If you’re here, it’s because you’ve been playing around with Meta Ads and witnessed a glimmer of success. It’s a good start, but simply launching a campaign isn’t enough. You need a strategy to scale and maximize your return on investment.
At Rise we have a proven framework – a 4 phase process – to build strong ecomm Meta accounts. We go through these phases to determine what needs to happen to amplify desired results and fix what is not working.
Phase 1: Laying the Foundation
Before we start talking about scaling, let’s ensure your house is in order. This means:
Conversion Tracking
Using correct data is crucial. Clear data is the lifeblood of optimization, and relying only on the Meta Pixel is not good enough. Since iOs14, tracking has been widely inaccurate.
In a world with cookie limitations, the Conversion API set up is a must-have for enhanced accuracy and server-side events. If you want even more clarity in tracking, you can invest in an attribution tool like Hyros, Cometly, or Triple Whale.
Meta Commerce Account
An Optimized Feed is not only essential for Google Ads, but also for Meta. With a Commerce account you can leverage powerful shoppable ad formats.
Use high-quality images, relevant titles and detailed descriptions. You can also create sets per categories, best sellers, gender, age, etc.
Phase 2: Experimentation
There’s no one fits all strategy, the only way to learn what works for you is through experimentation.
If you are starting from scratch, do not have proven audiences, nor proven creative assets – there are too many unknowns – you should be inclined to testings that you can conduct rapidly; that means testings that do not require a high threshold of spend or time.
Prove Small
We need to prove one single variable at a time, and your first goal is to find a message that resonates with your audience. We recommend starting with message testing, because the most important thing for new customer acquisition is a solid entry point.
For message testing, you are going to use a simple creative static image with a core piece of message. Test 12 copy variations at a time. Do not put much time into copywriting, nor thinking about what may or may not work – you would be assuming, and the whole idea of this testing is to reduce assumptions and go with proven insights.
As mentioned above, this experimentation does not require a high threshold of spend or time. Run for traffic, $3 to $5 spend for each variation, and targeting a broad segment (demographic only).
Why broad? Because the only variable we are testing right now is messaging.
From this experiment you’ll be able to detect:
- Loser messaging (under 2% CTR): these are not resonating, kill them.
- Middle of the road (2% CTR but over $2 CPC): kill them, you do not want to waste time optimizing these.
- Chasers (2% CTR): these show potential but can be improved. Try your next phase of messaging experimentation with tweaks over these.
- Winners (4% CTR): move to the next step.
Your second goal is to find winning creative assets. Take this step seriously, creative has the largest impact on conversion rates and your ability to scale.
Build dozens of creative assets with your winning messages. Diversify to test. We are not talking about testing different formats only (video, static, carousel, etc), but trying various approaches: product shot, lifestyle, unboxing, UGC, testimonial, product in action, how to, humor, before & after, evoke curiosity, create a sense of urgency, etc.
Take a bold approach with the differences between the creatives. There should be strong contrast for it to be a real experiment.
Once you detect your winning assets, you can move to the Audience discovery step.
When we talk about audiences, we talk about cold segments:
- Interests
- Lookalike
- Demographics
Test proven ads with single segments. If the audience is too big, you can layer – don’t go too big too soon. Use the same $5 rapid threshold.
On this initial audience experiment, you should be looking for engagement. That is, to find audiences that are willing to listen to what you have to say. Validate segments based on CTRs but also attention: time spent watching a video (+8sec), or time spent on your website.
Armed with your winning creatives and audiences, you can move to Phase 3.
Phase 3: Powerhouse
You have your tested ads and segments, now it’s time to implement and start optimizing for conversions. Combine the best-performing creatives with the most responsive audiences to build high-impact ad sets.
Remember these are cold audiences that are interested in what you have to offer, but may not be ready to buy. They are most probably on a stage of “hey, you got my attention, now tell me more”. You need preparatory content for them to take action once they head to your store.
On the other hand, your warm and hot segments are almost saying yes to your product. You can go with a proven offer, a tested value stack they are inclined to react to. But note that these audiences are not really scalable, as you will get them to exhaustion if you push too much. Your way to scale is through proven cold segments and winning ads.
Now, let’s go back to our cold audiences, because experimentation has not ended. You should continuously test, analyze, and iterate if you want to grow.
On post click phases – conversion phases – we call experimentation, optimization. Start with $20 to $50 daily budgets for 2 to 5 days so that you can detect not only what doesn’t work, but also what will help you scale.
The first metric you want to check in on is ROAS, and your flex point is your breakeven ROAS. No idea what your breakeven is? Send us a request and get access to our free target ROAS calculator.
If an ad is below your breakeven ROAS, you need to go deeper and understand what is not working so that you can make the correct adjustments:
- Check if your CPM is at the benchmark: $10 – $22 for average ecomm (the exceptions are: new accounts, niche industries, holiday season). If you are way over benchmark, it could be an audience size issue (frequency over 2 in the last 30 days) or that the algorithm understands that your copy & creative are not resonating with your audience. Note that tweaking for people is not the same as tweaking for the algorithm.
- Check your outbound CTR (should be over 2%) and CPC (between $1 and $1.5). If you detect issues here , your ad might not be relevant for the targeted segment.
- Check your conversion rate, which should be at least 2%. If it’s not, then it’s probably related to the landing page. Revise UX, product offering expectations vs ad messaging, pricing, and look for technical issues.
What happens when you have an ad performing over your breakeven ROAS and with a good conversion rate (2% – 3%)? You need to keep optimizing. Meaning: a/b test headlines, try different CTA and hook variations, change colors, the position of the product, etc.
Why? Because we are looking for ads that have 8% – 12% conversion rate. These are the ones that will create the stability you need to scale. If you start pushing on your 2% – 3%, you will set a premature ceiling.
Phase 4: Scale Up.
The key is to augment your proven creatives on proven audiences, keeping your core message consistent. You can scale per product, category, or message.
Increase budgets by 10-20% every few days, monitoring performance closely. Be patient, avoid aggressive increases that can destabilize your campaigns.
Keep testing and continuously optimizing.
Scaling is not about throwing money at the wall. It’s about strategic growth, driven by data, testing, and continuous optimization. The digital landscape is constantly evolving. Stay updated and adapt your strategies accordingly.
