Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some of my thoughts on how you should be thinking about this. It's a common problem when you start to scale up the number of products you're advertising, and your first thought to create 20 differnt campaigns is understandable, but it's thankfully not the way to go.
Honestly, that approach will cause you a massive headache and burn through your budget without getting you the results you want. There's a much smarter, more automated, and frankly, more effective way to structure this that will save you a ton of time and get the right cars in front of the right people. Let's get it sorted.
TLDR;
- Stop thinking about one campaign per car. This is inefficient, unscalable, and will prevent Meta's algorithm from learning properly. You need a catalogue-based approach.
- The absolute first thing you must do is set up a Vehicle Catalogue in Meta Commerce Manager. This is the engine for your entire advertising strategy.
- Use Advantage+ Catalogue Campaigns (what used to be called Dynamic Product Ads). These campaigns automatically show specific cars from your catalogue to people who have shown interest, which is incredibly powerful.
- Structure your account using a simple prospecting and retargeting funnel. Use broad and interest-based audiences to find new potential buyers, and then use the catalogue to retarget them with the exact cars they looked at.
- This article includes a flowchart visualising the ideal campaign structure and an interactive calculator to help you project your potential lead volume based on your ad spend.
You'll need to scrap your current plan... why 20 campaigns is a terrible idea
Alright, let's be blunt. Creating a separate campaign for each car is one of the most common mistakes I see people make when they're new to advertising a multi-product inventory. It seems logical on the surface – you want to control the budget and ads for each car, right? But in practice, it's a recipe for disaster on Meta's platform.
Here’s why it'll fall apart:
- Learning Phase Hell: Every single ad set Meta runs has to go through a 'learning phase' where the algorithm figures out who to show your ads to. To exit this phase, it needs about 50 conversions (in your case, leads) per week. With 20 different campaigns, each with its own ad set, you'd need 1,000 leads a week just to get everything running smoothly. You'd be fragmenting your budget so much that none of your campaigns would ever gather enough data to optimise properly. They'll be stuck in a permanent state of inefficient, expensive learning.
- Impossible Management: Imagine trying to manage this. A car sells. Now you have to find the right campaign, pause it, then build a whole new one for the new car that's come into stock. You'll spend all your time on admin instead of actual strategy. Advertising should be automated as much as possible, especially the tedious stuff.
- No Personalisation: With a manual setup, you can't easily show people the specific car they just looked at on your website. This is the most powerful part of eCommerce advertising, and you'd be leaving it completely on the table. You'd just be blasting generic ads and hoping for the best.
So, we need a different approach. We need a system that's built for an inventory that changes all the time, a system that learns from user behaviour and automates the delivery of the most relevant ad to every single person. That system is built on one thing: a catalogue.
We'll need to build your engine first: The Vehicle Catalogue
Before you even think about building another campaign, your number one priority is to set up a Vehicle Catalogue in Meta Commerce Manager. Think of this as the central database of your entire inventory that Meta can access directly. Instead of you manually creating ads for each car, you give Meta the inventory list, and it builds the ads for you on the fly.
This is non-negotiable for a business like yours. To do this, you'll need to create a product feed. This is basically a spreadsheet (usually a CSV or XML file) that lists all your cars and their specific attributes. Most modern dealership website platforms (like AutoTrader, Dealer.com, etc.) can generate this feed for you automatically. You then link this feed to your Meta Catalogue and set it to update automatically every day.
Each car in the feed needs specific information for the ads to work properly. Here's a basic rundown of the fields you absolutely must have:
| Field Name | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| id | A unique stock keeping unit (SKU) for each car. Cannot be repeated. | STOCK-1134 |
| title | The name of the vehicle. Usually Make, Model, and Year. | 2019 Ford Focus Titanium |
| description | Key details like mileage, engine size, fuel type, features. | 65,000 miles, 1.5L Diesel, Sat Nav, Parking Sensors. |
| link | The direct URL to the car's page on your website (VDP). | https://yourdealership.co.uk/car/stock-1134 |
| image_link | URL of the main, high-quality image of the car. | https://yourdealership.co.uk/images/stock-1134.jpg |
| price | The price of the car. Must include currency code. | 12500.00 GBP |
| brand | The manufacturer of the car. | Ford |
| condition | Set this to 'used' for all your vehicles. | used |
Once this is set up and your catalogue is populated with your 20 cars (and any future cars), you are ready to build the right kind of campaign.
I'd say you need to use the right tool: Advantage+ Catalogue Campaigns
This is where the magic happens. Instead of a standard Lead Generation campaign, you want to use an 'Advantage+ Catalogue Campaign' (this used to be called Dynamic Ads, and you'll still hear people use that term). You set the objective to 'Sales', even if you're optimising for leads. It sounds counterintuitive, but this campaign type is designed to work with a catalogue, and you'll choose 'Leads' as your conversion event at the ad set level.
Here's how it works: Meta's algorithm looks at a user's behaviour both on and off Facebook and Instagram. It knows if someone has been looking at Ford Focuses on AutoTrader, or if they've visited your website and looked at a specific VW Golf you have in stock. The catalogue campaign then automatically creates and shows an ad to that person featuring the *exact* car they looked at, or other similar cars from your inventory. It's hyper-personalised advertising on autopilot.
This single campaign type replaces your idea of having 20 separate campaigns. You have one campaign, powered by one catalogue, that can advertise your entire inventory of 20, 50, or even 500 cars simultaneously. When a car is sold and removed from your feed, the ads for it stop automatically. When a new car is added, it can be included in the ads straight away. This is how you build a scalable and efficient advertising machine for your dealership.
You'll need a proper campaign strucutre... Prospecting vs. Retargeting
Okay, so we've established you need one Advantage+ Catalogue Campaign. But within that campaign, you still need some structure. The simplest and most effective way to do this is to split it into two ad sets, mirroring a classic marketing funnel:
1. Ad Set 1: Prospecting (Finding New Customers)
The goal here is to introduce your dealership and your cars to people who haven't been to your website before. This is your 'top of funnel' (ToFu) audience. Your audience targeting here would be based on interests and behaviours. You are looking for signals that someone is 'in-market' for a used car. My recommendation is to start by testing a few different audience themes in separate ad sets to see what works best.
Audience ideas to test for prospecting:
- Broad Interests: Target people interested in specific car brands you stock (e.g., Ford, Audi, BMW) or competitor dealerships in your area.
- Car Buying Signals: Target interests like 'AutoTrader', 'Motors.co.uk', or car finance companies. These are strong indicators of active buyers.
- Location-Based Broad: Don't underestimate a broad audience. Target people aged 25-60 within a 20-mile radius of your dealership with no interest targeting. Once your pixel has enough data, this can be extremely effective.
For the ad creative in this ad set, you'd let the catalogue do its work. It will show a multi-car carousel or collection ad featuring a range of vehicles from your inventory that the algorithm thinks will be most appealing to new customers.
2. Ad Set 2: Retargeting (Bringing People Back)
This is where you make your money. This ad set targets people who have already visited your website but haven't submitted a lead form yet. This is your 'bottom of funnel' (BoFu) audience. The power of the catalogue campaign really shines here.
Your audience would be a Custom Audience of 'Website Visitors' from the last 30 or 60 days, and you must exclude people who have already become a lead. You can then set up the dynamic creative to do things like:
- Viewed Content: Show people a carousel ad featuring the exact cars they viewed on your website, plus a few similar models.
- Added to Wishlist/Saved: If your site has a 'save car' feature, you can target these users with specific reminders. This is a very high-intent audience.
This dynamic retargeting is incredibly powerful. It feels personal and relevant to the user because it is. Seeing the car they were interested in again keeps your dealership top of mind and encourages them to come back and make an enquiry.
You'll need to think about your offer and your ads
Even with the best campaign structure in the world, your ads will fail if the offer isn't right and the creative is poor. Remember, you're not just selling a car; you're selling trust and an easy buying process.
For the 'offer', your call-to-action is likely going to be a lead form. Make it as simple as possible. Name, Email, Phone Number. That's it. Don't ask for their entire life story. The goal is to start a conversation. You could test different Calls to Action like "Book a Test Drive", "Get More Info", or "Check Finance Options".
For the creative, while the catalogue pulls in the car images automatically, you can customise the ad 'frame' and the primary text. Your primary text should address common questions and build trust. Mention things like:
- "All our cars come with a 12-month warranty."
- "Flexible financing options available. Click to get a quote."
- "Family-run dealership with 5-star reviews for over 20 years."
The images in your feed are also critical. They need to be high-quality, well-lit, and show multiple angles of the car (interior, exterior, wheels, etc.). A good carousel ad that lets a user swipe through 10 high-res photos of a car is far more effective than a single, grainy image.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
So, to bring it all together, here is the high-level plan I would recommend you implement. This moves you away from a chaotic, manual process to a streamlined, automated, and scalable system.
| Component | Recommendation | Why It's Important |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | Create a Vehicle Catalogue from an automated website feed. Update it daily. | This is the engine for all your ads. It ensures your inventory is always up-to-date and enables dynamic, personalised advertising. |
| Campaign Type | Use a single Advantage+ Catalogue Campaign with a 'Sales' objective, optimising for 'Leads'. | Leverages Meta's most powerful machine learning for eCommerce/inventory-based selling. Automates ad creation and delivery. |
| Structure | Create two ad sets: 1 for Prospecting (interests, broad) and 1 for Retargeting (website visitors). | This simple funnel structure allows you to efficiently find new customers and convert high-intent users who already know you. |
| Budget | Allocate 70-80% of your budget to the Prospecting ad set and 20-30% to Retargeting. | You need to consistently feed the top of your funnel with new potential buyers to keep your retargeting audiences populated and effective. |
| Creative | Use dynamic formats (carousel). Ensure your feed has high-quality images. Write ad copy that builds trust and highlights key selling points. | The algorithm delivers the product, but your creative and copy are what stops the scroll and convinces someone to click and enquire. |
| Measurement | Track Cost Per Lead (CPL) as your primary metric. Also monitor Link Clicks and Click-Through Rate (CTR) to gauge ad performance. | Focusing on the right numbers tells you if the campaign is actually delivering business value, not just vanity metrics. |
This structure is the industry standard for a reason: it works. It takes the manual labour out of advertising a large, changing inventory and lets the algorithm do what it does best – find you customers.
Of course, setting this up correctly and then managing it is another story. The difference between a campaign that breaks even and one that drives significant growth often comes down to the daily and weekly optimisations – testing new audiences, refining ad copy, analysing performance data, and making intelligent budget adjustments. It's a full-time job to do it properly.
This is where working with a specialist can make a huge difference. We spend all day inside accounts like these, building and scaling them out. We've seen what works and what doesn't across dozens of industries and can apply those learnings to get you results much faster than you would through trial and error.
If you'd like to have a chat and walk through this strategy in more detail for your specific business, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a look at your current setup and give you some more tailored advice on the best way forward.
Hope this helps!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
