How to Scale Facebook Ads: 7 Proven Ways For Effective Growth

Running Facebook ads can be tricky, especially if you want to grow your business fast. 

Many small business owners and ad agencies struggle to get the most out of their campaigns.

The good news is that there are proven ways to scale your Facebook ads effectively. 

By understanding your objectives and implementing the right strategies, you can achieve better results without wasting money. 

In this post, we’ll dive into some practical steps to help you scale your Facebook ads successfully and grow your profits.

What are the benefits of scaling Facebook ads?

There are various benefits of scaling Facebook Ads, such as:

1. Improved Ad Performance - As your ads reach more people, you collect more data about your audience and how they interact with your ads. Think of spending your budget as buying data, which can help you improve your ad performance and optimize your campaigns.

2. Increased Reach - By expanding your targeting or testing new audience segments, you can tap into new markets and boost brand awareness, which can help you reach a larger audience

3. Competitive Advantage - By scaling your ads, you can dominate your industry’s advertising space and establish your brand as a leader in your market.

4. Cost Efficiency - As you reach a broader audience, you may find new segments that respond well to your ads at a lower cost. This helps you get the most value from your advertising budget.

5. Business Growth - The most significant benefit of scaling your ads is business growth. More conversions from your campaigns mean a larger customer base, more revenue, and overall business growth.

1. Increase Your Budget Strategically

Scaling your Facebook ads doesn't mean spending much money all at once. 

The easiest way to scale Facebook ads is by increasing your budget, known as vertical scaling. 

Boosting your ad spend lets Facebook show your ads to more people in your target audience, which should get you more results.

This approach allows you to test what works best and then double down on campaigns that perform well.

But remember, raising your campaign budget too fast will reenter your ad set learning phase, meaning that Facebook needs to learn how to deliver your ad with the new budget.

You don’t want this to happen, as it can cause your ad to underperform and ruin your campaign.

To keep your ads running well as you scale vertically, you should increase your budget slowly.

Solution: Raise your budget by 20% each week.

First, start by setting a daily or lifetime budget for each campaign. 

Once the campaign starts performing, gradually increasing your budget will help you maintain the performance of your ads and ensure the best return on investment.

For example, if you're spending $20 per day, you can increase the daily budget following this method:

• Week 1: $24, 

• Week 2: $28.80, 

• Week 3: $34.56, and 

• Week 4: $41.46.

These budget adjustments might seem small, but they help stabilize your ad set without hurting performance. 

By gradually increasing your budget, you can avoid restarting the learning phase and improve your overall results.

If you want to lower your budget for a specific campaign for some reason, the process is the same.

All your budget adjustments need to be 20% or less of the original budget.

2. Reallocate Budgets to Performing Ad Sets

With Facebook Ads, you have different ways to set your budget. 

You can choose between Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO), now called Advantage+ Campaign Budget, and Ad Set Budget Optimization (ABO).

With CBO enabled, Facebook automatically distributes the budget to your best-performing ad sets.

This means increasing the budget for high performers and decreasing it for low performers.

To enable CBO, you can either create a new campaign or turn it on for an existing one in the campaign settings.

Remember, if you set a budget at the campaign level, any changes will affect all ad sets in the campaign. 

And with CBO you don't control the budget at the ad set level. 

So why does it matter when you’re getting the optimum results?

Well, it’s not always the case. 

Sometimes, it can misallocate your budget to the well-performing campaign at first glance but too early, leaving your other Ad sets untested and potentially missing opportunities.

On the other hand, with ACB(Advantage+ Campaign Budget), you will not be able to understand what specifically works within your campaigns and what does not.

Note: Always turn off Advantage+ Campaign Budget when creating a campaign to prevent misallocating your budget increases. 

Then, set a daily budget at the ad set level.

Pro tip:

Using ADTools, you can maintain control of your ad spending with our automatic budget-balancing feature.

Not only does it automatically determine how to relocate your ad resources and budget based on campaign performance, but you can also efficiently distribute your budget between different platforms. 

All while ensuring optimal budget spending and understanding which AdSets are performing.

3. Utilize Automated Rules To Optimize Campaign

Automated rules in Facebook Ads Manager can save you time and help maintain the performance of your campaigns. 

These rules automatically change your ads based on conditions you set, such as pausing low-performing ads or increasing the budget for high-performing ones. 

This automation ensures your campaigns run smoothly with minimal manual intervention.

How to Set Up Automated Rules?

Setting up automated rules is straightforward. 

How to do it?

Open the Automated Rules from Business Manager or Ads Manager within the “All Tools” section.

Now click the “Create Rule” button, and the following display will show up where you need to set your guidelines.

Suppose we want to apply the rule of increasing the daily budget by 20% each week for the well-performing Ad sets. 

Here’s what it would look like:

To ensure the rule only applies to the proper ad sets, create a rule condition adapted to your KPIs of an optimal ad set. 

For example, you might want to scale campaigns with a specific cost per result or cost per click(e.g., CPR < $1.50).

By utilizing automated rules, you can streamline ad management and ensure your campaigns perform optimally, helping you save time, manage costs, and achieve better results.

However, using automated rules shouldn't stop you from checking your ad sets regularly. 

Keep reviewing the analytics so you can make other necessary adjustments.

Pro tip:

With ADTools, you can track the performance of all your campaigns in one dashboard.

You can also create a set of automated rules to control your campaigns not only on the AdSet and campaign basis but also on the platform basis.

Having an all-in-one dashboard for all your advertising channels helps you create different rules, whether it is for your Instagram, Facebook, or Google Ad campaign.

4. Maximize the Potential of Lookalike Audiences

Lookalike audiences are a powerful tool for scaling your Facebook ads. 

They allow you to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they share similar characteristics with your existing customers. 

To create a lookalike audience, navigate to Facebook Ads Manager, select "Audiences," and click on "Create Audience." 

Choose "Lookalike Audience" and the following display will appear.

Here, you can set the source of the lookalike audience, create different lookalike audiences, and experiment with different audience sizes.

Smaller lookalike audiences (1-2%) are more similar to your source audience(e.g., Customers), while larger ones (5-10%) offer broader reach. 

While most advertisers start by targeting a 1% lookalike audience, choosing a broader audience can give your Meta pixel more chances to find new customers.

Note: If you don't expand your audience while spending more, you might face audience fatigue - a drop in ad performance when most of your audience has already seen your ad.

Here are the most common signs of audience fatigue:

• High-frequency rates (number of times an individual has seen your ad)

• Increased CPM

• A general drop in performance

We suggest scaling your ads by expanding that range to 2% or 3% and creating more lookalike audiences that you can test out.

The more expanded your audience is, probably the fewer conversions it will generate.

But whether it’s 2% or 9%, you won’t know if it will work in your case if you don’t test these audiences.

You can also combine lookalike audiences with other targeting options, such as location, interests, and behaviors, to further refine your audience.

Imagine you have a proof of concept and well-performing Ads in one country(e.g., UK) and want to scale to another(e.g., AU).

Once your Meta Pixel has gathered enough data on your customer profile in one country, it can use that information to find more customers in other countries.

All you need to do is create a 1% lookalike audience, including the location you want to expand to, and benefit from lower CPMs in less competitive regions.

By creating and optimizing lookalike audiences, you can effectively scale your Facebook ads and reach new potential customers who are likely to be interested in your offer.

This strategy can help you maximize your ad performance and achieve better results.

5. Duplicate Your Most Effective AdSets

Before changing your ad creatives and copies, consider scaling your Facebook Ads by duplicating your most effective ad sets and running them to different audiences.

This strategy is great because it allows you to duplicate the well-performing AdSets but with larger budgets, boosting the likelihood of success.

This approach allows you to increase the budget of well-performing AdSets by more than 20% without harming your ad account or algorithm.

Since you can’t create an automation rule for duplicating AdSets within Meta Ads Manager, you can create an automated rule to notify you when the specific Ad performs well for 24 hours, for example.

This way, you’ll have more ad sets that should perform well. 

Note: Watch out for audience overlap since these ad sets will target the same audience.

6. Add More Placements Within Your Ads

Once you create an ad set, Ads Manager automatically enables Advantage+ Placements.

This option allows you to show your ad across all available placements, helping you optimize your ad set and increase your audience's reach.

