Before you proceed reading this blog further, please notice that these unconventional Facebook Scaling Strategies/ Techniques have worked for me or my clients but might not work for you. However, I am sure that this article will help answer one of these questions that are popular on internet
- How to scale Facebook ads?
- How to scale Facebook campaigns?
So, let’s start answering these questions on scaling FB ads or campaigns with each section.
Page Contents
Higher Delivery on Higher Previous Day Spend
- Facebook will try to push the campaign harder which had the highest spend a day before.
- For example, out of X number of campaigns, if campaign Y spent the most previous day, Facebook will push the delivery of that campaign the most.
- So, even if the campaign Y’s performance drops today, FB will still continue pushing it
Stop Campaign Bleeding Early
- Based on the previous observation where Facebook continues to push the campaign based on their previous day delivery, I stop the campaign delivery by using an automation rule such as stop the campaign using some rules such as if ROAS is lower than 2X and spend is more than 30 Dollars.
- However, problem with above method is that even though we are able to stop bad campaign delivery, some of the campaign just stop performing at all on a higher daily budget.
- I have seen these campaigns continue get paused by the automation rule again and again which takes us to the next point. Below is an example of one of my automation rules for a small account
Midnight Budget Reset
- This strategy has worked for the campaigns which performance have dropped after increasing the budget.
- What I do is, for the campaign that has stopped performing, I reset the budget in the midnight to a lower budget or the budget at which the campaign started to scale
- Why midnight budget reset works? Refer to the next point
Lower Budget = Higher ROAS. How to Scale then?
- I have noticed that on a lower budget, Facebook’s performance improves. And it’s obvious because Facebook is still trying to find you the best possible audience for your campaign even at a lower budget. And at a lower budget, Facebook first serves the ads to the audience who are more likely to buy such as your FB page engagers, Shop engagers, organic social audience, video viewers etc. Think of it like wherever Facebook ads will have an opportunity to make the ad frequency>1. That’s why when the budget drops, performance improves as you start to get more qualified audience
- So, this sounds counter-scaling issue and how to scale the campaigns then
750,000 Minimum Audience size
- This is directly from Facebook. Below is the screenshot
Winner for the Day
- For Scaling a campaign, you have to start thinking in terms of winning campaign or ad set for the day instead of just winning campaign or ad set. What does it mean?
- It means that not all of your campaigns are going to be the winning campaigns on a given day. Facebook will prefer a few campaigns over others and that too depending on other factors such as previous day spend, daily budgets of the campaigns, time of the day, Past 7 day performance of your campaign, campaign frequency so far etc.
- Here is an example – let’s say starting 12.00 AM midnight, out of 5 or any number of campaigns, if a few campaigns delivers good result by morning. Facebook will push those campaigns a lot more when compared to others. So now what?
Surf with Campaigns = Scale
- This technique makes sure that you are able to scale the winner of the day campaigns.
- How? Start increasing the budget of the campaign by 10-15% most every 1-2 hour as long as the campaign is performing on a given day.
- By Midnight, you might notice that a campaign which had the daily budget of $1000 has becomes $2000 by evening. So, this is almost a daily exercise and use can easily use automation rules to achieve these. Here is how it looks like for me on a lazy day
Scale Limitation: Pushed Surfing in the AM
- It means that even if you keep increasing the daily budget of the campaign, the campaign might not spend the full given daily budget because at higher daily spend, it takes Facebook algorithm a few hours to adjust the delivery.
- So, try to push harder in the AM. Let’s say until 12 PM or 1 PM. Because I have noticed that even if we are applying the surfing technique of increasing the budget by 10-15% hourly, the Facebook campaigns are unable to spend the entire budget and their spend matches usually the budget which was given at around Noon or afternoon time on a given day and time
Automated Campaigns are exceptions
- Automated campaigns behave a bit differently. Any campaign not using lowest bid or highest volume bidding strategy, is what I call an automated campaign. Some examples of these campaigns are lifetime campaign, campaigns running on bid cap, campaigns running on cost per result etc.
- Let Facebook have more control over automated campaigns and always think of automated campaigns as campaigns with exceptions. Here are a few observations from the automated campaigns
- I have noticed that lifetime campaign usually start to deliver after 3 PM
- Some of the campaigns on cost per result bidding strategy deliver mostly in the AM more.
- So, if you are running such campaigns, they might have similar behavior too.
Leverage Automated Bidding
- Recently, I have started to notice that automated bidding campaigns such as cost per result based campaigns or campaigns running on lifetime budget or on bid cap have started to perform a lot more and are more stable than campaigns running on lowest cost or highest value bidding. So, try to leverage those campaigns
Umbrella Interest “And Must Also Match”
- Use “And Must Also Match” feature under AdSet audience on Facebook ads. Select Umbrella Interest or I also call it Interest Stack and then “And Must Also Match” feature with users from interest group such as online shopping, engaged users etc.
- Here are some of those interests which have worked for me
- Facebook Payments users (30 days)
- Facebook Payments users (90 days)
- Engaged Shoppers
- Expensive Taste
- Luxury goods
- Online shopping
Right way of using CBO
Here is a snippet of advice directly from Facebook conversion playbook
- CBO works best when accounts are set up optimally. so if you choose this option, make sure to avoid ad set overlap
- To set your budget, use this formula. Take your average cost per result from your previous campaigns and multiply it by 50. The number you get is your recommended minimum weekly budget. For example, if your cost per result is usually $10, your weekly budget would be at least $500 for every ad set.
Right Attribution Window
Facebook is very generous towards itself when using any attribution window that includes view-through. It loves to attribute most of the conversions to itself. It would make a sense if you are just using Facebook ads to promote your brand or spending the majority of your marketing budget on Facebook.
However, the scenario changes a lot when there are other major platforms too where you invest heavily such as Google ads. In that case, both of the platforms would compete to attribute the conversions towards themselves. One solution that works for me is removing the view-through window completely in targeting and only using 1 day click or 7 day click attribution window. I have noticed that the performance might drop for a few days then it will start picking up as the pixel learns
Lifetime Budget vs Daily Budget
Which budget shall you choose, lifetime budget or daily budget? Well, I would suggest that the first preference should the lifetime budget. However, if the lifetime budget does not perform, then you should surely try the daily budget because that’s the only option left 🙂
FB Feed – Your next game changer
- Optimize your FB feed with as many attributes as possible and there is a reason why am I saying this.
- We already know that Google shopping has been a game changer in the advertisement industry and Facebook is moving towards the same direction with FB shop and IG checkout.
- Two of the FB’s futuristic projects, FB shop and IG checkout, heavily rely on the feed. So, if your feed is optimized, FB is going to push a lot more organic traffic to your FB shop and IG checkout. Reason being, for every sale, they are getting a cut out of it. So, it’s a win-win situation for all the three stakeholder.
- FB gets a cut for every sale
- You get more organic sale without spending a dollar
- A user gets a good shopping experience which is good for Facebook too.
- We recently got an offering of $25000 to test FB shop vs Business as usual as a part of FB shop promotion and here are the results