Solved: Ad Structure Help for Online Store on Facebook

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out and sharing your situation. It's a common story, to be honest – brands that are brilliant organically but struggle to translate that into paid ads, often getting let down by agencies with a one-size-fits-all approach. With your history and pixel data, you're sitting on a goldmine, you just need the right map to dig it up.

Forget the complicated structures you've probably seen. For a store with 300+ products, the answer isn't more complexity; it's a smarter, more streamlined approach that lets the algorithm do the heavy lifting for you. Let's get into what that actually looks like.

I'd say you need to start with the numbers...

Before we even touch Ads Manager, we need to answer a fundamental question: "How much is a customer actually worth to you?" Most people obsess over cheap clicks or low Cost Per Purchase, but they have no idea what they can actually afford to spend. This is likely where your previous agencies failed; they were chasing vanity metrics instead of profitable growth.

The metric that matters is Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Once you know this, you can determine your target Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). A healthy business model typically aims for an LTV:CAC ratio of at least 3:1. Meaning, for every £1 you spend to get a customer, they should generate at least £3 in profit over their lifetime with you.

For an eCommerce brand, a simple way to estimate LTV is:

LTV = (Average Order Value x Purchase Frequency Per Year x Average Customer Lifespan in Years) x Gross Margin %

You already know your AOV is $30. Let's make some reasonable assumptions for the rest. Say customers buy from you three times a year on average, they stick around for two years, and your gross margin is 60%.

LTV = ($30 x 3 x 2) * 0.60 = $108

With an LTV of $108, aiming for a 3:1 ratio means you can afford to spend up to $36 to acquire a new customer (your target CAC or CPA). Suddenly, seeing a $25 Cost Per Purchase isn't a disaster; it's a profitable investment. This number is your north star. It dictates your budgets, your testing, and your scaling decisions.

Use the calculator below to plug in your own numbers and get a real sense of what you can afford to spend. This is the foundation of a scalable ad strategy.

We'll need to look at your campaign structure...

Right, now that we have our target CPA, we can build a structure designed to hit it. As I mentioned, forget creating a campaign for every one of your 300 products. That's a recipe for disaster. It spreads your budget too thin, you never exit the learning phase, and you can't possibly manage it effectivly.

Instead, we simplify. We build a full-funnel structure with just two, maybe three, core campaigns. This consolidates your data, helps the algorithm learn faster, and makes management a breeze. The structure is based on audience 'temperature' – how familiar they are with your brand.

Here’s how you set it up:

Campaign 1: ToFu - Prospecting

• Objective: Conversions (Purchase). Always optimise for the final action you want. Don't fall for the "Brand Awareness" objective trap; you're paying Facebook to find people who will never buy.
• Budget: Allocate the majority of your spend here, around 60-70%. This is how you grow.
• Ad Sets: This is where you use your amazing pixel data. Start with 3-4 ad sets:
  • -> Ad Set 1: 1% Lookalike of your past purchasers. This is your highest quality audience.
  • -> Ad Set 2: 1% Lookalike of people who Added to Cart.
  • -> Ad Set 3: A "stack" of 3-5 of your most relevant interests. For example, if you sell handcrafted jewellery, you might stack interests like "Etsy", "Handmade Jewelry", and competitor brand names.
  • -> Ad Set 4: Broad targeting (no interests, just age/gender/location). Once your pixel is seasoned, this can perform surprisingly well.
• Creatives: Use your best-performing organic content. Videos showing the products in use, high-quality lifestyle images, carousels of your best-sellers. The goal is to stop the scroll and introduce the brand.

Campaign 2: MoFu/BoFu - Retargeting

• Objective: Catalog Sales. This is absolutely vital. You connect your product catalog to Facebook, and it will create Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs). This is the magic that lets you advertise 300+ products without lifting a finger.
• Budget: The remaining 30-40% of your budget goes here.
• Ad Sets:
  • -> Ad Set 1 (MoFu - Warm): Target all Website Visitors and Social Media Engagers from the last 30 days. Exclude anyone who has Added to Cart or Purchased in the last 14 days.
  • -> Ad Set 2 (BoFu - Hot): Target people who have Added to Cart or Initiated Checkout in the last 7 days. Exclude purchasers from the last 14 days. This is your money audience.
• Creatives:
  • -> For the MoFu ad set, use a Dynamic Product Ad in a carousel format. The copy can be a gentle reminder, maybe highlighting your brand's unique selling point (e.g., "Still thinking it over? All our pieces are handmade with love.").
  • -> For the BoFu ad set, also use a DPA carousel. But here, you can be more direct. Show them the exact items they left in their cart and consider offering a small incentive like "Free shipping on your order" or "Complete your purchase and get 10% off". This small nudge can make a huge difference. I'm thinking of a campaign we ran for a women's apparel brand that hit a 691% return, and another for a cleaning products company that brought in a 633% return. For both, a huge part of that success was nailing this hot retargeting with a compelling final offer.

You probably should obsess over audiences...

The structure is the skeleton, but the audiences are the muscle. Your success lives and dies by who you show your ads to. Since you have over 3 years of pixel data, you have a massive head start. You should prioritise your audience testing based on intent.

Think of it like a pyramid. The most valuable actions are at the top, and these are the audiences you should create Lookalikes from first. Too many people make Lookalikes of "All Website Visitors" which is far too broad and includes a lot of low-quality traffic.

Here’s the order of priority for your Lookalike and Retargeting audiences. Start at the top and work your way down as you need to scale.

When you build your Lookalikes, start with a 1% audience in your primary country. This will be the most potent. As you need to scale your budget, you can then test 1-3% and 3-5% Lookalikes, but always expect performance to dip slightly as you go broader. The real skill is finding new winning audiences without sacrificing profitability, which requires a methodical testing process.

You'll need a simple way to test and optimise...

Now you have the structure and the audiences, how do you manage it all without going crazy? The key is simple rules.

Let your campaigns run for at least 3-4 days before making any big decisions. The algorithm needs time to find its feet. After that, look at your numbers daily. Your main metric for killing an ad set is your target CPA.

The Rule: If an ad set in your Prospecting campaign has spent 1.5x to 2x your target CPA (e.g., $54-$72 based on our example) without a single purchase, turn it off. It's not working. Don't get emotional about it. Kill it and reallocate that budget to the ad sets that *are* working.

For creatives, do the same thing at the ad level. If an ad has a much higher CPA than the others in the same ad set or a very low Click-Through Rate (CTR), pause it. Then, duplicate your best-performing ad and make one small change to it – a new headline, a different first image, a new call to action. This iterative process of killing losers and testing variations of winners is how you consistenttly improve performance over time.

This is the work. It's not a set-and-forget system. It requires daily attention, but it's based on clear data and rules, not guesswork. It's a system you can actually manage in-house effectively.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

This is a fair bit to take in, I know. While this framework is powerful and something you can definitely implement yourself, the challenge often lies in the day-to-day management, creative production, and the nuanced interpretation of data. The mediocre agencies you hired likely failed because they applied a generic template without understanding the numbers that actually drive your specific business. They probably chased clicks instead of building a profitable customer acquisition engine.

Getting this right can be the difference between stagnating and scaling profitably. If you’d like an expert eye on your specific setup, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can look through your account together and build a more tailored roadmap.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh