Transcription
Scaling meta ads is not about spending more, not all the time. It's about spending smarter. Most brands that we work with and that contact us, they have hit a wall that they do not know how to implement next steps to scale their brands. And it happens because, as your store scales, you are the founder, and that means you have so many more things to do. You can't necessarily focus just on meta ads like we can, because this is what we do.
So, after managing millions of dollars in ad spend, I've seen the same mistakes over and over again. I've also put together this blueprint that my team uses to scale stores, and I want to show you an ad account that we have taken from $5K a month in spend to over $50K. This client is generating over $300 to $400K every single month. So, without further ado, let's get into it. [Music]
So, a lot of the brands that come to us, they try to push. So if they're at a 2X at $20K a month, $30K, $80K a month, $100K a month, then they push their results tank. Because scaling, in theory, the word scaling does not just mean increasing your budget. If we look on Google, to climb a steep surface, such as a wall, often using special equipment.
The biggest mistakes I see brands make are these: They spend too much too soon. "Two weeks, we have so many winners, let's scale," and they start cranking their budgets. That is the most common mistake; that is not how you do it. A lot of brands we also see, generally, the ad account is being hoisted up with one or two creatives. Again, lasts for now, but it will not last forever.
Number three: Relying on ROAS is the only KPI to track within your ad account. ROAS is great, but it doesn't take into consideration your margins, your COGs, all of these things that contribute to the profitability of your store, and not focusing on your lifetime value. I know I talk about Meta all the time, but we also do Klaviyo, because without retention, most businesses fail, because first-order profitability, especially at an AOV under $30, is going to be extremely hard to get at scale.
So let's get into how we took this brand from $5K to $50K, so you can see the step-by-step system that we have. So we're in that account; you can see I have my custom column set up, and you also can see, if I move my face, that we are in May of 2023 here. So we're talking a while back. In this, we had a total of $5K spend. We have top of the funnel, top of the funnel, top of the funnel, top of the funnel, really spread thin on this one. You guys can see that these down here really had no effect; where we were going was these ones up here.
So, at the time in 2023, we were segmenting out pretty detailed lookalikes, lookalikes, and then bottom of the funnel. So within these, we had a number of different ad sets running, and let's sort by purchases. You can see we were doing okay: 92 purchases, $3600 SP, 26. So we're at 3.37. The way we really started to strategize this is understanding placements, and we'd have four ads per ad set. Certain things have not changed in that scenario. This one was a specific campaign; wanted to A/B test two different hooks. This one, four ads once again. So the framework was very straightforward: four ads per ad set, testing different audiences, interests, etc.
So let's fast forward to May 2024. We spent $23,000, generating $121K at a 5.2X. Now you'll see what starts to happen here is that we condensed. So we condensed things down drastically. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. These four, we started to implement cost controls into this, and this one still running high as volume, one ad set, multiple ads. You guys can see all of the purchases that came through in this campaign, stacking all of these ads to allow Meta to make the decision on what was working best. You guys don't see this a lot because a lot of people won't have this time frame because they don't keep their clients long enough to be able to analyze past performance. This one was a bid cap campaign. You guys have seen my bid cap videos; I'm a huge fan. Spent $2300, 5.5X to generate $12K.
So you guys can see as we started to increase the budget, we needed to change how we were running these ads. So I want to fast forward now to March of 2025, which is right now, switched again. And so far this month, we have spent $32,000, still a week left, so we're tracking maybe just under $50K in ad spend. Efficiency is still there, a 3.58, and we have a whole different structure. And this is what I'm talking about: You have to evolve as you scale. Your ad accounts will work the way they're working with your ASC and your one other highest volume campaign that will work, provided you have good creatives that are speaking to the customer, that only work till maybe $10 or $12K a month in spend. From there, you have to pivot, cuz your ad account and your audience and the total addressable market starts to change as the pixel evolves and gets more data, then there's another switch.
So I want to get into budget allocations and what you need to be prepared for after seeing exactly what I just showed you. So guys, from $0 to $5K a month, hire a consultant or a coach like me, or learn how to run ads yourself. Don't try to outsource; you need to understand how to do these things. And the key is, from $0 to $5K, is test hooks, angles, and different creative formats: statics, UGC, videos. Test these different things and start to develop some level of tracking for your different creative assets.
Next is your $5K to $10K a month. This is where you want to start to put together a scaling and testing campaign. These two will feed each other, and it is so important to start breaking through that spend barrier. You're testing; you can watch my last videos. One test, four ads, one creative, one ad set, four different copy variations, one creative test methodically, so you can see what is working and what is not. And please, if you're ever planning on hiring someone, make sure you have a good naming convention, so that when my team gets into it, they know what's happening. Don't just name it vid 2 version 3; we have no idea what that means.
From $10K to $50K is where things start to get a little crazy. You have your scaling campaigns; you start expanding those scaling campaigns; your spend threat thresholds begin to increase because you're seeing money in your bank account. This is where you want to start testing ASCs; you want to start testing broad audiences in one campaign, in 20% budget increases every couple of days. Let the algorithm keep working for you; don't reset the learning phase. This is where potentially you want to hire somebody to help if you don't feel comfortable.
And then, guys, the $50K plus, which is crazy and fun and exhilarating, and I'm going to show you an account right now with that, so you guys can see. In this campaign, we have so many different campaigns running because we're really trying to isolate what is working. We have bid caps, cost per result, highest volume, no shop, yes shop, previous winnings, cost caps; all of these different campaigns going because we are going for just pure volume at a very small efficiency because the more volume, the less efficient we need to be because there's so much coming through. So, so far this month, we have spent $58,000; we want to get to $100K by next month, and we are just completely going volume all the way out. You can see we have all of our different ad sets within these two campaigns that are driving the majority at a $25 cost per purchase, coming in at a 1.5X because, again, volume, volume, volume. And that's where things change. Everything in terms of the unit economics of e-commerce pivots when you start going volume. Need a lower ROAS; your cost per purchase still needs to be efficient; your ROAS becomes a little bit less of an important factor because we want to track more of those e-commerce contribution margins, LTV, CAC metrics.
And so I hope that breakdown helped you guys to understand where you are now and what you need to start doing to get to be in a much higher spend bracket. So scaling is a system; it's not luck. The system is super important to follow. If you guys have any questions at all, leave a comment down below. Hit thumbs up if you enjoyed this. Ask away. Connect with me on Instagram or LinkedIn, where I constantly communicate with people like you who are asking for help. Happy to share any insights. And if you want to take your Meta ads to the next level, follow the blueprint; this works. We'll see you guys in the next video. [Music] [Applause]