Dispatch № 4 - Scaling Accounts
Hello and welcome to another free dispatch with me, Jake the Ad Nerd 🤓 (< not me)
Today is a fun one and it revolves around a question that I get asked, almost daily.
“Hey Jake, I have these amazing FB Ads ads going but how the hell do I scale them?
Well, lucky for you, we're diving into the minds of David Herrmann, Dara Denney, John Max Bolling, and Nick Shackelford to unlock inspiration for your strategies!
In all honesty, we’re going super text-heavy with the knowledge in this one. And I mean, there’s some real knowledge here…
So, I’d encourage you to block out 6-10 minutes to consume everything.
If you don’t have time for that right away, don’t worry. I’ll be here when you get back!
For those of us moving on, there are a few disclaimers before we get into everything (yes, they go in every dispatch).
1. There is no one unicorn source (including this one) that will teach you everything you need. If that’s why you’ve decided to be in this community, you’ll soon be disappointed.
2. What works for one advertiser, might not work for you. These are merely observations on what myself and others see is working across accounts and verticals. You need to test responsibly and at your own discretion.
⁉️ What Are We Nerding Out On?
As the picture would suggest… and my first few sentences… we’re scaling accounts!
Scaling seems to be a challenge for some media buyers because (in my opinion) they haven't fully taken the time to understand the foundational aspects of the platform.
This is not a knock on anyone. After all, that's why we're all here, correct?
To learn from others and evolve our skillset ✅
With that, there’s a tiny nuance when it comes to scaling, and that is: ensuring that your eyes are set on key metrics as you look to scale.
What are those metrics, Jake?
Come on. You know better than that!
You decide what those metrics are and how to get there. Providing enough time and data to reach a conclusion as to whether they fail, pass, or are ready scale.
(Don’t hate me but, it’s the truth. We cover this in ‘The Good Stuff’ below 😎)
Now, I’m sure you've all heard that there are two CORE methods for scaling. For those of you that haven’t. They are…
Horizontal Scaling and Vertical Scaling.
There are a plethora of resources out there (3 that I honestly trust), to break that down into a more strategic definition. For now, you get the nerded out, short and sweet.
Why?
Because the more I write and develop for this community, I’m realizing that I do not want it to become the place where you conduct ALL of your research. I want you to get out there, converse with others, test real dollars and ideas, and start forming your own playbook.
And… in all honesty, I want to be able to evolve this newsletter and tap into “deeper dives” on topics as this grows. Which is why the first few dispatches have been on a very macro level. We’ll continue with that trend and then circle back for micro in the future 😉
I think this is the best value that I can bring to you. Introduce you to the topics, ideas, and strategies, and then as you’ve digested them, return for a more tactical look.
Right… The short and sweet…
Vertical Scaling is all about increasing your budget. But, there are a few creative ways to do that (more about this later). Horizontal Scaling affects the whole funnel and allows you to expand it. Andrew Foxwell mentioned this a little in the last dispatch.
That's my short and sweet version and I want you to use that version, and this dispatch, to get you thinking about how YOU’RE going to scale accounts.
🍯 The Good Stuff
I'm incredibly grateful to somehow be able to steal time away from other advertisers who truly know the platform on a level that can provide value to you as a reader, every damn week!
Keeping with that theme, I reached out to a few people who I thought would bring in the most diverse and unique takes on the topic of scaling ads.
Undoubtedly, the contributor model is becoming the most impactful way to reward you for subscribing and I hope you’re enjoying it.
Now, when it comes to scaling, I wanted to ask our contributors a few standard questions and then a few “off-the-wall” questions to get them, and you as the reader, thinking 🤔
I’m pretty amped up on the responses. So, let’s just jump right in!
David Herrmann, has been helping to manage and scale DTC brands on their paid social advertising for over 6 years, successfully managing over $100M in ad spend. He’s also a self-proclaimed Paid Social Evangelist, a hopeless Dodger’s fan, and when he’s not providing advertisers with value, he’s actively documenting police car chases on Twitter.
We also share odd similarities in childhood memories… But, I digress.
David… let’s get after it!
1. What's your process/strategy for increasing a daily, weekly or monthly budget?
“I am a bit of a conservative when it comes to scaling daily budgets. Typically I won't scale a campaign unless I see our UATC and ROAS holding steady for the first 10,000 impressions. At that point I'll begin to scale by an initial 15% and monitor for another 48 hours before I scale again.
For monthly scaling we do a lot more audience scaling to increase budget vs scaling one ad set over and over. This is due to the positive signals coming in, it allows us to get more life out of our campaigns vs. scaling one ad set. This strategy has always been fruitful to get more out of our campaigns than scale and burn quickly.”
2. What's your favorite strategy for extending your funnel and scaling ads?
“Similar to what I said above. In my 9 years doing ads on FB the strategy that always seems to work is vertical scaling audiences vs. horizontal scaling budgets. Typically we will set up our tried and true audiences first on any new product launch. Once we find the ad that really takes off, we'll begin building out additional ad set budget audiences "similar" to the winning audiences. If those audiences hold for 24/48 hours we'll begin scaling them budget wise, while adding in new audiences at same budgets as current spending ad sets. It helps scale really fast.
This helped a client recently that was featured on Shark Tank and The Today Show from going from $3k a day budget to $25k a day budgets within 3 days. We then set up rules to help scale one learning phase is over to scale on their own (to make my life easier). Then just monitor our 1st-time impression ratios and day over day fluctuations.”
3. What's one thing that you know now that you wish you would have known 2 years ago when it comes to scaling Facebook Ads?
“That running ads in 2018 was a lot easier and less headache than running ads in 2020. :) For real, I think the biggest thing is just continuing to become an expert at what works / doesn't work in content for ads on the platform. Being a well versed content mind is an extremely valuable skill to have in this business and hiring someone who can help execute your ideas based on data is the best thing you can do for scale.”
4. If you had an unlimited budget on an account, what's the one test that you're doing before scaling?
“Making sure the brand has enough capabilities to be nimble in testing multiple pieces of creative quickly. The biggest factor as mentioned above is content when scaling out ads.”
👂 Listen Up
Please pay attention to David’s first point. It’s okay to be conservative when it comes to scaling daily budgets! It’s okay to limit the amount of money that you’re lighting on fire if your correlations are not aligning with success metrics or unit economics.
Land on your success metric for scaling, usually a ROAS (and/or UATC for eComm) holding steady for the first 10k impressions, and then begin your scaling.
Make sure that your metrics are fully aligned with the dollars that you’re willing to spend as you scale. Keeping in mind how risk-averse the account is.
Don’t forget about DELAYED ATTRIBUTION 🤓
Dara will touch on risk-aversion shortly. So, let’s carry on!
Dara Denney is the Director of Paid Social over at Fetch & Funnel. She’s got a real pulse on the nuances of Facebook Ads and has been in the biz for over 6 years. Dara recently launched a YouTube channel that shares her tips, tricks, and favorite “blueprints” for success.
Dara… drop some knowledge!
1. What's your process/strategy for increasing a daily, weekly or monthly budget?
”My process for scaling up budgets depends on a lot of factors. These are the things I always consider before scaling up a client:
How quickly is this business trying to grow? What goals are they trying to reach? Are these goals realistic?
How risk-averse is the client? Are they willing to see that ROAS go down a bit as they scale up? Do they trust the process or do they need to see results before continuing?
Do we have enough creative and creative resources to support a scale?
What's currently working on the account? Prospecting, retargeting? Are there other tests to explore for creative or targeting that could result in some quick wins?
What does their full funnel-marketing strategy look like during this scale-up period? Do we need to improve user flow on website or email to account for the additional volume so we're not wasting money?
How has the account handled budget increases in the past?
With all of that said, there are three main methods I use to scale up clients:
1. Increasing the budget in the best performing areas by 20% every 3 days.
2. Duplicating best performing ad sets into a CBO campaign and multiplying the budget.
3. Audience expansion, which is to find new customer avatars or markets to scale up in addition to the main campaigns.
During COVID-19, a lot of our clients at Fetch & Funnel were understandably more risk-averse than before. They weren't willing to sacrifice results, even temporarily, in the name of growth. Because of this, we have been taking the slow and steady method of 20% budget increases every 3 days a lot more than we used to. This method takes time, but we've found that it's the best way to scale up without sacrificing results.”
2. What's your favorite strategy for extending your funnel and scaling ads?
”My personal favorite to budget scaling is to use this combination: campaign budget optimization + super lookalike + broad audience. This CBO campaign contains two ad sets: one that is a super lookalike of all the best performing audiences that have been tested in the past and a broad audience targeting all of Facebook. This method kills it when all of the other marketings are working correctly and the product-market fit has been proven out.
Sometimes I find that this strategy can take up to a week to stabilize, which is why we haven't done it as much during COVID-19. Essentially you launch this campaign with your scaled-up budget (2x or even 5x whatever you were doing before depending on goals) and increase as needed. This campaign allows me to concentrate more on creative testing and looking for other customer avatars or markets to expand into.”
3. What's one thing that you know now that you wish you would have known 2 years ago when it comes to scaling Facebook Ads?
”Two years ago it was a completely different game: in 2018 I was still Michigan-methoding all my campaigns with like 50 ad sets all segmented by age, gender, placement, etc... that in addition to testing out lookalikes and interest avatars. What a nightmare. I'm really glad that scaling looks differently for media buyers these days and that bigger, broader audiences tend to work better because of improvements to the algorithm.
However, the thing I wish I knew sooner about scaling budgets (and Facebook Ads in general) is that there are no absolute best practices. What kills it for one client can and will shit the bed for another. Because of this, you can't just throw in the towel when something doesn't work. You have to test. And test again. That part never stops: my job as a media buyer isn't to "manage" your Facebook Ads account. It's to test everything; see what works and what doesn't, and to make those continuous changes at the campaign, ad set, and ad level. This applies to the scaling strategy as well: if one method of scaling doesn't work then we try another, smartly.”
4. If you had an unlimited budget on an account, what's the one test that you're doing before scaling?
”If I had an unlimited budget on an account I'd invest heavily in creative. Videos. Graphics. Copywriters. Anything to make the ads as sexy as possible.
I'd also be looking to make sure that everything not related to Facebook was squared away: a good-looking website with a strong conversion rate, solid email marketing... really anything that could be a potential bottleneck to all that extra traffic. One of the biggest problems I see with a brand's Facebook Ads often has nothing to do with their ads at all: it's the website. Or it's the product. And no amount of audience or ad testing is going to fix a problem like that.
So if I could have all the creative resources I'd want PLUS a conversion-ready website...*shivers*... I'd test some tried and true lookalikes using dynamic creative and then I'd CBO/super lookalike/broad audience that shit and then BOOM. You'd have a hockey-stick growth graphic to show potential VCs.”
🌠 Dara’s Dream
I’d have to agree with this dream and the dream that all of our contributors seem to share today… If you can, ensure the brand (or your team) has enough capabilities to be nimble in testing multiple pieces of creative quickly when scaling.
Content when scaling out ads is the least talked about element of many “guru’s” for good reason ;) It’s not a “ninja” hack…
Moving right along. John, what do you have for us?!
John Max Bolling, not only has an amazing name, he’s a beast when it comes to FB Ads. He’s the Head of US Operations at ROAS Media and managed $10M+ in paid spend for 2019, generating over $30M in revenues. I asked John to contribute because I’ve noticed that his team takes a less-traditional approach to almost all things FB Ads and it’s a methodology that I think others can learn from and build upon.
1. What's your process/strategy for increasing a daily, weekly or monthly budget?
“We are a bit unique in that our media buying efforts are much more attuned to a day trading mentality. We are actively in accounts every 2-5 hours manually scaling and culling based on strict guidelines that we build based on trends across the account-specific data, macro trends we are seeing across the portfolio for that similar industry, as well as country-specific data.
Most of our clients are global, so when it’s early evening in the US, we are scaling down US budgets while also scaling up budgets in the East Pacific regions. We have tested this extensively against the traditional methodology of “keeping your campaigns & ad sets out of the learning phase” and our method proves out in 90% of cases.
Think about it, if you start Monday with 50 active ad sets across your entire funnel, 25 of those ad sets are going to have a good day, and 25 are not. Where most media buyers leave things on and scale/cull based on 3/7/14/21/28 day data, we seize the opportunities we are given on a daily basis to squeeze out an additional 20-30% on a single ad set that is outperforming on the day.”
2. What's your favorite strategy for extending your funnel and scaling ads?
“See the answer above :)”
3. What's one thing that you know now that you wish you would have known 2 years ago when it comes to scaling Facebook Ads?
“The biggest thing I wish I realized is that everything you read (including this article) is lacking context. For every amazing story you see, that same media buyer is being fired from 3 other accounts for not being able to crack them. Scaling is extremely difficult and nuanced.
I would recommend everyone to build their own playbook, when you read a new strategy, jot it down and test it. If it performs then add it to your playbook, if it doesn’t then test it on 2 other accounts before you completely throw it away.
Most importantly double down on what is working, don’t chase shiny buttons just because your favorite twitter follow suggested it. Time vs. opportunity is a real thing. 80% of your execution should be focused on what works, 20% experimental.
Let the data guide you, but also don’t be so stuck in the data you miss an opportunity to test something wild every once in a while. Data is post-game analysis.”
4. If you had an unlimited budget on an account, what's the one test that you're doing before scaling?
“I’m going to cheat here a little. The one thing we test before scaling is the offer. But that offer consists of not only the product being sold, bundle, price, etc… it includes the entire experience. What creative will we build, what does the landing page look like, what is the checkout experience, what is the retargeting flow (both paid & through email/sms), and what does the post sale experience look like?
A lot of people believe scale is just increasing budget, and I wish it were that easy. Scale is a product of the following;
1. Product/market fit
2. Mass appeal of product (potential audience..it’s hard to scale a widget that only 50,000 people could ever want)
3. Unit economics
4. Organic presence
5. Attachment to celebrities or influencers
6. Product Supply chain
7. CBB (cross border expansion opportunity)
There are levels to scale, with peaks, valleys, and plateaus. Navigating those while managing cash flow, inconsistent results across acquisition channels, and the scale of the business going from $1m to $10m requires very nuanced skill sets.
Paid media is simply one of those skill sets.
And paid is completely reliant (at scale) on the businesses ability to test creative, offers, and build as much margin as possible as the one thing we know for certain is that ad costs will continue to rise.”
⏸️ Slow It Down
Let’s take a deep breath before we jump into the final contributor.
Lot’s of knowledge has been dropped… breathe!
I hope that you’ve caught onto the response to #4 and what every dream would be. There’s also some key, linear congruencies with each answer to #2 which is pretty cool!
John also brings up an interesting idea of approaching media buying like a day-trader. I’d say the biggest caveat to that is that John and his team have years of data and success backing up that specific model and they have a very, very clear understanding of unit economics and trends that allow that playbook to work.
That’s not saying that it’s not something that you could pull off 🙏
Ready to wrap it up? Alright, alright… let’s wrap this up Nick!
Nick Shakelford is the Co-Founder of Structured Social, the god-father of the STACK, and has quickly become one of the leading commerce and Facebook marketers, having spent over $85M on FB Ads alone. Shackelford manages several 6-figure ad budgets for massive brands and above all of that, he’s just a very humble human being.
Fun fact: Nick used to be a goalie for the American pro soccer team, LA Galaxy II, and owned a fidget spinner business called Fidgetly.
Nick, do me a favor and bring this full circle!
1. What's your process/strategy for increasing a daily, weekly or monthly budget?
“We have a 2 simple approaches to scaling and they are applicable across each window you've laid out. The factors are as follows.
1) Start the budget higher. It sounds simple but it is much easier to build upon a higher starting point vs going from $10-$20-$30 budgets up to $100-$200. It's much easier to scale if you're already at $400+ a day
2) We analyze the budget and see if it has been exhausted each day at an acceptable or above ROAS target. - Depending on how much above your ROAS target you are will determine the amount of budget you are able to increase.
Just at CPA/ROAS target? - 10-20% increase
Healthily Above CPA/ROAS target? - 30-50% increase
Each time, always watching to see if the drop in performance means we have to revert the budget back to the original pace.”
2. What's your favorite strategy for extending your funnel and scaling ads?
“We have a few scaling sequences but the most consistent would be.
DCT to find creative best performers -
Pull Post ID's or combine best performing creatives with copy - begin testing against proven audiences (meanwhile turning any creative into either a new gif or new short video to re enter into DCT testing)
Take best performing audience + creative combination move into cost cap/target cost campaign with higher budget
Take best performing audience + creative and horizontally duplicate best combinations.
For extending funnel -
This is pretty close to the chest but we have been incorporating a short listicals or sales blog style page that links to product page with a time sensitive offer at mid / bottom of funnel. We are going to be working on this step/workflow + structure for the remainder of the year.”
3. What's one thing that you know now that you wish you would have known 2 years ago when it comes to scaling Facebook Ads?
“We make decisions on the day to day but we need to measure on the month. If you are too overwhelmed with the days you won't be able to plan content or ideation for the remaining month.
Decisions that you are making in the account TODAY are because of what you have done the 3 or 5 or 7 days prior.”
4. If you had an unlimited budget on an account, what's the one test that you're doing before scaling?
“Oh man I've always wanted to do this - Separate out a campaign to be targeting each individual placement.
an IG feed only
an IG story only
an FB feed
an FB story only”
🏁 In Closing
First things first, I’m running out of room… 😂
With your time and inbox in mind, let’s close with a few bullet points!
When it comes to scaling, ensure your foundational knowledge is in place AND you have a benchmark for success (other than increasing the spend). This can be ROAS or UATC per X number of impressions. Just ensure there’s enough data to confidently move forward.
If you can, try to focus on overall results monthly. There’s scenarios where daily adjustments work, but overall success should be measured monthly.
Your best performing audiences and creative will be the first place to start your horizontal or vertical scaling. I can’t tell you which one will work best for you however, both start at that realization.
When possible, start your budget higher and scale from there, as opposed to, starting at $10-20 and scaling 20-30% every 48 hours.
Scaling FB Ads is completely reliant on the ability to test creative, offers, and build as much margin as possible.
Be ever cognizant of how risk-averse your accounts can be before an idea of scaling forms in your head.
Much like the initial disclaimers, what works for one advertiser, might not work for you. You have to test often, responsibly, and at your own discretion.
**If you’re not running ads and are looking for/working with an agency, may this dispatch act as a knowledge base for your understanding of FB Ads. It should bring forth questions that you can use as a basis for accountability.
With gratitude.
Did you enjoy this long-form style? Because… I freakin’ dig it! A lot.
It’s my sincere hope that this glimpse into the different approaches to scaling will aid you in ideating on new and effective ways to approach your FB Ads.
Ohhh… One last bit and full transparency… I’m possibly moving this to a bi-weekly newsletter. It would allow me and the contributors more time to ideate and compose.
Plus, the bi-weekly schedule will selfishly allow me to invest more time back into my business/team 😬 (I’m still dialing in that balance - bear with me).
But, I’ll keep everyone updated on that!
Until next time.
Cheers,
Jake the Ad Nerd 🤙
P.S. I’m on Twitter and would love to connect.
The Footer
No footer links this week… Because there’s no room 🤦♂️ Although, I do have space to link you to Cory Dobbin’s Twitter update about the ABC Lookalikes that he mentioned in last week’s dispatch.
If you enjoyed this dispatch or found value in it, please consider sharing!
Great content, great contributors, great voice. Keep it up, you rule.