Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out. It's a really common situation to be in. Getting those first few sales feels great, but then hitting a wall where you just can't seem to scale up is incredibly frustrating. Happy to give you some initial thoughts on what might be going on and how you might be able to break through that plateau. It's usually less about finding one magic bullet audience and more about building a proper structure that lets you scale sustainably.
TLDR;
- Your problem isn't the CBO, it's the lack of a systematic testing framework. Simply duplicating ad sets or upping the budget is a recipe for wasted spend.
- To scale, you need to structure your account by funnel stage (cold traffic, warm retargeting, hot retargeting) and prioritise testing audiences that are closest to the sale first.
- You're likely flying blind on your numbers. You need to understand your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) to know how much you can actually afford to pay for a customer (CAC). A 2.23 ROAS might be better (or worse) than you think.
- Creative will become your biggest bottleneck. You need to be testing new ads constantly to avoid fatigue as you increase spend.
- This guide includes an interactive LTV calculator and a funnel strategy flowchart to help you visualise and implement these changes.
You're probably thinking about scaling all wrong...
Okay, let's be direct. The advice to just "duplicate the winning ad set" is one of the most common and damaging myths for new advertisers. When you're spending $100 a day, the algorithm has found a small pocket of people in your audience who are likely to buy. It's working, which is great. But when you duplicate that ad set, you're essentially telling Facebook to find more of those same people, and you start competing against yourself. When you just crank up the budget on the existing CBO, you force the algorithm to look for conversions outside that sweet spot, which almost always makes your costs go up and your ROAS go down.
What got you to 3-4 sales a day won't get you to 10, 20, or 50. What you're experiencing isn't a failure, it's a sign that you've outgrown your initial simple setup. You've found a bit of product-market fit, and now you need a more sophisticated machine to realy capitalise on it. This means moving from just 'running ads' to building a proper acquisition system.
We'll need to look at building a proper testing structure...
The first step is to stop thinking in terms of single campaigns and start thinking in terms of a customer journey, or a funnel. Right now, you're probably treating every potential customer the same. But someone who has never heard of you is very different from someone who added a product to their cart yesterday and got distracted. They need different messages.
We structure this using three distinct campaign types:
- Top of Funnel (ToFu): This is your cold traffic. People who have never heard of you. The goal here is to introduce your brand and products to new, relevant audiences. This is where you'll do most of your audience testing with interests and lookalikes.
- Middle of Funnel (MoFu): This is for warm traffic. People who have engaged with you in some way – they've visited your website, watched one of your videos, or liked an Instagram post – but haven't taken a key action like adding to cart. The goal is to build familiarity and get them to a product page.
- Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): This is your hot traffic. People who are very close to buying. They've viewed a product, added to cart, or started the checkout process. The goal here is simple: close the sale.
Each of these would be a separate CBO campaign. Why? Because it gives you control. You can allocate your budget strategically. For example, you might put 70% of your budget into ToFu (finding new customers), 20% into MoFu, and 10% into BoFu (closing the low-hanging fruit). This structure prevents Facebook from spending all your money on cheap retargeting conversions and forces it to find new customers, which is the only way to truely scale.
Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Prospecting
Goal: Find new customers.
Audiences: Interests, Lookalikes (1-5% of Purchasers).
Budget Allocation: ~70%
Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - Engagement
Goal: Re-engage website/social visitors.
Audiences: Website Visitors (30d), Video Viewers (50%), Page Engagers (90d).
Budget Allocation: ~20%
Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - Conversion
Goal: Close the sale.
Audiences: Added to Cart (7d), Initiated Checkout (14d).
Budget Allocation: ~10%
I'd say you need to get your audience targeting right...
You mentioned you're testing new target audiences with no luck. This is common when the testing is a bit random. Within your new ToFu campaign, you need a prioritised list of audiences to test. The audiences that are most similar to your existing customers will almost always perform best. The further away you get, the more of a gamble it is.
Here's how I'd prioritise testing for an eCommerce store. You need at least 100 people in a source audience to create a lookalike, but honestly, you want more like 500-1000 for it to be really effective. So you might have to work your way up this list.
| Priority | Audience Type | Specific Audience to Test | Why it Works |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (Highest) | Lookalike | 1% Lookalike of your Past Purchasers | Finds people most similar to those who have already given you money. This is gold. |
| 2 | Lookalike | 1% Lookalike of Initiated Checkouts | The next best thing. These people showed very strong intent to buy. |
| 3 | Lookalike | 1% Lookalike of Added to Cart | Still a strong signal of interest in your specific products. |
| 4 | Detailed Targeting | Hyper-specific interests related to your niche (e.g. competitor brands, niche magazines, specific tools they use). | Allows you to target based on declared interests. The more niche, the better. |
| 5 (Lowest) | Detailed Targeting | Broader interests (e.g. "Fashion" or "Jewellery"). | Use as a last resort or when you have a very large budget. Quality is often lower. |
You'd put each of these into a separate ad set within your ToFu CBO campaign. Let them run for a few days (at least until they've spent 1-2x your target cost per purchase) and then turn off the losers. Replace them with new tests. This way you're always testing and optimising to find new pockets of profitable customers.
You probably should calculate your true profitability...
You said your ROAS is 2.23 with an average sale of $32. So for every $100 you spend, you're getting $223 back. That's a profit of $123 before you even account for your cost of goods, shipping, and other overheads. Depending on your margins, you might actually be losing money on that first sale. And that's okay, provided your customers buy from you again.
This is where most new store owners get stuck. They only look at the immediate return. But professionals look at the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer. How much profit does a customer generate for you over their entire relationship with your business? Knowing this number changes everything. If you know a customer is worth £500 to you over a year, suddenly paying £100 to acquire them seems like a bargain, even if their first purchase is only £32.
The calculation is pretty simple. It helps you figure out your maximum allowable Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).
LTV = (Average Order Value * Gross Margin % * Purchase Frequency) / Churn Rate
But a simpler way to think about it is just the total profit you expect from a customer. Let's make an interactive calculator for you. Play around with the numbers to see how small changes can massively impact how much you can afford to spend on ads.
12-Month LTV (Profit)
£24.00Max Affordable CPA (3:1 LTV:CAC)
£8.00You'll need more creative to test...
Once you have your structure and your numbers sorted, the next bottleneck is creative. You cannot scale to £500 or £1000 a day with one or two ads. Your audience will get sick of them, performance will drop, and your costs will skyrocket. This is called ad fatigue, and it's a major killer of scaling campaigns.
You need a simple system for continuously testing new ads. In your ToFu campaign, alongside your audience ad sets, you should have a dedicated ad set where you test new creative against your best-performing audience. I usually recommend testing at least 2-3 new ad variations every single week.
What should you test?
- Formats: Don't just run static images. Test short videos (UGC style works wonders), carousels showing off multiple products or benefits, and simple graphic-led ads.
- Hooks: The first three seconds of your video or the first line of your ad copy are everything. Test different opening lines that speak to different customer pain points or desires.
- Angles: Don't just sell the product, sell the outcome. For example, instead of "Buy our beautiful handcrafted necklace", try "The one piece of jewellery that gets compliments every time you wear it". See the difference? I remember one women's apparel client where we drove a 691% return by focusing on the feeling of wearing the clothes, not just the clothes themselves.
My main recommendations for you
I know this is a lot to take in, especilly when you're new to this. But trying to scale without these systems in place is like trying to build a house on a foundation of sand. It might stand for a bit, but it'll collapse as soon as you try to build the second floor. I've broken down the main action points for you in the table below.
| Area of Focus | Actionable Recommendation | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|
| Account Structure | Pause your current campaign. Rebuild into three separate CBO campaigns: ToFu (Prospecting), MoFu (Engagement Retargeting), and BoFu (Conversion Retargeting). | Gives you control over budget allocation and allows you to tailor messaging to the customer's stage of awareness, preventing wasted spend. |
| Audience Testing | Inside your new ToFu campaign, create ad sets testing your highest priority lookalike audiences first (Purchasers, Initiated Checkouts). | Focuses your budget on audiences with the highest probability of converting, giving you the best chance of finding new, profitable customer pockets. |
| Financials | Use the LTV calculator to figure out your true customer value and determine your maximum affordable Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). | Moves you from short-term ROAS chasing to building a long-term, profitable business. Lets you make smarter decisions about which ad sets to kill or scale. |
| Creative | Commit to testing 2 new ad creatives (e.g., a simple video, a new headline) every single week within a dedicated 'Creative Testing' ad set. | Creative is the fuel for scaling. This process prevents ad fatigue and constantly uncovers new winning ads that allow you to increase your budget profitably. |
Getting this all set up and managed correctly takes time and experience. You have to analyse the data, make the right decisions on which audiences and ads to cut, and constanty be feeding the machine with new creative ideas. For a business owner, it can quickly become a full-time job in itself.
This is often the point where people decide to bring in an expert. Not just to press the buttons, but to implement a robust strategy like the one I've outlined, manage it day-to-day, and help you scale without the costly trial and error.
If you'd like to have a chat about how we could apply this specifically to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We could go through your account together and pinpoint the biggest opportunities for growth. Feel free to book a time with us if that sounds helpful.
Hope this helps!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
