Solved: How do I increase my Facebook Ads campaign budget?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I saw your question about scaling your Facebook ads campaign and thought I'd give you some of my thoughts. It's a really common spot to be in – you've got something that works and now the challenge is how to grow it without breaking it. It's a good problem to have, mind you. I've seen this situation with lots of clients over the years, from small eCommerce stores to bigger software companies, and there's definitely a right way and a wrong way to go about it.

You're absolutely right to be cautious. Just cranking up the budget on a live campaign, especially one that's found its groove, can easily upset the apple cart. Meta's algorithm can be a bit sensitive to sudden changes. So, I'm happy to walk you through how I'd approach this and give you a more detailed strategy that goes beyond just this one campaign. This is the sort of stuff we do day-in, day-out, so hopefully you'll find it useful.

We'll need to look at how to scale without breaking what works...

Right, let's get straight to your main question: should you up the budget on the existing campaign or duplicate it? You've said you've had it happen before where just increasing the spend has messed things up. That's not just you, it's a very real thing. When you make a significant change to a campaign's budget (usually anything more than 20-25% in one go), you risk forcing the ad set back into the 'learning phase'.

When it's in this phase, Meta is basically trying to figure out who to show your ads to again. Performance can become really volatile, your cost per result can shoot up, and the consistant results you were enjoying can disappear for a few days, or sometimes, not come back at all. It's frustrating, and it's why I almost never recommend just hiking the budget on a well-performing campaign.

So, your instinct to duplicate is the correct one. This is the much safer, more controlled method. Here's exactly how I would do it:

-> Step 1: Duplicate the Campaign. Take your entire existing campaign and duplicate it. Don't change anything at first, just make an exact copy.

-> Step 2: Set the New Budget. On this new, duplicated campaign, set the budget to what you want to scale to. So, if you're spending £50 a day and want to increase it by 20%, you'd set the new campaign's budget to £60 a day.

-> Step 3: Run Both in Parallel. This is the most important bit. Turn on your new campaign but leave the original, proven campaign running as well. Don't turn the old one off yet!

-> Step 4: Monitor Closely. For the next 3-5 days, let both campaigns run. The new one will go through its learning phase, but your original campaign is still there, chugging along and bringing in results. You need to keep a close eye on the key metrics for both campaigns. Look at your cost per result, your return on ad spend (ROAS), click-through rate, everything. You're looking for the new, higher-budget campaign to stabilise and start delivering results that are at least as good as the original, if not better.

-> Step 5: Make a Decision. After a few days, you'll have the data you need. If the new campaign is performing well and has successfully exited the learning phase, you can then confidently turn off the original campaign. If, for some reason, the new one is a dud and the performance just isn't there, no problem. You just turn it off and you've lost very little. Your original campaign has been running the whole time, so your overall results haven't taken a big hit.

This method gives you a safety net. It's a bit more work, but it protects your proven results. I remember working with a women's apparel client, and their campaign was delivering a fantastic 691% return. They wanted to scale up for a new season, so we used this duplication method to increase their spend by 50% over a couple of weeks, creating new campaigns and monitoring them against the old ones. It allowed us to scale their revenue without ever risking the core performance that was already working so well. It takes a bit of patience, but it's the professional way to do it.

I'd say you need a proper structure for scaling...

Now, while duplicating your campaign is the right immediate move, it's not really a long-term scaling strategy on its own. If you just keep duplicating the same campaign over and over, you'll eventually exhaust your audience and see your returns diminish. True scaling comes from having a propper, structured approach to your entire ad account. This is where most people get stuck.

The best way to think about this is a sales funnel. You have different groups of people at different stages of awareness of your business, and you should be talking to them differently. We usually break this down into three stages: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu): Prospecting
This is your cold audience. These are people who have never heard of you before. The goal here is to introduce your brand and products to new, relevant people. Your current successful campaign is a ToFu campaign. The audiences you use here are based on interests, behaviours, and demographics. You're trying to find pockets of people who look like your ideal customer.

2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu): Re-engagement
This is your warm audience. These are people who have shown some interest but haven't taken that final step. They might have visited your website, watched one of your videos, or engaged with your Facebook or Instagram page. They know who you are, but they're not convinced yet. The goal here is to build trust and remind them of your value. The ads here are different – maybe you'd show them testimonials, user-generated content, or explain key features and benefits they might have missed.

3. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): Retargeting
This is your hot audience. These are people who are on the verge of converting. They've added a product to their cart, they've initiated checkout, or they've visited your pricing page. They are very close to buying. The goal here is simple: get them over the finish line. Your ads here should be direct and compelling. You might offer a small discount, remind them of what's in their cart, or create a sense of urgency (e.g., "Limited stock remaining!").

So, when we talk about 'scaling', it's not just about putting more money into your one successful ToFu campaign. It's about building out this full funnel. You need seperate campaigns for each stage. Why? Because you can control your budget and messaging much more effectively. You can allocate a certain amount of your budget to finding new customers (ToFu), a certain amount to nurturing them (MoFu), and a certain amount to closing them (BoFu).

Your current winning ad-set is a fantastic starting point. It's a proven ToFu audience. The next step is to build your MoFu and BoFu campaigns to capture all the interest you're generating. Without them, you're essentially pouring water into a leaky bucket. You're spending money to get people to your site, but you have no system in place to bring them back if they leave without buying.

You probably should start testing more audiences...

Building a full-funnel structure is the framework. The fuel for that framework is your audiences. A single high-performing ad set is gold, but it won't last forever. Audience fatigue is a real thing. Over time, you'll show your ads to the same people too many times, and they'll stop responding. Sustainable scale comes from a continuous process of finding and testing new audiences.

This is probably the most important part of managing a paid ads account. Here's a prioritised list of audiences I'd reccomend you test, in the order you should probably test them. This is based on what we see working across hundreds of accounts.

I've structured this using the ToFu/MoFu/BoFu model we just talked about. For a new account or one with a small budget, you might just have one ToFu campaign and one combined MoFu/BoFu retargeting campaign. As you grow, you can split them out further.

META ADS AUDIENCE PRIORITISATION

ToFu (Prospecting - Finding new customers)

• 1. Detailed Targeting: This is where you've already found success. The key is to get really specific. If you're selling high-end camera gear, targeting the interest "Photography" is way too broad. You'll get millions of amateurs. You'd be better off targeting specific camera brand pages (Canon, Nikon), famous professional photographers, or magazines like 'Professional Photographer'. Think about what your absolute ideal customer is interested in that the average person isn't. I often see people picking interests that are too general, which wastes a lot of money.
• 2. Lookalike Audiences: This is where scaling really takes off. A lookalike audience is where you give Facebook a list of your existing customers or leads (your 'source audience'), and it goes and finds millions of other people on the platform who share similar characteristics. This is incredibly powerful. You should test these in order of value:
• -> Lookalike of your highest value customers (if you can track that)
• -> Lookalike of all previous customers/purchasers
• -> Lookalike of people who initiated checkout
• -> Lookalike of people who added to cart
• -> Lookalike of all website visitors
• -> Lookalike of people who watched 50% of your video ads
• 3. Broad Targeting: This means targeting with very few restrictions, maybe just age, gender, and location. This only works once your Facebook Pixel has a lot of data (thousands of conversions). At that point, you can trust the algorithm to find the right people on its own. Don't start here.

MoFu (Re-engagement - Nurturing warm leads)

• -> All website visitors from the last 30-60 days (excluding anyone who purchased)
• -> People who have viewed specific product pages (excluding purchasers)
• -> People who have watched 50% or more of your video ads
• -> Anyone who has engaged with your Facebook or Instagram page

BoFu (Retargeting - Closing hot leads)

• -> People who have added to cart in the last 7-14 days (excluding purchasers)
• -> People who have initiated checkout in the last 7-14 days (excluding purchasers)

I remember one B2B software client where we built out a system like this. We started with interest targeting, then as soon as they had enough data (you need at least 100 events for a source audience, but ideally more), we built lookalikes of their trial signups. That, combined with a strong MoFu/BoFu retargeting setup, helped them get over 5,000 software trials at just a $7 cost per trial using Meta Ads. It's a methodical process of testing, you can't just guess.

Here's a simple way to visualise the audience testing process:

You'll need more than just good audiences...

Let's say you do all of that. You've built your funnel and you're testing audiences methodically. You can still hit a plateau. The final pieces of the puzzle are your ad creative and your website or landing page. As you scale and reach wider audiences, these become even more important.

Creative Testing is Non-Negotiable
You can't just run one ad forever. You need a pipeline of new ad creatives to test. Different people respond to different things. What works for one audience might not work for another.

• -> Test Different Formats: You should be constantly testing single images vs carousels vs videos. We've had several SaaS clients see incredible results with simple, low-fi User-Generated Content (UGC) style videos. It feels more authentic than a polished corporate ad and builds trust.
• -> Test Different Angles: Don't just talk about the same feature in every ad. Try different messaging. One ad could focus on the problem you solve. Another could focus on a specific benefit. Another could feature a customer testimonial. You need to mix things up to see what resonates.
• -> The Ad Copy: The words you use are just as important as the image or video. Is your headline grabbing attention? Is the first line of your text compelling enough to make someone click "see more"? Does your Call to Action tell them exactly what to do? We often work with professional copywriters for this, especially for B2B or high-ticket offers, because getting the message right can make a huge difference.

Your Website Must Convert
This is a massive one that so many advertisers overlook. You can have the best ads in the world, sending floods of perfect, targeted traffic to your website. But if your website is slow, confusing, or untrustworthy, nobody will buy. All that ad spend is wasted.

Think about it like this: if you spend £100 to get 100 visitors to your site, and your site has a 1% conversion rate, you get 1 sale. Your cost per sale is £100. If you can optimise your website and improve that conversion rate to just 2%, you now get 2 sales for the same £100 ad spend. Your cost per sale is now £50. You've just halved your acquisition cost without even touching your ads.

This is why, before we even launch campaigns for a new client, we do a thorough review of their landing pages. We look at things like:

• -> Is the value proposition instantly clear?
• -> Is the page fast to load?
• -> Is it easy to navigate on a mobile phone?
• -> Are there trust signals (reviews, testimonials, guarantees)?
• -> Is the call-to-action button obvious and compelling?
• -> Is the checkout process simple and streamlined?

I remember looking at a B2B software website once for a company who couldn't get their ads to work. They were selling an accounting system but didn't offer a free trial, just a demo. Their main headline was about "privacy," which isn't the main thing businesses look for in accounting software. Their website was killing their ad performance before it even had a chance. Improving your funnel conversion rate is one of the most powerful levers you can pull to make your ad spend more profitable and scalable.

We'll need to look at what's realistic for costs...

One final point I want to make is about managing your expectations on cost. As you increase your budget and scale your campaigns, it's normal for your cost per result (CPA) to go up a bit. You're reaching further afield, beyond the lowest-hanging fruit, so you have to pay a bit more to acquire those new customers. The goal isn't to keep your CPA flat forever; it's to manage the increase so you remain profitable.

The cost you'll see depends hugely on your industry, your target country, and what you're optimising for. Getting a lead or a simple email signup is much cheaper than getting a high-ticket sale. Based on the campaigns we run, here are some very rough ballpark figures to give you an idea. These are just estimates, of course, your own results will vary.

Objective: Signups / Leads (in Developed Countries like UK, US, CA)

Objective: eCommerce Sales (in Developed Countries like UK, US, CA)

As you can see, the ranges are wide. If your costs are on the higher end, it usually means there's room for improvement in your targeting, your ad creative, or your landing page. For eCommerce, what really matters isn't the cost per purchase, but the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). If you're spending £50 to get a £200 sale, that's a 4x ROAS, and you'd do that all day long.

Understanding these numbers helps you set realistic goals for your scaling efforts. You can see how improving your website's conversion rate or lowering your CPC through better ads can have a massive impact on your final cost.

I know that's a lot of information to take in, but scaling properly is a complex process. It goes way beyond just changing a budget number. It's about building a robust, repeatable system. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below, this is what I'd focus on if I was in your shoes:

As you can probably tell, this becomes a full-time job pretty quickly. It's a methodical process of testing, analysing, and optimising across multiple campaigns and audiences. It's what we do for our clients, and it's how you build sustainable, long-term growth rather than just relying on one lucky campaign.

If you've found this guidance helpful but feel it's a bit overwhelming to implement yourself, you might want to consider getting some expert help. We offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can have a proper look at your ad account together. We could review what's working, identify your biggest opportunities for growth, and map out a specific scaling plan tailored to your business. It's a great way to get some clarity and see if we'd be a good fit to help you take things to the next level.

Whatever you decide to do, I hope this has given you a much clearer path forward. Best of luck with the campaign!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh