Solved: Scaling FB Ads for a Clothing/e-commerce Brand

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I've had a look at your situation with your clothing brand. It's a really common problem, having a strong product but struggling to get that initial traction and consistent sales with ads. A lot of people just throw money at Meta ads in an unstructured way and hope for the best, which almost never works out.

I’m happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience scaling eCommerce brands. The good news is that with a proper structure and a bit of strategic thinking, you can definitely start seeing better results. It's not about magic buttons, but about building a solid foundation that you can scale from. We'll need to get away from random boosting and into a proper system for finding customers.

Your ICP is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic

Right, first things first. Let's bin the idea of a traditional Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Honestly, for a clothing brand, knowing your customer is "Female, 25-34, lives in London, interested in fashion" is next to useless. Why? Because millions of people fit that description, and you'll burn through your budget trying to talk to all of them. It leads to generic ads that nobody pays attention to.

To stop wasting money, you have to define your customer by their pain, their frustration, their 'nightmare'. Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state. What is the deep-seated reason someone would choose *your* brand over the thousands of others out there? You need to become an obsessive expert in this.

Let's think about it for a clothing brand. The 'nightmare' isn't "I have nothing to wear." It's much deeper.

• Is it the professional woman who feels invisible in a corporate world dominated by boring grey suits, and her nightmare is blending in and not being seen for her creativity and authority? Your clothes are her armour.
• Is it the new mum whose body has changed, and her nightmare is feeling like a stranger in her own skin, unable to find clothes that are stylish but also practical and comfortable? Your brand gives her back her identity.
• Is it the eco-conscious student who is horrified by fast fashion, and their nightmare is contributing to environmental collapse just to stay on-trend? Your sustainable brand is their guilt-free solution.

See the difference? We've gone from a flat demographic to a real, emotional problem. "Feeling invisible," "losing my identity," "guilt over consumerism." These are the things that drive purchasing decisions, especially in a crowded market like fashion. When you understand this, your entire approach changes.

Your job now is to find out where these people hang out online. This isn't about broad interests like 'Vogue' or 'ASOS'. It's about niche communities.

• The professional woman might follow specific female leadership influencers on Instagram, listen to podcasts like 'The Diary of a CEO', or be in private Facebook groups for women in tech or finance.
• The new mum might be in parenting groups, following specific 'mumfluencers' who talk honestly about postpartum life, or reading blogs about stylish and practical kid-friendly fashion.
• The eco-student probably follows sustainability activists, reads online magazines like 'Ethical Consumer', and might even have interests in brands like Patagonia (not for their clothes, but for their ethos).

This intelligence is the blueprint for your ad targeting. You're not just throwing darts at a board; you're placing your message directly in the path of people who are already experiencing the exact problem you solve. If you dont do this work first, you have no business spending a single pound on ads. It's the most common mistake I see, and it's why most brands fail to get traction.

We'll need to look at your offer and messaging...

Once you've identified that core 'nightmare', your offer and your ad copy need to be laser-focused on solving it. Your product isn't "a well-made organic cotton t-shirt." It's "the confidence to walk into any room and own it." It's "the relief of feeling like yourself again." It's "style without compromise."

Most brands, especially new ones, make the mistake of talking about themselves. They talk about their fabrics, their design process, their brand story. Tbh, nobody cares at first. They only care about what you can do for them. Your ad's only job is to communicate that transformation.

A brilliant framework for this is the Before-After-Bridge.

• Before: You describe their current reality, their 'nightmare'. You show them you understand their pain.
• After: You paint a picture of their desired future state, where the nightmare is gone.
• Bridge: You introduce your product as the simple, tangible bridge to get them from Before to After.

Let's apply this to the ICPs we just talked about:

This kind of messaging connects on an emotional level. It's not just selling clothes; it's selling a feeling, a solution. This is what makes people stop scrolling through their feed and actually click on your ad. And this needs to be reflected on your website too. The landing page they hit should continue this story, reinforcing the transformation and making the purchase feel like the obvious next step.

You'll need to stop paying Facebook to find non-customers...

Now, let's talk about the technical side of Meta ads. This is where most people get it disastrously wrong. Here is the uncomfortable truth about so-called 'awareness' campaigns. When you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and very stupid, command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, being a very literal machine, does exactly what you asked. It hunts down the users inside your targeting who are the absolute least likely to click, least likely to engage, and would rather die than pull out a credit card. Why? Because those people aren't in demand. Their attention is cheap because no other advertiser wants it. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

I've seen so many founders burn thousands on these campaigns thinking they are "building a brand". It's a total myth for a small business. The best form of brand awareness is a sale. It's a competitor's customer switching to you and telling their friends about it. That only happens through conversion.

From day one, every single penny you spend should be in a campaign with the objective set to Conversions, with the conversion event as Purchase. Yes, even with a brand new pixel. Yes, even with a tiny budget. You need to train the algorithm from the very start on what you actually want: paying customers. It'll be more expensive per impression, but you're paying for quality, not quantity. You are telling Meta, "Go and find me people who look and act like other people who have bought from me."

Let's visualise the difference in how the algorithm thinks for these two campaign types.

So, to be absolutely clear: delete any awareness campaigns you have. From now on, you only run conversion campaigns optimised for purchases. This is the single biggest technical lever you can pull to start getting sales.

I'd say you need a proper campaign structure...

Okay, so you've defined your customer's nightmare, you've got your messaging sorted, and you're using the right campaign objective. The next piece of the puzzle is structure. Randomly testing audiences in one campaign is a recipe for chaos and wasted spend. You need a structured approach that mirrors the customer journey. We call this the ToFu/MoFu/BoFu funnel.

• ToFu (Top of Funnel): This is your prospecting campaign. Its job is to find new people who have never heard of you before but fit your ICP. This is where you'll spend most of your budget (around 70-80%).
• MoFu (Middle of Funnel): This is your warm audience retargeting. These are people who have shown some interest (e.g., watched your videos, engaged with your Instagram page) but haven't visited your website yet.
• BoFu (Bottom of Funnel): This is your hot audience retargeting. These are people who have visited your website, viewed products, or even added to the cart but didn't buy. Their intent is high, and your job is to get them over the line.

You should set these up as three separate, long-term campaigns. This organisation is critical because it allows you to speak to each audience with a different message and control your budget allocation effectively. I see lots of people mixing prospecting and retargeting in the same ad set, which is a huge mistake. The algorithm gets confused, and your messaging is wrong for at least half the people seeing the ad.

Here's a breakdown of the audiences I'd prioritise for a clothing brand, within this structure. The further down the list, the more valuable the audience generally is.

When you're just starting out and have a small budget, you can combine MoFu and BoFu into a single "Retargeting" campaign to ensure the audiences are large enough. But always keep your prospecting (ToFu) separate. Inside your ToFu campaign, you'll have different ad sets, each testing a different audience (e.g., one ad set for a lookalike, another for an interest group). This lets you clearly see what's working and what's not, so you can turn off the losers and scale the winners.

You probably should get your targeting right...

Let's talk more about that ToFu campaign, because that's where you'll find your scale. As I mentioned, detailed targeting (interests) is where you'll start. The mistake most people make is choosing interests that are way too broad.

For a clothing brand, targeting "Fashion" or "Shopping" is like trying to boil the ocean. It's a massive audience full of people with completely different tastes, budgets, and values. You'll get clicks, but they'll be from the wrong people. The key is to find interests that a high concentration of your *ideal* customer would have, but a general person would not.

Think back to your ICP's nightmare.

• For the eco-conscious student, instead of "sustainability" (too broad), you could target interests like the magazine "Atmos", the event "Copenhagen Fashion Week" (known for its focus on sustainability), or even smaller, ethical competitor brands.
• For the corporate professional, instead of "business", you could target followers of specific publications like "The Business of Fashion", brands like "The Fold London", or even software they might use, like "Salesforce", and layer it with an interest in luxury goods.

You need to be a detective. The aim is to find these pockets of highly relevant people. I usually group related interests into a single ad set to create a "super-audience". For example, one ad set might contain 5-10 interests all related to sustainable fashion blogs and magazines. Another might contain interests related to minimalist Scandinavian designers.

Once you have enough data (at least 100-500 purchases), you absolutely must start testing lookalike audiences. I often see clients testing lookalikes that are too broad, like a lookalike of all website visitors. That's not specific enough. You need to create lookalikes based on the most valuable actions. Start with a 1% Lookalike of your "Purchase" event. This tells Meta to find the 1% of users in your target country who most closely resemble your existing customers. It's often the most powerful audience you can build.

Test, test, test. You should always be testing new ToFu audiences. Have your long-term campaigns running, and inside your ToFu campaign, dedicate a small part of the budget to testing new interest stacks or lookalikes. When you find one that performs well, you can gradually increase its budget. How long do you test for? A good rule of thumb is to let an ad set spend at least 2-3 times your target Cost Per Purchase before you make a decision. If it hasn't got a sale by then, it's probably not a winner.

You'll need a realistic budget...

This is always the big question. How much should you spend? The honest answer is it depends on your goals and your numbers. But we can work it out logically.

First, you need to understand your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). This is the most important metric in your business. It tells you how much a customer is worth to you over time, not just on their first purchase. If you know this, you know how much you can afford to spend to acquire them (your Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC).

A healthy business model for an eCommerce brand typically aims for a 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio. Meaning, for every £1 you spend acquiring a customer, you should get £3 back in profit over their lifetime. Let's calculate your LTV.

Once you know your Max Affordable CAC, you have your target. If your ads are bringing in customers for less than that number, you're profitable. From my experience with fashion brands, a cost per purchase can range anywhere from £15 to £75 depending on the price point and competitiveness. I remember one campaign we worked on for a women's apparel brand that achieved a 691% Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), which shows what's possible with the right strategy.

So, what should your starting budget be? I'd say a minimum of £30-£50 per day to get started. Anything less and the algorithm struggles to get enough data to learn effectively. A budget of £1,000-£2,000 per month is a good starting point to properly test audiences and creatives. Here’s how you might allocate that budget across your funnel:

This structure ensures you're constantly feeding the top of your funnel with new potential customers while efficiently converting those who are already aware of your brand. As your brand grows and you get more website traffic, you can start to shift a little more budget towards the MoFu and BoFu campaigns.

I know this is a lot to take in. Moving from unstructured ads to a proper system like this can feel daunting. There are a lot of moving parts, from nailing teh creative and copy to constantly analysing the data and optimising your campaigns. It's a full-time job in itself.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Executing all of this flawlessly takes expertise and experience. While you can definitely implement this yourself, working with an expert can significantly shorten the learning curve and prevent costly mistakes. We've scaled numerous eCommerce brands using this exact framework, and we know the little nuances that can make a huge difference to performance.

If you feel like you'd rather have an expert team build and manage this system for you, so you can focus on designing great products and running your business, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a proper look at your brand, your products, and your goals, and give you a tailored strategy session on how we'd approach scaling your sales. There's no hard sell, just genuine advice.

Hope that helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh