Why Your Facebook Ads Break When You Scale Past $1,000/Day

Running paid ads sometimes can feel like this huge gamble where you just put money in, you hope that it does what it's supposed to do, and maybe you've gotten to a point where things are kind of working, but you want to go from 1 to 2 and from 2 to 100. Um, it can be a real struggle to do that, and I think a lot of people don't know the right way to do it. And if you've tried to push your spend past a certain threshold, like $1,000 a day— this applies to you even if you're going from 0 to 100 or 50 to 100, or even from $5,000 to $10,000 a day, but you're having really high CPMs, your ROAS is swinging, your winners are dying. It's not bad luck. It's usually a structure problem. And we've scaled client accounts through this exact wall while keeping them profitable. I think it's a very common thing to think, okay, I'm gonna scale my budget and my results are gonna just magically double, but the cost per result may double as well. It doesn't have to be that way. We've done stuff where we've taken clients from getting, you know, a 1 to 6 return on ad spend. So putting $1 in to get $6 out, and we scale the budget up, and then we go from putting $1 in to get $10 out. It can work, but as long as you have a good system, it'll, it'll actually scale past that point, and you'll be really good. So I'm going to show you the 3 things that break when you scale spend, the order to fix them, and then how you can push past that threshold with without totally torching your returns, 'cause it can feel like gambling, but it doesn't have to be. So let's get right into it. I made this really simple chart just to kind of walk you through everything, how you can scale past $1,000 a day without killing your return on ad spend. Now, like I said just a minute ago, this $1,000 a day may not be you. You may be at a different number, and these strategies that I'm about to talk about, these big ideas, are basically applicable no matter what level you're trying to get past. So keep that in mind. Don't let that number scare you. And these will work really for whatever you're promoting. We work with a lot of really cool brands that promote a lot of different stuff— e-com, VSL funnels, book a call, live workshops and webinars, info products, everything. So these are applicable mostly across the board. So first, let's just discuss why instability happens in the first place and what you can do to actually identify that that's happening. And how to fix it as well. So let me over here. Four things. First, algorithm needs room to optimize across the board. If you're not giving the algorithm time once you launch a new test or once you scale things up, you need to give it time. People can be very impatient, and if you're just not giving it enough room to optimize in the first place, you're going to have a very tough time scaling past that point. Second thing to kind of identify is, well, first, just to go back a little bit, are you giving algorithm enough room to optimize? And this is something that you can audit. I'd recommend in this first point here, why instability is happening. If you're like not sure why your ads aren't working or why you can't scale past a certain point, check these things as I talk through them and you'll be able to identify what's going on. So first, algorithm needs room to optimize. Are you giving ads enough time to spend? Are you giving them enough time to learn? Are you giving them enough inputs like creative, copy, audiences to actually optimize correctly? Second, when you have tried scaling, how aggressively are you doing it? Because if you scale fast, too fast, it's gonna reset the learning process. It's gonna throw Facebook for a loop. And you need to make sure that you have a very specific cadence for scaling. So you're not causing that instability. Now, because of both of these 2 things happening, you'll have CPM spiking under pressure because you're maybe trying to scale too quickly. You're not giving the algorithm room to optimize. Your CPMs go up, Facebook charges you more, and you're screwed. Lastly, but then what happens is your winners are suddenly dying. If you're noticing that your winners are just randomly dying out of nowhere, your CPMs are really expensive, kind of for no reason. Something here could be the problem. And I wanna kinda walk you through now what things are breaking and really how you can start to fix them as well. So if this thing lets me do what I wanna do, here we go. Cool, okay. 3 things that break. First, creative volume is insufficient for your spend level. Now, all this means is depending on how much money you're spending, you need to have the equal amount of creative and more so winning creative to actually get through that gap so you're not feeling insufficient and the algorithm doesn't have options to choose from. There's not like a magic number. It's not like when you spend $100 a day you need X amount of creatives, or when you spend $10,000 a day you need X amount of creatives. But if you're trying to scale and you're hitting that roadblock, the volume that you're putting out is probably not enough. It's usually more volume that you need. It's never usually less. If you're cranking out creative volume, like if you're posting 10, 20, 30 creatives a week. I'd say the bare minimum nowadays, if you can do between 20, maybe even 30, probably 20 to 30 new creatives a week, you should be in good shape. But if you're doing 20 and you feel like things are wrong, check a few of these other things first. But if you're doing only 5, 2, 3 creatives, even 10 creatives a week, you probably don't have sufficient creatives to support the spend we're where you wanna be. So just keep that in mind. Second, audience saturation and overlap. Creative nowadays is the targeting. And so many people will obsess over different interest targeting or lookalike audiences or retargeting because it sounds cool. But the bottom line is when you start to add in different interests and different audiences, you're just starting to get this overlap. Whereas instead, you could test more creative that's talking to the audience in different ways. And you'll be in better shape. So for example, let's say you were running ads and you had these 3 buckets of 3 different audiences, like Audience 1, Audience 2, Audience 3. What's happening now is some of these audiences, because Facebook is really not looking at audiences as much anymore, they're gonna start to overlap because you're asking for basically the same thing. And if the creatives are all very similar and you're just trying to test the audience at the beginning, at least, you're gonna start to get this overlap. Whereas what could be better is instead you have 3 creatives that are all very different in angle, very different, and you have one audience that they're all going to. The audience is basically gonna be getting 3 totally different ads is what it seems like. The algorithm likes this a lot more. There's not gonna be this kind of cross-pollination and overlap. And instead it's gonna be 3 ads that are all serving a different purpose. All hitting one big broad audience, and Facebook will kind of divvy things out in sectors across the board. Lastly, your account structure can't distribute budget cleanly. All this means is you should be testing constantly between an ABO setup, a CBO setup, and then different setups within there. So if you have a CBO setup, should you have one ad per ad set, or should you have, you know, multiple ads per ad set. Good test. And then you can do the exact same thing here in ABO. Figure out what works best for you. Is bid caps better? Is not bid caps better? Test whichever is better for you, because at the end of the day, every single account is different. I've seen some people in some accounts that absolutely crush it with ABO one ad per ad set, and other ones that cannot do that and they have to do ABO with multiple ads per ad set, or vice versa. So keep that in mind. It's important to know that What you're even what I'm telling you here, like I'm saying, one thing is going to work better for me than it will for you. And don't take it to heart when someone else is working and you feel like you have to go that direction because that's not the case. So once you've kind of identified those things, how can you actually scale spend cleanly? How much, how often, and how can you actually do it correctly? So let's break these down real quick. First, scaling cadency. Amount and frequency. I pretty much look at— losing my drawing, there we go. For the amount, I usually like to scale between 10 to 20%, whatever that budget is. And the frequency, I'll pretty much do it either once every day or every 2 to 3 days. So every 1 to 3 days, I'm gonna be scaling the budget by 10 to 20%. And that's on existing ad sets. Now, when you add new tests, it doesn't really— it's not like you have to add a test that only is adding an extra 10% budget. You usually want to have it balanced between your like workhorse and your winner campaigns and then your tests, but there's not a very specific number and you'll have to figure it out for your account as well. And that comes with just time and learning a little bit there. But what I like to do is every 1 to 3 days scale 10 to 20%. Once or twice a week, I'll add in those big creative batches, which will bunch, which will bump my budget up. But I find new winners, add them to the winner campaign, rinse and repeat. Simple as that. Next, consolidation versus fragmentation strategy. We kind of spoke about that as far as the account structure itself. But what you want to be looking at doing is, do you want your stuff more consolidated or fragmented? And you ideally want it consolidated. And this just means is less amount of campaigns, as possible. So ideally what I like to have is I'll have an asset testing campaign, one thing where I'm just testing, and then you'll have your scaling campaign. And then usually I'll have like another kind of scaling campaign as well, maybe that's scaling a little bit differently. So this usually for me, what I found works well is this is all ABO scaling. Maybe I'll have like a CBO scaling and maybe you'll have an ABO scaling. So I have a little bit of wiggle room here. If the CBO is sucking up too much, I can kind of pull some here and vice versa. Continuous creative feed. This is so important and people overcomplicate this. It's just super simple. Make more creative. It doesn't matter really what it is. You'll figure out what works and test different angles. I have a lot of more in-depth videos on my channel about this. Look there. I won't talk about it too much here because it won't really do it justice. Last but not least, when you're scaling, you really have to be looking at your numbers and you have to protect your ROAS. It's very easy when you scale to $1,000 a day, scale wherever, that you start getting a little bit lenient and you start freaking out because there's just a lot of campaigns, a lot of stuff going on. Look for early warning metrics. Not enough people talk about this. Not enough people even understand this. And it's really like leading indicators is what this is. So what are different leading indicators inside Facebook? Let me actually pull us down here. What are leading indicators in Facebook? So leading indicators, a few things here. First, CTR, your click-through rate. If that's low and it's not doing what it wants, Facebook highly favors a high click-through rate. You want a high click-through rate. If it's low, that's a leading indicator that something may not be right. You should keep a close eye on that ad set or campaign. Etc., etc. Your cost per link click, same thing. If this is high, this is telling you that this may be a little bit too expensive and there's something that you need to adjust. Lastly, things like frequency can kind of give you a sneak peek if you see that rising. Same thing if this is up, um, then you can see— and I maybe misspoke— if this is down, that's bad. That's a leading indicator. Cost per link click is high, that's bad. Frequency is high, that's bad too. That's giving you a little bit of a heads up that, hey, maybe you should refresh a few things. If you wanna ignore leading indicators, that's fine, but you need to make sure you're pumping out and testing as much as possible. But I think it's very important to look at these 'cause it can give you a little bit of a sneak peek at what's wrong so you don't make the same mistake again. Next, when to pull back. I think you need to have rules inside your ad accounts, whether they're automated or yourself looking at them, I think using Facebook's automated rules are so underrated, where you should just have a very clear cutoff point. If you know that your average order value is $60 and you want things to be profitable, I would basically, once something has spent $58 with no sale, I'd cut it. And then ongoing after that point, if it's spending and profitable and it's doing well, and this is depending on if you're e-com or digital product. For me, a digital product, I'll— like, if this was my goal, I'd be okay with spending $58 to start, but I'd want that to be lower. Ideally, if I could profit like $10 to $20 per sale, great, because then there's backend high-ticket stuff. But, um, you just want to know when to pull back. Set your own rules. You know your business better than I do. Set the rules and know what to do based on them and follow them to a T. Lastly, speed versus stability trade-off. Do you want to scale quickly or do you want to scale Super important to scale right. Don't try to push through it just to kind of get there. Set everything up correctly. And ideally, if you're following some of the other videos on my channel, you can make that happen. So I hope you enjoyed this video, a little bit tactical, a little bit straight to the point, but that's exactly how you're gonna scale past $1,000 a day is if you follow all these things step for step. If you're interested in running ads better for your business, click the first link below, join our group. You'll get a ton of free resources that'll help you a lot. And I'll see you in the next one.