However, certain placements might consistently yield better results for some brands, audiences, creatives, or offers. 

You can use manual placements to find these opportunities. 

But when scaling your ads horizontally, consider using as many placements as possible.

For example, you could try newer Ad placements such as Facebook Reels, Stories, etc. 

You can also expand your ad set to platforms like Instagram or the Audience Network for better results.

To ensure your creatives perform well across placements, you can use Ads Manager’s asset customization at the Ad level to adapt your creatives.

Since Facebook Feed and Facebook Story don’t have the same dimensions, you should adjust your creatives.

What’s great is that Meta Ads lets you choose specific creative variations for different placements, like Stories and Reels, and helps you adapt your creatives without changing the ad.

By adding more placements within your AdSet, you can track each placement's performance.

Select “Placement” from the Delivery breakdown menu, and the analytics will be shown. 

Here, you can compare reach, results, and cost for each placement to find the best opportunities for horizontal scaling.

Pro tip:

With ADTools, creating ad campaigns across multiple platforms and adapting them to different placements has never been easier. 

Within a few clicks, you can create campaigns and AdSets based on your selected, constructed, and filtered creatives.

Choose the ones that fit you most, connect your Meta account, and you’re ready to go.

7. Test and Adjust Your Campaigns Constantly

Regularly monitoring and adjusting your Facebook ad campaign is essential for achieving the best results. 

To ensure your campaign is on track, focus on these key metrics:

• Click-Through Rate (CTR)

• Conversion Rate/Conversions

• Cost Per Click (CPC) 

• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

• Frequency

Based on the metrics you monitor, make adjustments to improve your campaign's performance:

1. Optimize Ad Creative: If your CTR is low, consider changing your ad's image, headline, or copy to make it more appealing.

2. Adjust Targeting: If your conversion rate is low, refine your audience targeting to reach more relevant users.

3. Reallocate Budget: Shift your budget towards high-performing ads and reduce spending on underperforming ones.

4. Test New Strategies: Regularly test different ad formats, placements, and strategies to find the best for your audience.

By monitoring key metrics and making necessary adjustments, you can ensure your Facebook ad campaigns are always optimized for the best possible results. 

This proactive approach helps you stay ahead of the competition and achieve your advertising goals efficiently.

Key Takeaways on How to Scale Facebook Ads

Scaling Facebook ads effectively requires a strategic approach. 

By following these proven methods, you can successfully scale your Facebook ads, achieving better performance and higher returns on your investment.

However, having the right tool to help you simplify and automate tasks can be an extra bonus in your stack to help you scale your Ads.

Let us introduce you to ADTools.

ADTools is a digital advertising platform for small businesses that can help you create, manage, and optimize your Facebook ads at scale while keeping all analytics in one place.

With ADTools, you can:

• Automate the campaigns - Save time and resources while keeping precise audience targeting and effective ad delivery through your advertising channels.

• Run ads across multiple platforms - Design and adapt ads to each of your channels effortlessly without switching tabs, allowing for efficient advertising.

• Monitor performance - Track key metrics and KPIs within a unified dashboard and gain valuable insights to help you make informed decisions.

• Use the advanced capabilities of AdTools PRO, such as:

  • Simplified creation of creatives and copies at scale

  • AI-driven audience targeting and optimization

  • Stunning visual ad previews

  • Smart budget management for better client communication

Interested in giving it a try?

Sign up now for free and discover how ADTools can help you create comprehensive Facebook ads quickly and effectively!

FAQ

How fast can you scale Facebook ads?

The speed at which you can scale Facebook ads depends on various factors, including your budget, audience size, and campaign performance. 

Increasing your budget gradually is important to avoid overwhelming your audience and ensure consistent performance. 

A 10-20% budget increase every few days is recommended. 

What are the horizontal and vertical scaling in FB ads?

Vertical scaling involves increasing the budget of your existing ad sets to reach more people within the same audience. 

This method focuses on maximizing the performance of high-performing ads by allocating more resources to them. 

Conversely, horizontal scaling involves creating new ad sets targeting different audience segments or using different ad creatives. 

This approach helps diversify your campaigns and reduce the risk of ad fatigue.