In this article, I will walk you through from start to finish all steps to consider when you are looking to scale your Facebook ad campaigns.
If you want to dive deeper into any one topic you can use this guide
3 Key Metrics To Drive Revenue, So That You Can Scale Your Ad Spend
The 3 metrics I recommend to scale your ad spend on Facebook ad campaigns are visitors, conversion rate, and AOV. In a formula format, this looks like...
Visitors X Conversion rate X AOV = Revenue
These are the top-line KPIs that any decision-maker should be tracking for their online eCommerce business.
In this model, Visitors are the number of people who see your ad and click through to your website. Conversion Rate is the percentage of people who visit your website and buy something. AOV is the average amount of money each customer spends on your website. Revenue is the total amount of money you earn from your ads.
An increase in any one of these numbers will have a direct impact on your total revenue.
For example, if you want to make more money from your Facebook ads, you can either:
Get more people to visit your website (increase Visitors)
Convert more visitors into buyers (increase Conversion Rate)
Sell more expensive items or increase order size (increase AOV)
Or some combination of the three.
The key to scaling your Facebook ad campaigns sustainably is to focus on repeatable channels of revenue that continue to drive a high Conversion Rate and AOV efficiently.
Increasing your Facebook ad spend to drive more visitors is great, but if those visitors don’t buy anything, then you’re not making any money.
And if you don't have the proper funnel in place, then you won’t make much money from each visitor no matter how many of them there are.
Furthermore, even if you have the correct funnel in place, if you aren't properly tracking your metrics you can't improve any of the above metrics.
Using this formula and tracking results correctly, you can gradually increase your Revenue by increasing Conversion Rate or AOV as well as making the visitors coming from Facebook ads count for more.
First Step Set Your Target Acquisition Cost
Before diving into building your Facebook ads and the strategy you will use, you need to determine your target CPA otherwise you will be flying blind.
Determining Your Target CAC
Let's say you are selling a product for $100 what is the correct CPA? How much should an ad manager be spending to get one sale? Is $20 per sale too much? $40? $60? Well if you know your cost of delivery per product you could see that although high you could afford to spend up to $60 to acquire each customer.
Knowing how much margin you need will help you ultimately determine how much you can spend to be profitable.
What Number To Pull Before Running Your Ads
For Cost of Delivery (COD) I pull the following
Average Shipping Cost
Cost of Goods (COGS)
Transaction fee for sale
Return %
Adding this all together will give me my COD. To get all-in-cost for a new customer you can add in:
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
Discount, if applicable.
Putting it All Together
We are going to use a spreadsheet to track this data.
You can follow along by downloading the spreadsheet above.
For determining our target CAC we simply need to plug in a few numbers we got on the first tab into the second tab. This tab works great if you are trying to find your average CAC across all products or looking to find the average CAC for a particular product.
Above is a quick glance at the determining target CAC sheet. Fields in yellow should be filled in.
Unicorn Level LTV
As an additional note on KPIs, I typically like to see an LTV of about 20-30% in the first 60-90 days. Tracking LTV is helpful; especially, in a scenario where you are spending over your target CAC. If you can get the customer to make a second purchase within the 60-90 day window. The higher LTV might provide you with more flexibility and the ability to outspend your competitors.
How To Implement This Formula To Scale Your Facebook Ad Campaign
Once you have your total cost locked down and know what your target CAC should be. The next step is to dive into your sales funnel.
Remember this formula...
Visitors X Conversion rate X AOV = Revenue
A sales funnel is any repeatable and trackable process to drive sales. With your sales funnel, we are going to focus on conversion rate. The key to any sales funnel is that it is tracked and can be improved over time.
As you go through these you might discover that you already have a funnel in place and don't need these, that's fine too. Just make sure it is tracked.
Below we will go through 3 must-have funnels if you're running Facebook Ads.
3 Facebook Campaigns Your E-commerce Businesses Should Start Today.
Here are three funnels that you can take and implement tomorrow to scale your ad spend.
Product Launch Campaign
PDP Campaign
LP -> PDP Campaign
These campaigns are a must if you are looking to drive measurable and repeatable revenue month over month.
Product Launch Funnel
If you are looking to re-engage previous buyers as well as drive brand awareness through Facebook ads the product launch funnel is for you.
Conversion rate is your primary metric. Secondary metrics include email and SMS sub who are looking to be notified of your launch.
Step 1: The Product Landing Page (PLP)
The product landing page is the first step in your funnel and where you will be driving traffic from your Facebook ads to.
Some elements that you may want to consider adding to your LP are:
Product videos
Countdown timer, use this only if the launch is soon (24-48 hrs). A timer that says launch in 3 years isn't going to get anyone excited.
Customer testimonials
Sign up with email or SMS to get notified when a product goes live.
Step 2: The Thank You Page (TYP)
The thank-you page is the second step in your funnel and is where people are taken after they subscribe to be notified of your product launch.
On this page, you can upsell customers on related products or offer them a discount on their first or next purchase. This helps to offset ad spend and acquisition costs.
You can also use this page to collect customer feedback or review ratings that you can use later on.
Step 3: Email and SMS Follow up
After collecting the email or SMS number on your landing page. Be sure to send an immediate follow-up along with one or two other emails or texts to keep up engagement and excitement.
This can include:
Updated videos on the video, maybe from an influencer showcasing your product in the wild.
Sneak peaks: This could be showcasing your product arriving in your warehouse or getting prepped for packing.
Some other items that you can include are testimonials, social proof, or an intro to your company mission.
Just be sure that these can be tied back into your launch and don't take away from the excitement you are building.
Step 4: Set Up Your Facebook Ads For Retargeting
Anyone who visits your landing page has expressed some degree of interest in your product launch.
Your most relevant audiences are those who gave you your email and/or SMS address for this launch.
For these prospects, you can create a new audience of these people for retargeting. More on this below in the targeting section.
Other audiences to include in retargeting include high rollers (people who purchase often and at a high AOV), recent purchasers of previous launches, previous customers, or your VIP list if you have one.
For some of these, you may want a separate ad set if you wish to see the audience performance and compare it to your cold launch traffic.
Facebook does not work in a silo so be sure to add UTM to track FB traffic so that when you send your email list to the page, run google ads, or send influencer/affiliate traffic you can tell the difference in performance within Google Analytics.
Step 5: Product Is Live Page
Your product is now available to purchase. Here are some notes to keep track of here:
Creating a redirect from your pre-launch page to your live page can catch those who are watching the timer or have bookmarked your page.
This page can be the same page with a swap out of the lead collection to a button adding to cart. You can of course put in more work if you want to spice up the page.
If you didn't have this on your pre-launch page, be sure to add amazing pictures of your product now that it is launched.
Step 6: The Order Confirmation Page (OCP)
The order confirmation page is the final step in your funnel and is where people are taken after they complete their purchase.
On this page, you should thank customers for their purchase and provide them with a tracking number or estimated delivery date.
You can also use this page to upsell customers on related products or offer them a discount on their next purchase.
Product Description Page Funnel
The product description page [PDP] funnel is used to promote one or a collection of similarly priced products. The goal here is to take existing audiences who are already aware of your brand and use Facebook ads to drive them to your highest converting products.
If you decide that you want to promote multiple products. My recommendation would be to have them fall in at the same price point. This way you can track CPAs easier.
Imagine promoting a $20 product within the same ad campaign as a $200 product. The CPA for each of those products would and should vary drastically. A separate campaign for each of these products will allow you to get a better grasp on the CPA by product.
If you have multiple products in the same price range I would still recommend segmenting ad sets by product this way you can see performance by product and ensure that you are hitting your margin goals with your Facebook campaigns
Step 1: The Product Description Page (PDP)
Once you have your product(s). Your PDP should be designed to get people excited about your product and persuade them to buy it.
Some elements that you may want to consider adding to your PDP are:
Product videos and images
Customer testimonials
“Add to cart” or “Buy now” buttons, consider making these sticky for people on mobile devices.
Payment plan options like Afterpay or Klarna.
Star rating.
Last note here. Be sure that your PDP page communicates everything you wish it to above the fold, if you don't have a CTA like "Add To Cart" or "Buy Now" above the fold stop reading this article, add it, and come back.
Step 2: Email Follow up
Be sure to add in abandon cart and view cart abandon emails/SMSs. If a visitor is in your cart abandons be sure to exclude them from receiving the view cart email/SMS so that they aren't receiving both email campaigns.
Not in the map above, you could also add in Facebook Dynamic Product Ads (DPA's) at this point. DPA's will show the exact product viewed or abandoned. Showing these for 3-7 days post view/abandon should bring in additional sales for your business.
Step3: Thank You page
Congrats! Someone has made their first purchase from you.
Your thank you page must include a confirmation message with a tracking number, some type of CTA, and instructions on what to do next.
Your CTA could be one of the following:
Offer a referral code so they can mention their post on social to their friends and get a commission if they purchase
Drive SMS subscriptions if you have not collected that already
Get them to join your rewards program or follow you on social media.
Offer a bonus guide post-purchase as a gift, if you don't have SMS yet you could offer to send it via SMS.
For this funnel, we are going to have an upsell to a complimentary product to increase LTV. This strategy will allow us to scale our ad spend more sustainably as we increase our budget and see costs rise.
If you are using Shopify there are any number of apps you can download to help you build out your one-click upsell.
Step 4: Email And FB Follow Up
If your customer takes the upsell you can send them your typical welcome series. Thanking them for their purchase, tracking information for their product, and an introduction to the brand.
If they do not purchase. You may want a shorter welcome series that introduce complementary products to increase your LTV.
Step 5: Activate Your New Customers
If your customers bought the upsell. The next step is to activate them and convert them to advocates for your brand. Usually, this means joining your rewards program.
You can incentivize this by offering:
Advanced notification of discounts and sales.
Exclusive early access to product launches
Access to an exclusive newsletter
Bonus from their most recent purchase and any new purchases that apply to new purchases in the future.
Step 6: Facebook Ads In A Supporting Role
If the new customer doesn't take the upsell you can tag them in your email provider and import that audience into Facebook. Once there you can retarget them for their second purchase.
If you are using Klaviyo they have an in-app integration with FB to automatically pull your audiences into FB.
If not most email providers have the ability to tag your customers. From there you can export and import as a new audience.
You can also use the cross-sell or upsell feature in Facebook to show your product(s) during a set time frame. To do this select catalogue sales as your objective at the campaign level.
Then within your ad set you should see the option to retarget ads to people who have interacted with your products.
Lastly, if they take the upsell or not. Providing value to your existing customer base is important. Teasing out the rewards you choose in step 5 can be a nice reminder to bring in new rewards members.
An important step here is to segment out your rewards members and find the LTV of these customers compared to your other customers. If they are worth more to your business. This can help inform you of the campaign budget for this effort.
LP To PDP Facebook Campaign
The Landing page funnel is meant to serve as an introduction to your brand and product offerings with more customizability than your home page.
Although conversion rate is the primary metric we will use to gauge the success of this funnel, secondary metrics include page views as well as time on site.
Look in Google Analytics to get benchmarks for page views and time on site for new customers. Then stack that up against how your launch went. Did you do better or worst in these areas? How can you iterate to make the process better?
Step 1: Facebook Ads
Your Facebook ads are an introduction to your brand and should drive curiosity. The goal of this ad campaign is to get people to your site.
Step 2: Landing Page
Once on your site the landing page's goal becomes is to educate and convert.
I like to theme my landing pages. If you are a brand focused on a particular mission the landing page can be a great way to share your mission in long form with the world.
As you drive traffic/visitors to this page. Keep an eye on your conversion rate from landing page to PDP page to see if your message is connecting with your audience.
Step 3: Retarget With DABA Ads Or Carousel Ads
If a visitor lands on your landing page without adding anything to the cart retargeting these visitors with a Carousel or DABA ad can be an effective way to introduce your visitors to everything you have to offer. Anywhere from 5-10 products should be enough for these ads. Be sure that the collection of products lines up with the theme of your landing page.
Step 4: Follow Up Via Email
Don't forget your follow-up emails for view cart, abandoned cart, and your welcome series.
How To Set A Target Audience For Your Campaign
Once you've set the strategy and determined the goal for your campaign, the next step is to implement the strategy within your Facebook ad manager.
If you are the owner of the business or strategist and are looking for someone to do all this for you. Here is my shameless plug to jump on a call with me.
Creating New Target Audiences Within Facebook Audience
There are two primary ways to create your audience within Facebook audience:
1) You can use the Facebook Pixel to track visitors to your website and create a custom audience of people who have taken specific actions on your site. This could be page-view, view content, add to cart, purchase, etc.
2) Or you can create a Lookalike audience of people who are similar to your best customers.
Creating a Lookalike audience is a great way to find new potential customers who are similar to your best customers.
To do this, go to your Facebook Ads Manager and click on the "Tools" dropdown. Then select "Audiences".
Click on the "Create Audience" dropdown and select "Lookalike Audience".
From there, you'll need to select your source audience. This is the group of people that you want to find more like.
You can either use a custom audience that you've created, or you can use one of Facebook's pre-built audience segments.
Once you know your goal, you can create a lookalike audience.
For example, if you want to increase website visitors, you can create new lookalike audiences of people who have visited your website in the last 180 days.
Or if you want to increase sales, you can create a new lookalike audience of people who have interacted with your brand and existing customers who have purchased from your site in the last 180 days.
How To Create Your Custom Audience And Lookalike Audience
From within your business manager, you can create this audience by going to the audiences section of your business manager.
Then create a new custom audience.
Once you have set up your initial audience you can make a lookalike audience based on that audience. I personally like lookalike audiences 2%, 2-5%, and 5-10%. But through testing, you might find better increments.
Now that we have your lookalike audience for your Facebook ads. Let's dive into 3 funnels that can help you scale your business.
Targeting Your Audience
Now that you have your target audiences created, it's time to target them with your ad campaigns.
There are a few different ways to do this:
1) You can target your audience with a Facebook remarketing campaign.
2) You can target them with a Facebook campaign that is specifically designed for people who have interacted with your brand on Facebook but haven't bought anything.
3) You can target them with a general Facebook ad campaign.
It's important to note that you should only target people who are likely to convert.
If you target too many people, your ads will become irrelevant and you'll end up wasting your money.
Facebook Ads Manager
Now that you understand the three metrics to focus on, how do you go about implementing this into your Facebook ad campaigns?
The first step is to open up your Facebook Ads Manager.
Once you're in the Ads Manager, click on the "Campaigns" tab and then select "Create Campaign".
From there, you'll need to select your campaign goal.
After you've selected your goal, you'll need to select your target audience.
Next, you'll need to create your ad.
You can use the Facebook ad templates to help you with this.
Once you've created your ad, you'll need to select your budget and schedule.
Finally, you'll need to review your ad and submit it for approval.
Five Tips & Tricks To Improving Your Facebook Ads
This covers most of what you need to launch a more effective ad campaign. Below are some additional topics that you will want to be aware of.
Ad Fatigue
Audience Overlap
Niche Audience
Learning Phase
Facebook Algorithm
Ad Fatigue
One issue you will run into is Ad Fatigue.
This occurs when people see your Facebook ads too many times and they start to ignore them and become bored. Usually, you can see this affects your engagement metrics.
Look at your CTR to see if that is declining. If you are running a video ad look into how long people are watching your video.
To combat this, you'll need to create new ads regularly.
Audience Overlap
Another issue you need to be aware of is audience overlap.
This is when you're targeting the same audience with multiple ads from separate Facebook campaigns or ad sets. You can view your overlap by going to your ad set and selecting insights.
To avoid overlap exclude current purchasers from Facebook
Niche Audience
You'll also want to consider targeting a niche audience. The best way to do this is to use the demos, interests, or behaviors section in your ad set.
In the case above, by targeting Facebook page admins, I can reach the people who are in charge of advertising. These individuals are the people who might find my content to be interesting.
The Learning Phase
During the learning phase, Facebook is discovering the best way to optimize your ad delivery. Ad costs could be higher during this time.
During this phase, you'll need to have patience and wait for the results to come in.
To get out of the learning phase: don't make unnecessary edits to your Facebook ads, don't make changes that would send your ad back to the learning phase, and ensure that your budget will get you 50 optimization events. If this is a purchase you would need 50 of these within the week for Facebook to optimize your ad delivery.
Environmental Changes To Facebook Advertising
The environment in which we advertise is constantly changing. In the past, this has been fantastic for Facebook advertisers. As it has allowed us to get granular with our audience targeting.
One of the more recent trends however has been in the direction of more privacy, reducing the granularity we have when targeting audiences. Notably changes to IOS14.5 in 2021. Changes like these can have a real impact on your business.
One way to combat changes tracking is to use 3rd party audiences. 3rd Party sites to look into include: Madgicx and Liveramp
You Are Rockstar And Are Ready To Scale Your Ad Spend.
Now that you know how to create a campaign and what metrics to focus on, you're ready to start scaling Facebook ad campaigns. Just remember to keep track of your results and make changes as needed.
I hope this article helped you learn more about how to scale your Facebook ad campaigns. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.
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