How to successfully scale your Facebook ads campaigns

Have you had some success with paid social advertising in the past and are now ready to scale your Facebook ads campaigns? Did you know there are two different types of scaling and a whole host of considerations you should bear in mind before you increase your ad spend? If you're interested in taking your advertising to the next level, in this article, I explain what scaling involves and what you need to keep an eye on in order to make it work for your business. 
But first things first, let's talk about the two types of scaling - horizontal and vertical.
What is horizontal scaling?Horizontal scaling refers to the practice of increasing your ad budget. And when not done right, this can introduce a few spanners in the works. When you start to scale your Facebook ads campaigns, running ads becomes a bit more technical. And this is where you can really benefit from hiring a paid social expert, rather than managing your own campaigns.
For more information on this, head over to my article, Why should you run Facebook and Instagram ads for your e-commerce business?
If you're interested in increasing your ad budget, I recommend you do this incrementally by 20%-30% every few days. This is in order to give Facebook time to optimise your campaigns and operate at the new budget level.
When scaling horizontally, you'll be reaching more lookalike audiences. For this reason, it's important you pay close attention to 'overlapping audiences'. You may have instances where the same people fall under different types of audiences, which means they might see your ads more often. When this happens, you're effectively competing with yourself. To help with this, I recommend you use the audience overlap tool within the Facebook Ads Manager.
Understandably, there will also be situations where you want to increase your ad spend quickly and for a limited amount of time. For example, during a Black Friday or Christmas Sale promotion. Because your promotion is time-bound and linked to a particular occasion or event, in these instances, you may not be able to increase your ad spend incrementally. When this happens, you should be prepared to understand the impact that this will have on your KPIs. 
What is vertical scaling?The second scaling strategy you could decide to employ is called vertical scaling. And it refers to the practice of increasing your audience. Reaching new audiences and adding new creatives will help you increase the return on your ad spend (ROAS). You can do this by testing new countries or new interest-based audiences, for example.
Say that, for instance, your ideal customers are mainly women who are interested in organic and natural skincare products. You could place your ads in front of different categories of people and demographics who have an interest in those areas by creating different audiences. Again, it's important to consider overlapping audiences here. When the same people see your ads too many times, they might hide them from their feed. And in turn, this can harm your campaigns.
Monitoring your KPIs when you scale your Facebook ads campaignsIf you are going to scale your Facebook ads campaigns
I advise you to keep a close eye on your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). In particular, you should pay attention to the following:

• Your ROAS, or Return On Ad Spend. Are you getting good results with your Facebook ad campaigns?
• Your CPA, or Cost Per Acquisition. How much does it cost you to acquire a new customer? And if your budget or your audience change, is your CPA still within your target?
• The number of purchases.
• The amount spent.
• Your CTR, or Click Through Rate. This is the number of clicks you receive on your ads per number of impressions. 
• The percentage of landing page views to add to cart. This refers to how many people visit your page vs how many people add a product to their basket. If this number is low, you might be attracting the wrong audience to your website.
• The percentage of add to cart to purchase. How many of the people who add a product to their basket actually complete the order?

When scaling your ad campaigns, knowing your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), as well as having a target that you don't want to exceed is fundamental. This is because when scaling (either horizontally or vertically), you are increasing your audience, so you need to be prepared for your CPA to increase.
If it used to cost you £1 to gain a new customer, for example, now that you are spending more to reach more people, your CPA might increase to, say, £2.50. Is that still within your target? If so, great. But it's important that you monitor your results and always remain in control of your spending and margins. For this reason, I recommend you check your KPIs every 24 hours (like I do for all my clients) and potentially turn your ads off by using automated tools if your CPA increases beyond your target.
Other considerations to take into account when scaling
Closely monitoring your KPIs will help you ensure you achieve your advertising goals without any unpleasant surprises when scaling. But there's more you can do.
For example, you need to ensure you keep an eye on your forecasting and your supply and demand. If you increase your sales volumes, will you be able to still supply your customers? Do you have the systems in place to produce and deliver stock on time? 
You can also look for ways to bring your CPA down by adding more ad creatives, trying different target markets, or segmenting your warm audience. For example, you can do this by targeting people who have visited your website in the last 7 days, 14 days, or 30 days. The idea is that anyone who has checked out your products recently will be a 'warmer' lead than one who last accessed your website a year ago or never before.
If you're scaling horizontally (i.e. by increasing your advertising budget), you can use one of the two available options within the Facebook Ad Manager:

• ABO, or Adset Budget Optimisation.
• Or CBO, Campaign Budget Optimisation.

When it comes to scaling, I strongly recommend using CBO, as it tends to work better for my clients.
Would you like my help to scale your Facebook ads campaigns?While you might have had good results with Facebook ads in the past, scaling can introduce technicalities and complications that you may have not anticipated. If you would like my support to help you scale your Facebook ads campaigns, get in touch for a free discovery call where we can discuss how I can help you achieve your sales targets.