Solved: Best bid strategy for new Meta Ads ecom account?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on your question about bid strategies for your new ecom Meta ads account. It's a great question to be asking right at the start.

The short answer is there isn't one single "best" strategy forever, but there is a best one to start with. The bid strategy you choose is massively dependant on the age of your ad account and how much data your Meta pixel has collected. It's just one part of a bigger machine, and for that machine to run smoothly and profitably, a few other bits need to be working in harmony too, like your campaign structure, your targeting, your ad creative and of course, your website.

I'll walk you through how I'd approach it, from the bid strategy itself to all the other peices that need to be in place for it to actually work and get you sales. It might seem like a lot, but getting this foundation right from day one is the difference between burning through cash and building a proper, scalable sales channel for your business.

Let's start with your main question: The right bid strategy...

For a brand new ad account with a fresh pixel that hasn't seen any traffic or conversions, you have one main job: get data. You need to teach the Meta algorithm who your customers are, and the only way to do that is by feeding it conversions. Think of it like training a new employee; you dont give them the most complex task on their first day. You start simple.

Phase 1: Start with 'Lowest Cost' (sometimes called 'Highest Volume')

This is your starting point. No question about it. When you select this, you're telling Meta "get me the most conversions possible for my budget". The algorithm will then go out and try to find the cheapest possible conversions it can. This is exactly what you need at the beginning.

Why? Because it's focused on volume. It will generate conversions (hopefully!) and data faster than any other strategy. This initial data is gold. It populates your pixel, shows Meta what a converting user looks like, and gives you a baseline for your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). Without this baseline, any future decisions are just guesswork.

A word of warning though: the costs can be a bit all over the place at first. One day your CPA might be £10, the next it could be £25. Don't panic. This is normal while the algorithm is in its "Learning Phase". The goal here isn't perfect, stable results. The goal is data aquisition. Just let it run, gather at least a few dozen conversions, and keep an eye on the average CPA over a week or so.

Phase 2: Graduate to 'Cost Per Result Goal'

Once you're out of the learning phase and you've got a steady stream of sales coming in, you can start to take more control. The general rule of thumb is you want about 50 conversions per ad set, per week, to have a stable foundation. Once you're there, and you know your average CPA from the 'Lowest Cost' phase, you can switch to a 'Cost Per Result Goal'.

Let's say your average CPA during your initial phase was £20. You could now set a Cost Per Result Goal of, say, £22. You're telling Meta "I want you to get me conversions, and I'm willing to pay around £22 for each one".

Why set it slightly higher than your average? Because it gives the algorithm some breathing room. If you set it too low, say at £15, you'll likely choke the campaign. Meta will struggle to find conversions at that price, your ad delivery will plummet, and your campaign will grind to a halt. It's a common mistake that people make. They get greedy, set the target too low, and wonder why their ads stopped working. Giving it that little bit of extra room allows Meta to bid more competitively in auctions for higher-quality users who are more likely to convert, which can often lead to more volume and sometimes even a lower actual CPA in the long run.

The Future: 'Highest Value' & ROAS Bidding

This is the holy grail for e-commerce, but it's an advanced strategy you shouldn't even think about for a few months. With this, you're optimising for Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), not just the cost of a single sale. It requires a lot of data. The pixel needs to have seen hundreds of purchases of different values to be able to tell the difference between someone who'll spend £20 and someone who'll spend £200. Attempting this too early will absolutly fail. Keep this in your back pocket for later, once you're scaling.

I'd say you need to get your campaign structure right first...

Okay, so you've got a plan for your bid strategy. But like I said, a bid strategy on its own won't do much if the rest of your setup isn't logical. The most common error I find when auditing new client accounts is a messy, illogical campaign structure. It's usually just one campaign with a bunch of random ad sets all jumbled together.

A structured approach is much better. For e-commerce, the classic sales funnel model works wonders. It helps you organise your efforts and speak to customers differently based on how familiar they are with your brand. I structure nearly all our e-com client accounts this way.

ToFu (Top of Funnel): Prospecting Campaigns
This is where you find new people who've never heard of you. Your entire budget will likely be here at the start. The goal is to introduce your brand and products to a cold audience and drive them to your website. The audiences here will be based on interests, demographics, and eventually lookalikes.

MoFu (Middle of Funnel): Consideration/Warm Retargeting
This is for people who've shown some interest but haven't taken a high-intent action yet. They might have visited your website, watched one of your video ads, or engaged with your Instagram page. Here, you're reminding them you exist and encouraging them to take a closer look at your products.

BoFu (Bottom of Funnel): Conversion/Hot Retargeting
This is your money-maker. These are people who are on the verge of buying. They've added a product to their cart, or even started the checkout process but didn't finish. The goal here is simple: get them over the finish line. These ads are often direct, maybe with a small incentive like "Complete your order now" or a reminder of the product they left behind.

Here's a very basic example of how that might look in your Ads Manager:

This structure keeps things organised. It lets you allocate budget logically and ensures you're not showing "complete your purchase!" ads to someone who's never even heard of you. It seems simple, but it's a structure that has driven incredible results for clients. One campaign we worked on generated a 1000% Return On Ad Spend for a subscription box by methodically moving people through this funnel.

You probably should focus on who you're targeting...

So you have a structure. Now you need to fill it with the right people. This is arguably the most important part. You could have the best product and ads in the world, but if you show them to the wrong people, you'll get zero sales. For a new ecom store, this is where you need to do your homework.

For your ToFu (Prospecting) campaign, start with Detailed Targeting.

Don't bother with Lookalike Audiences or Broad Targeting yet. You have no data, so a Lookalike audience would be a lookalike of... nothing. And Broad targeting requires a very mature and intelligent pixel to work effectively. You're not there yet.

Your best bet is to use Interest and Behaviour targeting. But you have to be clever about it. The key is to choose interests that are as specific as possible to your ideal customer and that a casual, non-customer is unlikely to have. This is where people get it wrong.

Let's say you sell specialist coffee beans. Targeting the interest "Coffee" is a terrible idea. You'll reach millions of people who just drink a cup of instant coffee in the morning. Your ad spend will be wasted. Instead, think deeper. Who is a real coffee enthusiast? They might be interested in:
-> Brands: James Hoffmann, AeroPress, Fellow, La Marzocco
-> Publications: Standart Magazine, Perfect Daily Grind
-> Behaviours: People who have bought coffee equipment online.

See the difference? You're niching down to find your true tribe. The audience size will be smaller, but the quality will be infinitely higher. Brainstorm 3-5 of these 'themes' of interests and test each one in a seperate ad set. This will give you clean data on which customer profile works best.

For your MoFu and BoFu (Retargeting) campaigns, prioritise by intent.

As soon as you have traffic, you need to set up retargeting. You need at least 100 people in an audience for Meta to use it, so at the very start you might need to group them together (e.g., all website visitors in one ad set). But as you grow, you should split them out. The priority should always be based on how close they got to purchasing. An audience of people who added to cart is far more valuable than an audience of people who just watched 3 seconds of your video. Your budget allocation should reflect that.

Here's the general order of priority for retargeting audiences, from hottest to warmest:
1. Added to Cart / Initiated Checkout (BoFu) 2. Viewed specific Product Pages (MoFu) 3. All Website Visitors (MoFu) 4. Instagram & Facebook Page Engagers (MoFu) 5. Video Viewers (e.g., watched 50% of your ad) (MoFu)

Start at the top and work your way down as your traffic grows. Getting this audience strategy right is a huge part of how we acheive results like a 691% Return for apparel brands or an 8x Return for niche map sellers. It's about being relentless with targeting.

You'll also need creative that actually sells...

Even with the perfect bid strategy, structure, and targeting, your ads will fall flat if the creative – the image or video and the text – is rubbish. The creative does the actual selling. It's your digital shop window and your best salesperson rolled into one. It has to grab attention in a crowded feed and persuade someone to stop scrolling.

