatic campaign budget optimization will impact your campaign’s performance. This requires knowing how different ads, targeting and budgets will affect your campaign’s profitability.
Scaling a Facebook ad campaign effectively takes time and money. Start by making sure the investment will work for you. Postmedia has pulled together best practices to help you understand if and when you should scale a Facebook ad campaign and how to scale in a way that helps you reach and convert more people in a cost-effective way.
When to scale a Facebook ad campaign
The only time you should scale a Facebook ad campaign is if it is working, meaning it is achieving a positive ROI. Your Ads Manager account tracks performance. Review this data to find out which campaigns are high-performing and have the best ROI. Scaling your best-performing ads will help grow revenues. You can also compare the cost to acquire a user through this channel to their average lifetime value to determine if your campaign is profitable.
Also consider number of times one person sees your ad, or the average frequency. If the average viewer sees your ad more than five times, it means Facebook is having a hard time finding new people in your target market. It also means the viewer has ad fatigue and likely doesn’t want to see the ad anymore. The higher the average frequency, the less likely scaling the campaign will be effective.
Six things to know before scaling a Facebook ad campaign
- The current ROI of your campaigns.
- How much you can spend in total.
- The results you want to achieve.
- The cost-per-result could either increase or decrease. If costs go up, you may want to adjust the strategies you’re using to reach a broader market, if that expanded market makes sense for your product. If the adjustments don’t work, you may want to decrease your daily spend.
- Ad fatigue is another reason your cost-per-result might increase. To make sure your audience isn’t bored and losing interest in your ads – now that they’re seeing them more often – keep ads updated and fresh. Add new text, images and video.
- It could take up to a week for Facebook’s algorithm to optimize your campaign once you’ve increased your ad budget.
Fast facts: 72 percent of people would prefer to learn about a product or service via video, and 75 percent of marketers post videos on Facebook.
How to successfully scale your Facebook ad campaign
Set a new total budget and increase daily spending in increments
Experts recommend gradually increasing your daily ad spend rather than increasing your budget all at once. This will give Facebook’s algorithm time to learn about the best people and places to show the ad. One common rule of thumb is to increase the daily spend in 20 percent increments. Facebook’s campaign budget optimization will automatically allocate the funds to the highest-performing ad sets.
Facebook notes that during the learning phase ad sets are less stable and typically have a higher CPA. To ensure ad sets can exit the learning phase, Facebook recommends:
- Waiting to edit your ad set until it’s out of the learning phase.
- Avoiding unnecessary edits that cause ad sets to re-enter the learning phase.
- Combining similar ad sets. This will allow Facebook to learn as much as possible about each ad. When you create many ads and ad sets, the delivery system learns less about each than when you create fewer ads and ad sets.
- Using realistic budgets. If budgets are too small or too large the delivery system won’t be able to accurately gauge the target market it should optimize for. Set a budget large enough to get at least 50 total optimization events and avoid frequent budget changes (which can cause an ad set to re-enter the learning phase).
Tip: Use Facebook’s automated rules to automatically increase your budget when an ad set meets the conditions you set. You can also create a rule to decrease your budget if the campaign isn’t meeting expectations. Include a maximum daily limit to ensure you don’t exceed your budget.
Create lookalike audiences within Facebook Ads Manager
These are the people who most resemble your existing customers, web visitors and Facebook followers since they are most likely to be interested in your products and services. Facebook allows you to choose whichever criteria you feel is most valuable (e.g., people who made a purchase in the last 60 days) and which percentage of the lookalike audience to target. The first one percent is the most likely to convert. As you scale, broaden the percentage from there. Read our blog to learn more about Lookalike Audiences.
Broaden your reach
Tap into data insights to target new audiences based on different demographics, locations and interests that are the most likely to convert into buyers.
Tip: Facebook’s audience targeting works the same across all available placements. Use Automatic Placements to ensure your ad is seen on Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Messenger.
Create new ads
Remember, the bigger your budget, the more often people see your ads. To keep your target audience’s interest, it’s important to regularly update your creative. Refresh with new visuals and new copy. As you make changes, be sure to A/B test different options to understand what resonates with different audiences. Use this information to create personalized ads for specific target groups.
Scaling your Facebook ad campaign can be an effective way to reach – and convert – more potential customers. The key is to be thoughtful about your approach and create a strategy to ensure the increased budget is driving the results you want to see. Not sure how much should you scale your Facebook ads? Book a free consultation with us to learn more.
