Scaling your Facebook ad campaigns is a thrilling journey — you’re ready to invest more to reach a larger audience and boost your results. But here’s the catch: When scaling up (or down), a misstep can cost you! Many advertisers quickly raise or lower their budgets and bids, hoping for better results. Unfortunately, this often backfires.
If you’re trying to scale your Facebook ads, you need to know how to adjust your budgets and bids smartly. In this blog, I’ll guide you through expert strategies to scale your campaigns without breaking the algorithm, helping you maintain efficiency and save money. These strategies are backed by data and real-world results, so let’s dive in!
Section 1: Why You Shouldn’t Change Your Budget by More Than 20% at a Time
Facebook’s algorithm thrives on consistency. When you suddenly increase or decrease your budget by a large margin, it disrupts the algorithm’s learning process and can negatively impact campaign performance. Research shows that making drastic budget changes (e.g., a 100% increase) can lead to a significant drop in the efficiency of your ads — reducing your ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), increasing cost-per-click (CPC), and hurting overall ad performance.
Recommendation:
Stick to increasing or decreasing your budget by no more than 20% at a time. This small change allows the algorithm to adjust naturally, optimizing the performance without any major disruptions.
Example:
If your current daily budget is $100, increase it to $120 — not $200. Similarly, if you need to reduce your budget, lower it to $80, not $50. Gradual changes help maintain consistency, leading to more stable results.
Section 2: Scaling Up Your Campaigns – Start with the Budget, Then Adjust the Bids
When you want to scale up a campaign, the best approach is to increase the budget first before making any changes to bids. This strategy allows you to take advantage of more budget while still working within the parameters of your existing bid. It also enables you to reach a broader audience within the same cost range.
Here’s What Happens:
- More Audience Reach at the Same Bid Level: When you increase the budget first, Facebook tries to reach more people without raising your bid. This way, you are expanding the reach to additional potential customers within the same cost structure.
- Tapping into New Audience Segments: With the additional budget, Facebook can begin to target fresh audience segments that may not have been fully reached with your previous budget, but within the same bid range. This ensures you’re not wasting money by overbidding.
Example:
Suppose your current campaign is running at $300 per day with a bid of $0.50 per click. Instead of immediately increasing the bid, increase the budget to $360 first. This allows you to reach more people within the current bid range, ensuring that you can test new audiences without overspending.
Section 3: Scaling Down Campaigns – Adjust Bids First, Then Budget
Why Bid Adjustments Come First When Reducing Spend:
When you’re scaling down, you want to avoid cutting the wrong audience. If you decrease your budget too soon, you may inadvertently lose valuable high-intent users. Instead, reduce bids first so you can cut back on the less interested audiences, while still reaching the high-converting users.
Here’s Why Bids Matter First:
- Target Higher-Intent Audiences: Lowering bids before the budget means you’re reducing ad exposure to users who are less likely to convert. By adjusting bids first, you filter out low-value clicks while keeping ads in front of the most interested people.
- Efficient Cost Control: With lower bids, you maintain control over your spend while still driving relevant traffic to your site.
Expert Data:
According to Facebook’s internal testing, reducing bids by 10% first allows campaigns to maintain up to 85% of their previous reach with less cost. Only after adjusting bids should you scale back your budget for a more efficient campaign.
Example:
If your campaign is running at $400 with a bid of $1 per click, reduce the bid to $0.90 per click first. Afterward, reduce the daily budget to $320. This ensures that you’re still targeting the best-performing audiences, but at a lower cost.
Section 4: Why Incremental Changes Improve Campaign Efficiency
Why This Approach Works Better for Scaling:
Facebook’s ad delivery system rewards campaigns that make steady, incremental adjustments rather than sudden, drastic changes. By making small, controlled adjustments, you allow the system to optimize better, leading to improved performance over time. These changes help the algorithm keep up with your goals without forcing it to re-learn everything from scratch.
Tip:
For larger budgets, incremental changes are especially crucial. Small tweaks in bids and budget amounts can make a massive difference in performance and help maintain a low cost per conversion.
Expert Insight:
A study by Smartly.io found that advertisers who increased budgets incrementally over 4-6 weeks saw 2x the increase in ROAS, compared to those who made larger budget shifts in a single week.
Conclusion – Scaling With Strategy: The Key to Sustained Ad Performance
Scaling Facebook ads isn’t about rushing to pump more money into your campaigns; it’s about making smart, strategic adjustments. By following the 20% budget change rule, starting with budget adjustments, and scaling down with careful bid reductions, you’ll be able to achieve long-term success without sacrificing efficiency.
Remember, the more you spend, the better the results, but only if you do it the right way. Keep these tips in mind as you scale, and watch your campaigns perform better than ever before.
