Solved: Facebook Ads - Duplicate Ads or Build from Scratch?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your situation. It's a really common spot to be in, that whole 'testing phase' turning into a bit of a headache with ads getting stuck in learning limited. A lot of people's first instinct is to either duplicate what works or just throw more money at it, but tbh, that's often the quickest way to burn through your budget without actually solving the underlying problem. The whole 'learning limited' thing is probably one of the most misunderstood parts of running Meta ads.

The good news is you've already got some data and you know which ads are getting you sales. That's a better starting point than most have. Let's get into how you can use that to build something that actually scales, rather than just staying stuck.

We'll need to look at why you're really in 'Learning Limited'...

First off, let's just get this out of the way. 'Learning Limited' isn't a penalty. It's not Facebook punishing you. It's just a status message. It's the algorithm telling you, "Look, mate, I haven't got enough data to be confident I can get you consistent results." Specifically, it means your ad set isn't getting about 50 conversions (in your case, sales) within a 7-day window. That's the magic number it needs to properly optimise.

So when you ask about turning off non-performing ads, the answer is yes, absolutely. Theres no point wasting spend on stuff that isn't working. But the real question isn't about the ads you turn off, it's about what you do with the ones that *are* working, and why they're not getting enough volume to push the adset out of learning.

Simply upping the budget in the current adset, as you said, might not be the best idea. If your conversion rate is low, all you're doing is spending more money, faster, to get the same poor results. You'll likely just drive your cost per sale up. And duplicating the good ads into a new adset? You're just starting the learning phase all over again from scratch, and if the conditions are the same (same audience, same budget constraints), you'll likely end up in the exact same place. It's like being stuck in traffic, getting frustrated, and deciding the solution is to get out of your car and get into an identical car right behind it. You haven't actually gone anywhere.

The problem is almost never *just* the budget. It's a combination of three things:

-> Your Budget: Is it realistic to get 50 sales a week with what you're spending? If your cost per sale is £20, you need £1000 a week (£140/day) just to hit that target. If you're spending £20 a day, it's mathematically impossible to exit learning.

-> Your Audience Size: Is your audience big enough to find 50 buyers, but specific enough that they're the *right* people?

-> Your Conversion Rate: Are your ads, your landing page, and your offer compelling enough to turn clicks into sales efficiently? This is the one most people ignore.

So, the fix isn't about tinkering with a single adset. It's about rethinking the entire structure of how you're testing and who you're talking to. You have to fix the system, not just the one broken part.

I'd say you need a proper campaign structure, not just a bunch of ads...

When I see accounts stuck in this phase, it's usually because they're running one campaign with a few adsets and a jumble of ads inside. It's a mess. You can't tell what's really working, data is spread too thin, and the algorithm is just as confused as you are. You need to structure things based on the customer journey.

Think about it in terms of a funnel: Top (ToFu), Middle (MoFu), and Bottom (BoFu). This isn't just jargon; it's a way to organise your thinking and your campaigns.

-> ToFu (Top of Funnel): This is your cold audience. People who've never heard of you. Here you test broad interests, lookalikes, etc. The goal is to find new potential customers.

-> MoFu (Middle of Funnel): These people know who you are but haven't bought yet. They've visited your website, watched a video, or engaged with a post. They're warm.

-> BoFu (Bottom of Funnel): These are the hot leads. They've added to cart, initiated checkout, but didn't complete the purchase. They're right on the edge.

Your current approach of just having one campaign is probably mixing all these people together. Your winning ads might be converting because they're being shown to your BoFu audience by chance, but the adset is struggling because most of the budget is being wasted on a cold ToFu audience that isn't ready to buy.

A much better way is to set up seperate campaigns for each part of the funnel. For a business focused on sales, I usually start with two main campaigns:

1. A Prospecting Campaign (ToFu): This is where you test your cold audiences. You'd use a Campaign Budget Optimisation (CBO) setup. Inside this campaign, you create different ad sets, each targeting a different audience you want to test. For example, one adset for a lookalike of your past customers, one for an interest stack related to your niche, one for a competitor's audience. You put your best-performing ads (and new variations) in all of them and let Facebook's CBO decide where to put the money.

2. A Retargeting Campaign (MoFu/BoFu): This campaign is purely for people who have already interacted with you. You'll have adsets for website visitors, for people who added to cart, etc. The messaging here is different. It’s not "discover our brand," it’s "hey, you forgot this," or "here’s a reason to come back."

This structure stops you from getting stuck. It pools your data much more effectively. Your retargeting campaign will likely have a much higher conversion rate, easily getting you out of learning limited for that part of your funnel. The prospecting campaign is for exploration, and you accept that some adsets in there will fail. That's the whole point of testing. You're not expecting every single adset to be a winner, you're looking for the one or two that can scale.

Here's a simple way you could structure your account to start:

With this, you're not just duplicating ads randomly. You are strategically placing them where they have the best chance to succeed and gathering data in a much cleaner, more organised way. This is how we took one of our clients, a women's apparel brand, to a 691% return on ad spend. We stopped the chaotic testing and built a proper funnel structure. It isolates variables and lets you scale the winners with confidence.

You probably should focus on what you're actually selling, and to who...

This might sound a bit blunt, but if your ads are struggling to get enough sales to exit the learning phase, the issue might not be your ad management. It might be your offer, your message, or your understanding of the customer. An amazing ad campaign can't fix a weak offer.

You need to stop thinking about your customer as a demographic ("women, 25-40, interested in fashion"). That's useless. You need to think about their problem, their nightmare. What's the specific, urgent, expensive problem that your product solves? Your ad copy needs to speak directly to that pain.

Instead of just showing a product and saying "buy now," you need to use a framework like Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).

-> Problem: State the customer's pain point directly. "Tired of fast-fashion that falls apart after one wash?"

-> Agitate: Pour salt in the wound. Make them feel the pain more acutely. "Spending your hard-earned money on clothes that end up in a landfill, making you feel guilty and look just like everyone else?"

-> Solve: Introduce your product as the clear solution. "Discover our handcrafted pieces, made with sustainable materials designed to last a lifetime. Stand out and feel good about what you wear."

This kind of messaging works because it's rooted in emotion and a deep understanding of the customer's real frustration. If your ads are just generic feature lists, they'll never convert well enough. You're not just selling a product; you're selling a transformation from a "before" state (frustrated, guilty) to an "after" state (confident, proud).

This also ties back to your targeting. Once you know the 'nightmare', you know where to find these people. What blogs do they read? What influencers do they follow? What other brands do they buy from? That becomes your interest targeting. You stop guessing and start making data-informed decisions about who you're targeting. Your audience and your message have to be perfectly aligned. If they are, your conversion rate will go up, your cost per sale will go down, and you'll find it much easier to get the 50 conversions you need to exit the learning phase.

You'll need to know what a customer is actually worth to you...

This is a big one. You're worried about your cost per sale and being stuck in learning, but do you actually know what you can afford to pay for a new customer? Most business owners dont. They just want the lowest cost possible, but that's a losing game. The real question is: "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?"

The answer is in the Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Once you know this, everything changes. You stop being scared of a £20 or £30 cost per sale if you know that customer will be worth £300 to you over their lifetime.

Here’s a simple way to calculate it for an e-commerce business:

1. Average Order Value (AOV): Total revenue / number of orders. Let's say it's £75.

2. Purchase Frequency (PF): Total number of orders / number of unique customers. Let's say your customers buy from you 2 times a year on average.

3. Customer Value (CV): AOV * PF. So, £75 * 2 = £150 per year.

4. Customer Lifetime (in years): This can be tricky, but a simple way is 1 / your monthly churn rate. If you lose 5% of your customers a month, your churn rate is 0.05. Your customer lifetime is 1 / 0.05 = 20 months, or about 1.67 years.

5. Lifetime Value (LTV): CV * Customer Lifetime. So, £150 * 1.67 = £250.50.

6. Factor in your Gross Margin: Your LTV is revenue, not profit. If your gross margin is 60%, your actual LTV in terms of profit is £250.50 * 0.60 = £150.30.

Here's that laid out in a table:

Now you have the truth. Each customer is worth £150 in gross margin to you. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £50 (£150.30 / 3) to acquire a single customer and still run a very healthy, profitable business. Suddenly, that £20 CPA doesn't seem so bad, does it? It gives you room to breathe and lets you bid more agressively to get out of the learning phase. Knowing this number changes your entire perspective on ad spend.

This is the main advice I have for you:

So, to pull this all together, forget about just duplicating ads. You need to take a step back and build a proper machine for growth. Here are the key steps I would take if I was in your shoes.

As you can see, the problem you're facing isn't really about which button to click in Ads Manager. It's about strategy. It's about understanding the platform, your customer, and your own business numbers on a much deeper level. It's not just about setting up an ad and hoping for the best; it's about building a system.

Getting this right involves a lot of moving parts, and trying to learn it all while also running your business is tough. It's why a lot of businesses end up stuck where you are, spending money but not really moving forward. This is where getting some expert help can make a huge difference. Having someone who's built these systems for dozens of businesses (from eCommerce stores seeing 1000% ROAS to software companies getting signups for under £2) can help you bypass months of expensive trial and error.

We could help you implement this entire strategic framework, from the campaign structure and audience deep dive to the LTV calculations and messaging. If you'd like to have a proper chat about it, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can go through your ad account together and lay out a clear plan of action.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh