Solved: Impact of Similar Products in Facebook CBO Campaign

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. I saw your post and it's a really common question, so happy to give you some of my thoughts on it. There's a lot of different opinions out there, and what works for a massive account spending tens of thousands a day might not be the best approach for everyone else. It's not as simple as 'one campaign is always best'.

It's great that you're following trusted people in the space, that's always a good starting point. But the devil is always in the detail, and applying that advice to your specific situation is where the real work begins. Let's break it down a bit.

I'd say you need to think about your audience first...

This is the main thing really. The question isn't so much about one product vs. multiple products per campaign, but more about who you're trying to sell these products to. Are the people buying your 'bodywash deodorant package' the exact same type of people who would buy the 'shampoo and conditioner, bodywash and deodorant package'? In your case, the answer is probably yes, or at least there's a huge overlap. They are all personal care products. So from that perspective, running them in seperate adsets within a single CBO campaign makes a lot of sense.

The whole point of CBO (Campaign Budget Optimisation) is to let Facebook's algorithm do the heavy lifting. You give it a budget, and it's supposed to find the best-performing ad set (and ad) and push more of the money towards it. If your audiences are very similar, CBO can efficiently figure out which product package resonates better with that audience and optimise accordingly. You're basically telling Facebook, "here's my budget, here's my target audience, now go find me the cheapest conversions for either of these products".

Where this "one campaign" strategy falls apart is when the products appeal to very different people. I remember one client; we worked with them on both women's apparel and cleaning products. We achieved a 691% return for the apparel store and a 633% return for the cleaning products on Meta Ads. Selling both from one campaign wouldn't have worked. The person looking for a new dress has a completely different mindset, different interests, and responds to different messaging than someone looking for an effective kitchen cleaner. Trying to lump them into one CBO campaign would just confuse the algorithm. It would struggle to find a coherent 'best performing' audience because the audiences themselves are fundamentally different. It'd be a complete mess and a waste of money.

So, for your specific products, it's probably fine. The risk is minimal. However, as you expand your product line, you'll need to constantly ask yourself: "Is the ideal customer for this new product the same as my existing ones?" If you start selling, say, high-end shaving kits for men, that might need a seperate campaign because the targeting would be much more specific (men, specific age groups, interests in grooming etc.) compared to general bodywash which has a much broader appeal.

The advice to use one campaign is usually about simplification and giving the algorithm as much data and flexibility as possible under one roof. It's a solid principle, but it's not a universal law. Context is everything.

We'll need to look at a proper funnel structure...

Okay, so sticking with one campaign might work for your current setup. But to really scale and get the best performance, you should think about your advertising in terms of a funnel. This is how we structure things for pretty much all our clients, from SaaS companies to big eCommerce brands. It's just a way of organising your campaigns based on how familiar someone is with your brand.

You've got three main stages:

1. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Prospecting:

This is your cold audience. These are people who've likely never heard of your brand before. The goal here is to introduce your products, grab their attention, and get them to your website for the first time. This is where you do your broad targeting—testing interests, behaviours, and eventually lookalike audiences. For your products, this could be people interested in 'natural skincare', 'men's grooming', 'Lush Cosmetics', 'The Body Shop', etc. Your campaign at this stage would be a CBO campaign, with different ad sets targeting these different cold interest groups. You're casting a wide net to see who bites.

2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - Consideration:

This is your warm audience. These people have shown some interest. They've visited your website, watched one of your video ads, or engaged with your Facebook or Instagram page. They know who you are, but they haven't bought anything yet. They're on the fence. The goal here is to bring them back and remind them why they were interested in the first place. You're not trying to introduce the brand anymore, you're trying to build trust and push them towards making a purchase. This would typically be a *seperate* campaign, a retargeting campaign, also using CBO. The ad sets inside would target different warm audiences, like 'all website visitors in the last 30 days' or 'people who watched 50% of your video ad'.

3. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - Conversion:

This is your hot audience. These are the people who are very close to buying. They've added a product to their cart but didn't finish the checkout. They've initiated checkout but got distracted. These are your most valuable prospects, and you need to give them a final push. This can often be combined with your MoFu campaign into a single 'Retargeting' CBO campaign, especially on smaller budgets. But the ad sets would be very specific: 'Added to Cart in last 7 days (but did not purchase)', for example. The ads here can be more direct, maybe offering a small discount or highlighting your free shipping to overcome that last bit of hesitation.

So, while you might have one *prospecting* campaign selling multiple similar products, you should definately have at least one other *retargeting* campaign. Lumping your cold prospecting audiences and your hot 'add to cart' audiences into the same CBO campaign is a big mistake. CBO will almost always spend all the money on the BoFu retargeting audience because they are the easiest and cheapest to convert. It looks great on paper ("Wow, my cost per purchase is so low!"), but you're not actually growing your business. You're just converting the same small pool of people over and over again while failing to bring any new customers into your funnel. You have to keep the ToFu seperate to force Facebook to go out and find new people.

You probably should prioritise your audiences...

This funnel structure brings us to the next logical point: which audiences do you actually test, and in what order? This is another area where I see a lot of people go wrong. They test random audiences or they jump straight to lookalikes without enough data.

Here's how I'd prioritise things, and this is a framework that works for pretty much any eCommerce account.

First, Nail Your Cold Targeting (ToFu):

When your account is new and your pixel is still learning, you don't have enough data for fancy stuff. You have to start with the basics: Detailed Targeting. Think really hard about your ideal customer. What magazines do they read? What brands do they love? What are their hobbies? For your products, you could create themed ad sets:

• -> Competitor Brands: Target people interested in brands like Harry's, Dollar Shave Club, Dr. Squatch, Aesop, Kiehl's.
• -> General Interests: Target broader interests like 'Men's grooming', 'Skincare', 'Natural products', 'Self-care'.
• -> Retailers: Target people who like stores that sell similar products, like Boots, Sephora, or even premium supermarkets.

The trick is to be specific. Targeting 'Beauty' is way too broad. Targeting 'natural and organic skincare' is better. You need to group these interests into logical ad sets and let them run against each other in your ToFu CBO campaign. After a few days, you'll see which theme is performing best, and you can turn off the losers and scale up the winners.

Second, Build Your Retargeting Audiences (MoFu/BoFu):

As soon as you start getting traffic (you really need at least 100 people in an audience, but more is much better), you should set up your retargeting campaign. You can combine these into one ad set if your budget is small to start.

The audiences to prioritise are:

• 1. Added to Cart (last 7-14 days) - EXCLUDE purchasers
• 2. Initiated Checkout (last 7-14 days) - EXCLUDE purchasers
• 3. All Website Visitors (last 30 days) - EXCLUDE the two above + purchasers
• 4. Instagram & Facebook Engagers (last 30-90 days) - EXCLUDE website visitors + purchasers

This creates a waterfall effect. The most valuable people (Added to Cart) see the most specific ads. If they don't buy, they might get caught in the 'Website Visitors' audience later with a different ad. It ensures you're showing the right message to people based on how serious their intent is.

Third, Unleash the Lookalikes (Back to ToFu):

Once you have a decent number of conversions (ideally 100+ purchases, but you can start with Add to Carts if needed), you can create Lookalike Audiences. These are absolute gold. You're telling Facebook: "Go find me more people who look just like my existing customers". This is far more powerful than just guessing with interests.

You should create and test lookalikes in order of value:

• 1. Lookalike of your Purchasers list
• 2. Lookalike of people who Initiated Checkout
• 3. Lookalike of people who Added to Cart
• 4. Lookalike of All Website Visitors

You'd test these as new ad sets within your main ToFu prospecting campaign, competing against your best interest-based audiences. Often, a 1% Lookalike of your purchasers will outperform everything else. I remember one subscription box client where we hit a 1000% ROAS on Meta Ads, and a huge part of that success was systematically testing and scaling high-value Lookalike audiences.

You'll need to test your creative and landing page...

Having the best campaign and audience structure in the world won't save you if your ads themselves are bad, or if your website doesn't convert. It's like having a perfectly tuned F1 car but putting a terrible driver behind the wheel. You're not going to win the race.

On the ads side, you need to be constantly testing. Don't just run one image and one headline. Inside each ad set, you should have at least 2-3 different ads.

• -> Test formats: Run a high-quality product image vs. a lifestyle image (someone using the bodywash in a nice bathroom setting) vs. a short video ad (a quick demo or a user-generated style review). Video often works wonders. I recall working with a luxury brand where we got them over 10 million views on their launch videos on Meta Ads, which was massive for building initial awareness.
• -> Test copy: Test different angles. Does your audience care more about the natural ingredients? The amazing smell? The value of the package deal? The fact that it's a UK-based business? Write different primary text and headlines for each angle and see what gets the best click-through rate (CTR).
• -> Test your offer: Is it a bundle? A starter kit? Is there a discount? Make the offer clear in the ad.

Then you've got your website. This is often the biggest leak in the bucket. You can spend thousands on ads driving traffic, but if your website doesn't feel trustworthy or is hard to use, people will just leave. I've looked at so many client websites where this is the number one problem.

Take an honest look at your product pages. Do you have professional, clean product photos from multiple angles? Are the product descriptions compelling? Do they sell the benefits, not just list the features? Do you have customer reviews or testimonials? These are massive for building trust. My general impression when I see a store struggle is that it just doesn't look trustworthy enough for me to feel comfortable putting my card details in. Things like trust badges (secure payment logos, etc.), a clear returns policy, and an easy-to-find contact page can make a huge difference.

You need to look at your analytics. Where do people drop off? Do you get lots of clicks from your ads (good CTR) but very few people view a product page? That could mean your ads are misleading or your homepage is confusing. Do you get lots of 'Add to Carts' but very few purchases? That often points to a problem in the checkout process, like unexpected shipping costs or not enough payment options.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot of information to take in. To make it more actionable, I've put the key steps into a table for you. This is the kind of strategic framework we'd implement for a new eCommerce client.

What to expect and when you might need help...

As you can probably see, running paid ads effectively involves a lot more than just setting up a campaign and letting it run. It's a continuous process of testing, analysing, and optimising across your campaigns, your audiences, your ads, and your website. It's a full-time job for a reason.

When you start implementing this, don't expect instant amazing results. You have to give the algorithm time to learn, and you need to spend enough money to get statistically significant data to make good decisions. Turning off an ad set after just £10 of spend is pointless. You need to let it run until it's spent at least 1-2x your target cost-per-purchase before you can judge it properly.

The ranges for eCommerce can be wide. For sales in developed countries like the UK, a cost per purchase could be anywhere from £10 to £75 or more, depending on your product price and how competitive your market is. Our job, as experts, is to implement proven structures and testing methodologies like the ones I've described to systematically push that cost down to the lowest possible point and get you the highest possible Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

This is where professional help can make a huge difference. An experienced agency or consultant has done this hundreds of times before. We know which audiences to test first, what kind of creative works for your niche, and how to interpret the data to make the right decisions quickly. I remember managing campaigns for an outdoor equipment brand on Meta Ads, driving 18k website visitors through strategic campaign structuring. I also recall generating a 7x return for a gambling company, again on Meta Ads, by employing similar testing methodologies to the ones I've described. That experience allows us to avoid common mistakes and accelerate the path to profitability.

I hope this detailed breakdown has been genuinely helpful for you. If you go through all this and feel a bit overwhelmed or just want an expert eye on your account to speed things up, that's what we're here for. We offer a free initial consultation where we can go through your ad account and strategy together and give you some more specific advice.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh