If you are in the business of growing a business, Facebook Ads is the place to be. You put a budget behind your ad, and Facebook delivers results. What’s not to love? But at some point, every business has to ask themselves: how do we scale our Facebook ads to reach more potential customers without throwing too much time and money down the drain?
It’s all about finding that Facebook ad scaling sweet spot.
In this article, we share strategies for successfully scaling Facebook ads and converting more ad viewers into customers in a matter of weeks. If you’re testing the scaling waters for the first time, we also cover what it means to scale a Facebook ad, when to scale, and tips to know before you start.
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What does it mean to scale a Facebook ad?
Let’s say you have a Facebook ad that’s thriving. You look at the stats and think, “gosh, why did I only put $100 behind this? Imagine how many people I could reach if I tripled my budget!”
Bam. You’re just a few more good ideas away from successfully scaling a Facebook ad.
Scaling a Facebook Ads campaign means increasing the budget behind your ad, getting it in front of more people, and generating more conversions. You increase the scale of the reach, and hopefully, the scale of your ROI.
When done right, scaling a Facebook Ads campaign should significantly increase the number of ad viewers who convert into customers, while still keeping your cost-per-result low and your return-on-investment high.
Scaling a Facebook Ads campaign is an investment in both time and money. Many businesses spend more time scaling their ads than they do creating them in the first place. But when scaling a Facebook Ad pays off, it really pays off.
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When to scale your Facebook ad
Scaling up a Facebook Ads campaign is not always the right move. Not every campaign is a good candidate for scaling, and there is no guarantee increasing your budget will pay off. Knowing when — and how — to scale is crucial.
A Facebook Ads campaign is a good candidate for scaling if it meets both of these criteria:
High performance. Look at the data Facebook Ads provides in your Ads Manager account. Note which campaigns perform best and have the best ROI.
- Average frequency <5. Average frequency is how many times one person sees your ad. If it’s more than a handful of times, this probably isn’t the campaign to scale. High ad frequency means Facebook is already struggling to find enough people in your target demographic, and the people seeing it now are on the road to ad fatigue.
If you have campaigns that are already working well, these are the ones to consider backing with a bigger budget.
Things to know before you scale
1. Your cost per result will probably increase.
Before you start, understand that scaling a Facebook Ads campaign isn’t as simple as throwing more money behind a well-performing ad. Giving a campaign a bigger budget will almost inevitably increase your cost-per-result.
Why? With a smaller budget, Facebook focuses on the 1% of your audience most likely to love your product and make a conversion. As you increase your ad budget, Facebook widens the net to the next-most-likely group to convert, and then the next, and so on and so forth.
Each broadening percentage group is that much less likely to convert. To get them to take action, your ad (and Facebook) has to work a little harder. The cost-per-result usually rises to reflect this. But, as long as you still see results that work within your budget, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just the way expanding your audience works.
2. Know your limits.
Right off the bat, decide how much you can spend in total. If you don’t know where your scale maxes out, you won’t know when to stop, and you’ll start losing profits.
Ask yourself: how much is each new customer worth? When will my ad stop being profitable? Measure the success of your scaling efforts from there.
If your results continue increasing after you scale, and your cost-per-result is within your profit-making range, things are going well. If you see your cost-per-result headed over budget, it’s time to drop your daily spend back down or make adjustments to your ad’s creative or targeting.
Scaling Facebook ads isn’t just about spending as little as possible. The aim is to grow your business with a solid return on investment. As the adage goes: sometimes you have to spend more to make more.
3. Be aware of ad fatigue.
The more money behind your ad, the more frequently your audience sees it pop up on their screens. Pre-scaling, your ad might make an appearance on someone’s Facebook feed once a week. After a few weeks of scaling, that might increase to as much as once or twice per day.
If you aren’t careful, your audience will get sick of your ads and stop engaging with them. When this happens, your cost-per-result skyrockets and your ROI plummets.
Avoid this by keeping your ads fresh. Regularly update the images, videos, and text in your ads, so viewers have a new reason to stop and click. As a rule of thumb, the bigger your budget, the more frequently your Facebook ads should get a refresh. If your numbers head off course, there’s a good chance ad fatigue is at play. Shake things up to get your results back on track.
Consider combatting ad fatigue with video. People find video more engaging than images. According to the latest video marketing statistics, 72% of them would rather learn about a product or service via video.
Use the Biteable video maker to create killer Facebook ads, then tweak them in minutes when things need a refresh.
4. Your ad needs time to adjust.
Each time you scale your ad budget, the Facebook algorithm spends about two days back in the learning phase.
In other words, your campaign needs time to settle into its new budget and Facebook needs time to optimize for the best results. Give it about a week before you increase your spend again. At that point, you should see accurate data on your ad’s performance and can use that data to make informed decisions.
Strategies to successfully scale your Facebook ads
Make slow and steady changes
You can’t scale a Facebook Ads campaign without increasing your budget — it’s the definition of scaling. But there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.
For example, increasing your budget from $20 to $2000 in one day is the wrong way to do it. You’ll freak out the algorithm and likely end up with an alarming increase in your cost-per-result. Increasing from $20 to $2000 might be your end goal, but when it comes to scaling Facebook ads, slow and steady wins the race.
Gradually increase your budget rather than doing it all at once. This gives the algorithm time to adjust and optimize, and it gives you time to track the progress of your scaling efforts.
Follow the 20% increase rule…when it makes sense
Many Facebook Ads experts recommend scaling your daily spend in 20% increments. The 20% rule is solid advice, especially when your budget heads into the three and four figures. However, 20% of a $20 ad budget is a whopping $4. Such a small increase has very little impact on the way your ad behaves. Also, at that rate it will take you months to get anywhere near your target results.
The bottom line: don’t scale your ads too quickly, but don’t scale them too slowly, either. Confidently jump from $20 to $30 and $30 to $40 until you’re working closer to the triple digits.
Beware the learning phase
Make any changes to the scale of your ads budget at least two days apart, minimum. Changing anything about your campaign kicks it back into the learning phase for 48 hours, where the campaign is at its most unstable and your cost-per-result is likely at its highest. Ideally, leave a week between spending increases. This gives your new budget ample time to optimize and return accurate results.
Lean on lookalike audiences
Lookalike audiences are the (almost) carbon-copies of your existing Facebook followers, customers, clients, website visitors, etc. These are people who share similar interests and behaviors with whichever audience you choose to “clone.”
Within Ads Manager, match whichever criteria you prefer. Gather an audience of people similar to those who converted in the last 90 days, or to people who visited your website in the last 180 days, etc.
These lookalike audiences help you reach new people most likely to be interested in what you are selling.
Facebook lets you control which percentage of the lookalike audience to target. The top 1% of your lookalike audience is the most high-value, so start there. But as you scale, broaden the percentage of your target lookalike audience to reach new, just-a-little-less-relevant, people.
Target new demographics and interests
A key element to scaling a Facebook ad is finding enough new, interested people to advertise to. Similar to lookalike audiences, targeting new demographics, locations, and interests is another great way to expand your reach.
Broaden your reach while still keeping things relevant by adding new data to your existing demographics, locations, and interests. Choose demographics you know are likely to convert, locations relevant to your ad, and interests that closely align with what you are selling.
Create new creative
Ad fatigue is real. The larger your budget, the more frequently you need to update the images, videos, and text in your ads.
To stop your campaign from going stale, revamp it with new visuals and new supporting copy. A/B test different options to see what audiences respond to best.
As you test new target audiences, you may find some audiences respond better to different ads than others. Create custom visuals and text based on these responses, or based on where an audience falls in your marketing funnel.
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Scale your way to the top
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