Test, Test, and Test Again.

Never assume you know what will work. At the start, you should be testing a few different creative concepts against each other.
-> Static Images: High-quality product shots, lifestyle images showing your product in use. These are quick and easy to digest.
-> Video: Short, punchy videos are king. Think simple unboxings, a quick demonstration of the product's main benefit, or even better, user-generated content (UGC). UGC feels authentic and builds massive trust. We've seen some SaaS clients get incredible results from simple UGC videos, and the principle is the same for e-commerce.
-> Carousel Ads: Perfect for showing off multiple products, or different features of a single product.

Launch your first campaign with at least 2-3 completely different ad creatives in each ad set. Let Meta's algorithm work out which one resonates most with the audience. After a few days, you'll see a clear winner. Pause the losers, and then create new variations based on the winner to try and beat it. It's a constant process of optimisation.

Your Copywriting Matters Immensely.

Your ad copy (the text) needs to be compelling. Don't just list features. Sell the benefit. Sell the transformation. How does your product make your customer's life better?
-> Bad Copy: "Our new lamp. Made of oak wood. 50cm tall."
-> Good Copy: "Tired of harsh overhead lighting? Create a warm, cosy vibe in any room with our handcrafted oak lamp. The perfect reading light for late nights. Transform your space."

Speak directly to a pain point or a desire. Hook them in with the first sentence. And always, always have a clear Call to Action (CTA) like "Shop Now", "Learn More", or "Get Yours Today". It tells people exactly what to do next.

We'll need to look at your website and landing pages...

This is the final, and often most overlooked, piece of the puzzle. You can spend a fortune on brilliant ads that get thousands of clicks, but if they land on a website that is slow, confusing, or untrustworthy, you will get zero sales. All that money you spent on clicks? Wasted.

I've seen it time and time again. A client comes to us and says "my ads aren't working", and within 30 seconds of looking at their website, I can see the real problem. Before you spend a single pound on ads, make sure your house is in order.

The Trust Factor
People are buying from a stranger online. You have to make them feel safe. This means:
-> Professional, high-quality product photography. No blurry phone pictures on your kitchen table.
-> Clear, easy-to-find contact information and a return policy.
-> Social proof! Customer reviews, testimonials, ratings. This is non-negotiable for ecom.
-> A clean, professional design. If it looks like it was made in 1998, people will assume it's a scam.

The User Experience (UX)
It needs to be easy to buy from you.
-> Is your site fast to load? People will leave if it takes more than a couple of seconds.
-> Is it mobile-friendly? Most of your ad traffic will come from mobile devices.
-> Is your checkout process simple? Don't ask for a million pieces of information. Remove every possible point of friction. Are there surprise shipping costs at the very end? That's the #1 reason for cart abandonment.

You need to analyse where people are dropping off. Use your website analytics. If you're getting lots of clicks on your ads but very few people are viewing product pages, the problem might be your homepage. If you're getting lots of 'add to carts' but very few sales, the problem is almost certainly your checkout process or shipping costs. Fixing these issues on your site will have a bigger impact on your profitability than any ad tweak you could ever make.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

I know that's a huge amount of information to digest. Running paid ads profitably isn't about flicking one switch; it's about getting a whole system of things working together. To try and simplify it, here's a phased action plan summarising the key steps I've outlined.

As you can see, it's a methodical process. Getting it wrong at the start can be very expensive, as you can easily burn through your budget without learning anything or getting any sales. The difference between success and failure often comes down to having a structured, data-driven plan like this from day one.

We've implemented this exact kind of process for numerous clients. For example, we helped a gambling company get 200 percent more purchases and a 7x return by optimizing their Meta ads campaigns. It takes patience and expertise, but the results speak for themselfs.

If this all feels a bit overwhelming and you'd prefer to have an expert guide you through it or handle it for you, that's what we're here for. We offer a free, no-obligation consultation where we can take a look at your specific business and products and map out a more detailed strategy together.

Hope this detailed breakdown has been helpful for you.

Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh