How Do You Scale Your Meta Ads Budget?

How do you scale your Meta ads budget?

So one of the most common Meta advertising challenges is about how to scale. And by “scale,” I mean that you want to increase your ad set budget while maintaining profitability. The bottom line is that scaling frequently fails and advertisers don’t know why.

Today I want to discuss two important elements of scaling: What you should scale and how to do it. Most advertisers are absolutely clueless about both.

So first, let’s talk about how you can isolate an ad set worth scaling. The reason so many advertisers fail to scale is because they falsely believed that an ad set was worth scaling in the first place. Just because you’re getting good conversion results doesn’t mean it’s scalable.

The reason for this is that most surface-level conversion results lie, and not enough advertisers do the digging required to understand the truth. You can have a $10 Cost Per Conversion or 4X ROAS, but that means nothing on the surface.

That’s because remarketing happens algorithmically, and it’s possible a high percentage of your results comes from that. This matters because remarketing isn’t scalable because you can exhaust these audiences quickly.

So if you think you have an ad set worth scaling, I want you to perform a couple of breakdowns. Assuming you’ve thoroughly defined your audience segments, start with a breakdown by audience segments.

Ignore results from Engaged Audience and Existing Customers and focus only on performance for New Audience. That doesn’t mean that you should ignore these results typically, but it does when we’re talking about scaling.

Is that isolated Cost Per Conversion or ROAS for a new audience profitable? Because prospecting scales since you have close to an endless supply of potential new customers.

But I also don’t trust that you’ve defined your Audience Segments properly because most advertisers haven’t. So let’s try something else.

Isolate only your 1-day click or incremental attribution results for Cost Per Conversion and ROAS. Ignore 1-day view, 1-day engage-through, and even 7-day click, because they all tend to require other marketing channels. In other words, likely remarketing, which isn’t scalable.

1-day click is scalable and predictable.

So let’s say that you’ve isolated an ad set that should be scalable according to these measures. You get great results from the new audience and when isolating 1-day click or incremental attribution.

Then what?

A common question advertisers ask is what percentage they should increase their budget by, and how often they should increase it. This is due to an ingrained fear of restarting the learning phase, which goes back more than a decade.

The thought is that you want to avoid restarting the learning phase because it will screw up your results. Know that there isn’t an established threshold dollar amount or percentage increase that will restart learning. And if your ad set is labeled High Performing, your increase won’t restart learning.

But the reality is that it’s not restarting learning that’s the problem. It’s the increase itself, regardless of how much, that leads to temporary instability.

And when you think about why, it all makes sense.

Let’s say you double your budget. When you do that, Meta will expand your potential audience to reach people you weren’t reaching previously. You’re going to reach more people for the first time, especially in the early days and weeks of the increase.

And if you’re selling anything of value, you should know that most purchases will not happen from the first view of your ad. So not only are you reaching a group of people who may be less likely to convert, but they haven’t been through a full cycle of your ads yet.

Your results are bound to suffer.

But again, this drop in performance is at least partially temporary. Of course, if your original results came primarily from remarketing audiences, the drop in performance is likely to be even more pronounced.

Once these new people start seeing your ads more and Meta can get some data on what this new group does, your results should start normalizing. But you’re unlikely to get the same Cost Per Conversion and ROAS at $200 per day as at $5,000 per day.

So on one hand, I’ll say the concern about raising your budget too quickly is overblown. Your results will look like crap initially, and there’s every reason to understand why that would be.

But the problem with immediately doubling or tripling your budget is that you don’t know how that will impact profitability. Maybe your ads were profitable at $200 per day, but that profitability drops as you increase your budget to the point, eventually, of no longer being profitable.

Where is that point?

More importantly, where is the sweet spot where you can spend the most and sell the most product while remaining profitable?

This sweet spot is the only reason I’d suggest a more cautious approach to scaling. It’s not about restarting learning, it’s about finding that sweet spot.

Now how much you increase your budget immediately depends on your comfort level, but also your runway. If you have all the time in the world to find your sweet spot, you can take your time. But if you need to scale quickly, you may not have that flexibility.

So start with an increase you’re comfortable with, but don’t obsess over restarting learning. A safe increase that will hopefully result in minimal volatility would be around 15%. Again, that’s just a number, and don’t feel like you need to stick to it.

So start with that initial increase, and give it at least a few days. Expect your results to get worse, at least initially. That’s normal.

If results stabilize and remain profitable, increase your budget again. Repeat this process as many times as necessary until you find your sweet spot, and you may need to lower your budget a bit once you find your ceiling.

You don’t even need to do this manually since you could use automated rules and increase your budget based on results over a specific window of time.

I wouldn’t even say to give up once you hit that ceiling. It could be a perceived ceiling. This is also an opportunity to create more ads and try something different, and see if that improves results before dropping your budget.

So here’s the bottom of the glass.

Scaling is more complicated than simply increasing the budget on an ad set that appears to be performing well. The first step is finding an ad set worth scaling, and that starts by isolating performance from new audiences, and either 1-day click or incremental attribution.

The second element is increasing your budget strategically to find the sweet spot of volume and profitability. And if you run into the ceiling, create more ads to try and further improve performance.

These elements are the secret to scaling, but not enough advertisers look at it this way. That’s why they fail.