Solved: Scaling Meta Ads for Gel Blaster Business in the US

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on scaling your gel blaster business using paid advertising.

It sounds like you've got things off to a decent start, getting sales within the first week at a £100/day spend is promising. However, running ads for just a week is *really* early days. Think of it more like you've just planted the seed, you're not ready to harvest yet. Scaling isn't something you jump into straight away; it's something you build up to after you've got a solid foundation and you're consistently seeing profitable results that you can trust.

My immediate focus, based on what you've mentioned, wouldn't actually be on scaling the ad spend yet, but on two fundamental areas: your website/funnel and optimising your current ad performance.

We'll need to look at traffic quality and your website...

The biggest red flag you've raised is the high number of abandoned carts. This is absolutely crucial to fix *before* you think about driving significantly more traffic (and spending more money). Why? Because people are interested enough to get products into their cart, but something is stopping them from completing the purchase. Every abandoned cart represents money left on the table, and if you scale your ads without fixing this, you'll just get more abandoned carts at a higher cost.

Abandoned carts can happen for a whole bunch of reasons, but they almost always point to issues with the website itself or the checkout process. You mentioned your landing page is theblastershop.com/pages/m1911, which seems to be a page for just one specific product. While good for driving interest in *that* product, is that where people are adding things to cart? Do you have a full store setup? If not, that's a massive problem for an eCommerce business. People usually want to browse different options, see related products, or perhaps buy accessories. A dedicated product page can work if you're only selling one thing, but for multiple products, you absolutely need a proper store with a homepage, category pages, and individual product pages, all linked together logically.

Let's think about the potential issues causing people to bail at checkout:

• -> Unexpected Costs: Is shipping expensive? Are taxes added at the very end? Being upfront about costs earlier in the process helps manage expectations.
• -> Slow Loading Times: If the checkout pages are slow to load, people get impatient and leave.
• -> Complicated Checkout Process: Too many steps, asking for too much information, forced account creation – all friction points. A smooth, guest checkout option is usually best.
• -> Lack of Trust: This is HUGE for online stores, especially newer ones or ones selling specific items like gel blasters. People are giving you their sensitive payment information. Does your site *look* professional and trustworthy? Key elements are missing if it's just a basic product page.

On the trust point, look at things like:

• -> Product Imagery: Are the photos high quality? Do they clearly show the product?
• -> Product Descriptions: Are they detailed and persuasive?
• -> Customer Reviews/Testimonials: Do you have reviews on the product pages or elsewhere on the site? Social proof is incredibly powerful.
• -> Secure Payment Badges: Displaying logos of accepted payment methods and security badges (like SSL certificates) reassures customers.
• -> Clear Contact Information: An easy-to-find phone number or email address shows you're a real business.
• -> Return Policy & Guarantees: A clear and fair policy reduces perceived risk.
• -> Links to Social Media/Other Platforms: If you sell on Etsy or Amazon or have active social profiles, linking these can build credibility.

From my experience, addressing abandoned carts is often the fastest way to increase your overall conversion rate and thus reduce your effective cost per purchase, making scaling much more viable later on. We've seen businesses unlock significant revenue just by optimising their website funnel. One campaign we worked on for cleaning products saw a 633% return and a 190% increase in revenue; a big part of that wasn't just the ads, but making sure the website was converting well.

I'd say you need to give it more time...

Now, let's talk about the ads side. A week of data isn't enough to make big scaling decisions. Meta's algorithms are still learning, and you're still figuring out what works best. Your current metrics ($0.42 CPC, 6% link CTR) are pretty standard, nothing to be overly concerned about for a start. The CPM ($23.40) is a bit on the higher side, which could mean your audience is competitive or simply more expensive to reach on Meta. But again, early days.

Before scaling, you need to optimise what you have. This means rigorous split testing. You mentioned wanting to reach more of your intended audience – testing is how you find them effectively and efficiently.

What are you testing currently? You should be testing different aspects of your ads:

• -> Creative: Are you using images, videos, carousels? Are you showing the blasters in action, or just static shots? Different angles – fun activity, collection item, target practice? You need to test multiple variations to see what gets people to click and, more importantly, buy. We've had SaaS clients see great results with User Generated Content (UGC) style videos; maybe something similar showing real people using the gel blasters would work?
• -> Copy: What's your headline and primary text? Are you focusing on the fun, the price, the features? Test different messaging.
• -> Audiences: What targeting are you using? Broad targeting? Specific interests (hobbies, sports, gaming, specific brands)? Lookalike audiences based on website visitors, view content events, add to cart events, or even purchase events (once you have enough data)? Test different audience types and sizes to see which ones deliver purchases profitably. Sometimes a slightly smaller, more relevant audience performs much better than a massive, generic one, even if the CPM is higher, if they convert at a higher rate.

Your goal right now should be to find winning combinations of creative and audience that consistently deliver purchases at a profitable cost per acquisition (CPA) for *you*. Once you have a few of these performing reliably over a longer period (think a few weeks, not one), *then* you can start thinking about scaling.

Also, make sure your conversion objective is set to "Purchases". Optimising for link clicks or landing page views is fine initially to get traffic, but for an eCommerce store, you absolutely must optimise for the final conversion event which is a purchase. Meta's algorithm is powerful, but it needs to know exactly what action you want it to find users who will take.

So, how to scale once you're ready?

Scaling isn't just about throwing more money at the same campaigns. It's a gradual process:

• -> Increase Budget Gradually: Don't jump from £100/day to £500/day overnight on your current campaigns. Increase budget in smaller increments (e.g., 10-20% every few days) on your best-performing ad sets. Monitor performance closely after each increase.
• -> Duplicate Winning Ad Sets: Often, duplicating a winning ad set and increasing the budget on the duplicate can work better than scaling the original too quickly, as it avoids disrupting the learning phase too much.
• -> Find New Winning Audiences/Creatives: Scaling also means finding *more* winning combinations through continued testing. Launch new ad sets with different targeting or new creative variations alongside your existing winners.
• -> Implement Retargeting: As mentioned with abandoned carts, retargeting is critical. Set up campaigns targeting people who visited your website, viewed products, added to cart, but didn't buy. Use persuasive ads to bring them back. Offer a small discount maybe? This is often very high-ROAS traffic.
• -> Expand Platforms (Later): Once Meta is maxed out at a profitable level, you could consider other platforms if your audience is there, like Google Shopping ads (if people search for gel blasters) or even TikTok ads given the product type, but this is much further down the line. Master Meta first.

In summary, your immediate steps should be fixing the website/abandoned cart issues and dedicating the next few weeks to rigorous ad testing to find profitable creative and audience combinations. Scaling comes after you've optimised your current performance and built trust on your site.

Recommended Action Plan Overview:

These steps should give you a clear path forward to get your current setup solid before attempting significant scaling. Jumping the gun on scaling before these fundamentals are in place can be a very expensive mistake.

Getting these things right, especially the website and funnel optimisation alongside detailed ad testing, can be complex and time-consuming. Sometimes having an expert eye look over your setup and strategy can really help identify the bottlenecks and fastest paths to growth. If you'd like to chat through your specific setup in more detail and see if there are other areas we could help with, we'd be happy to book in a free consultation. The link should be in my profile/bio.

Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh