Solved: Warming Up Ads Before Sales - Is it Necessary?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I saw your question about 'warming up' ads and it's a really common one, something a lot of people seem to talk about online. I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts on it. To be blunt, this idea of 'warming up' an ad account with awareness campaigns before you ask for a sale is probably one of the most persistent and costly myths in paid advertising, especially for small businesses who can't afford to just burn money.

The short answer is: you're telling the advertising platform the wrong thing. You're asking it to find people who will 'look' at your ad, not people who will 'buy' from you. They are two completly different groups of people. Let's get into why that is and what you should be doing instead.

We'll need to look at why 'warming up' is a waste of your money...

Alright, let's get right into the thick of it. This whole concept of "warming up" an ad account or "boosting a post for awareness first" sounds logical on the surface, doesn't it? It feels a bit like dating – you don't ask someone to marry you on the first date. You warm them up, build a relationship. Unfortunately, the Meta ads algorithm doesn't work like that at all. It's not a person you need to build rapport with; it's a ruthlessly efficient, logic-driven machine.

When you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the algorithm a very specific, very literal command: "Find me the largest number of people, inside my chosen audience, for the absolute lowest possible price."

The algorithm, being the obedient machine it is, does exactly what you asked. It scours the billions of users on its platforms and identifies the individuals who are the easiest and cheapest to show an ad to. Who are these people? They're often the ones who scroll passively, who rarely click, almost never engage, and are absolutly, positively the least likely to ever pull out a credit card and buy something. Why? Because their attention isn't in high demand. Other advertisers aren't bidding much for them because they know these users don't convert. Their 'ad space' is cheap. So when you run an awareness campaign, you are actively paying the world's most sophisticated advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product. You're filling your funnel with digital window shoppers who have no intention of ever coming inside the store.

Think of it like this. Imagine you're a fishing boat captain. You have two types of nets.

• Net A (The 'Awareness' Net): This net has massive holes in it. It's designed to be dragged through the water as quickly and cheaply as possible. You'll catch a huge volume of... well, mostly water, seaweed, and maybe a few tiny fish that nobody wants. It's cheap to operate, but your actual catch is worthless.
• Net B (The 'Conversion' Net): This net has smaller, stronger mesh. It's designed specifically to catch the type of fish you actually want to sell at the market. It costs more to drag this net through the water because it's heavier and requires more skill to handle, but when you pull it up, it's full of valuable fish.

Running an awareness campaign is like using Net A. You're optimising for volume and low cost, not for value. You're telling the algorithem you want to catch seaweed, so that's what it gives you. Then, when you switch to an engagement or purchase objective later, you're asking a machine you've just trained to find seaweed to suddenly start finding prize-winning tuna. It gets confused, and the data it's learned from your 'warm-up' is now polluting its ability to find actual buyers. It's a flawed strategy from the very start. The best form of 'brand awareness' for a small business is a customer buying your product and having a great experience. Awareness is a byproduct of sales, not a prerequisite for them.

I'd say you should tell the algorithm exactly what you want...

So, if 'warming up' is out, what's the alternative? It's simple, almost deceptively so. You need to be direct. You need to choose the campaign objective that perfectly matches your real-world business goal from day one, minute one.

You mentioned your goal is to "received purchases through Instagram messages". That's a brilliant, clear objective. Meta has campaign setups designed specifically for this. You would typically choose a 'Sales' or 'Leads' objective and then, in the ad set settings, you'd select 'Messaging Apps' as your conversion location. You can then specify that you want to receive messages on Instagram. Crucially, the algorithm will then optimise for 'Conversations' or 'Leads', meaning it will actively hunt for people within your target audience who, based on their past behaviour, are most likely to not just see your ad, but to actually click that 'Send Message' button and start a conversation with you. It's looking for people who have done this before and are likely to do it again.

This is the absolute core of making paid ads work. You are leveraging billions of data points that Meta has on its users. The algorithm knows who the window shoppers are, who the 'likers' are, and who the buyers are. By choosing a conversion-focused objective, you are giving it permission to use that data to your advantage. Yes, it will be more expensive on a 'per impression' basis. Your CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions) will almost certainly be higher than in an awareness campaign. But that's a meaningless metric. You're not in the business of getting impressions; you're in the business of getting customers. You'd rather pay £20 to show your ad to 1,000 people and get 5 sales, than pay £5 to show it to 1,000 people and get zero sales.

This brings us to a much more important calculation: how much can you actually afford to spend to get a customer? This is where understanding your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) becomes so important. Forgetting about cheap clicks and focusing on profitable acquisition is the single biggest mindset shift that separates failing advertisers from successful ones.

Let's do some quick maths. Knowing these numbers gives you power. It tells you wether that £20 cost per purchase from an ad is a disaster or a massive bargain.

You probably should focus on finding the right people first...

Okay, so we've established that you need to tell the algorithm to find buyers, not viewers. The next question is, where does it look? This is where targeting comes in, and just like with campaign objectives, there's a smart way and a not-so-smart way to go about it.

The biggest mistake I see is people getting obsessed with finding some magical, secret 'interest' that no one else knows about. The truth is, successful targeting is about structure and logic, not luck. You should think about your audiences in terms of a funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu). These are people at different stages of awareness about your business.

Here’s how I’d prioritise them for a small business just starting out:

1. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - The Warmest Audience: These are people who already know you. They've visited your website, engaged with your Instagram profile, or even added a product to their cart (if you have a website). This is your most valuable audience, and you should always be running 'retargeting' ads to them. They convert at the highest rate. Even if you're just starting, you can set this up to capture people as they start interacting with you. You'll need at least 100 people in this audience for the ads to run, so it's something that builds over time.
2. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Finding New People: This is where you find new customers. Since you're starting fresh, this is where most of your budget will go. Your main tools here are:
   • Detailed Targeting (Interests/Behaviours): This is your bread and butter. The key is to think beyond the obvious. If you sell handcrafted jewellery, don't just target 'Jewellery'. That's too broad. Think about your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). What magazines do they read (e.g., Vogue, Tatler)? What brands do they admire (e.g., competitors, complementary brands like high-end fashion labels)? What other interests do they have that suggest they have disposable income and an appreciation for craftsmanship (e.g., 'Fine Art', 'Luxury Travel', pages for places like 'Liberty London')? You want to find interests that your ideal customer has, but the average person does not. That's how you find your niche.
   • Lookalike Audiences: This is an incredibly powerful tool, but you need data for it to work. Once you get some purchases or even just a good number of people messaging you, you can tell Meta, "Go and find me more people who look just like these ones." You can create a Lookalike of your past purchasers, or people who have engaged with your Instagram page. The algorithm analyses thousands of data points about these people and builds a new, much larger audience of similar individuals. It's the fastest way to scale. I'd usually start with a 1% Lookalike in your target country, as it's the most similar to your source audience.

The mistake many people make is throwing a bunch of random interests into one ad set. You need to be methodical. Create different ad sets to test different audience 'themes'. For example:

• Ad Set 1: Targeting interests related to competitor brands.
• Ad Set 2: Targeting interests related to high-end magazines and blogs.
• Ad Set 3: Targeting interests related to complementary hobbies (e.g., art, design).

Run them with a small budget for a few days. You'll quickly see which audience is responding best (i.e., sending you messages at the lowest cost). Then you turn off the losers and put more budget behind the winners. It's a process of constant testing and refinement, not a 'set it and forget it' affair.

You'll need an offer they can't ignore...

This might be the most important part of the entire letter. You can have the perfect campaign objective and the most precisely targeted audience, but if what you're showing them—your ad creative and your offer—is weak, you will fail. Full stop. The number one reason I see campaigns fail, time and time again, is a bad offer.

An 'offer' isn't just a discount. It's the entire package: your product, your pricing, your messaging, and the reason someone should buy from YOU right NOW, instead of from the thousand other options available to them. For someone selling via Instagram DMs, your ad creative (the image or video) and your ad copy (the text) are your entire sales pitch. They have to do a lot of heavy lifting.

So, how do you craft a message they can't ignore? You need to stop selling features and start selling outcomes. You don't sell "a handmade silver necklace". You sell "the confidence of wearing a unique piece of art that no one else has" or "the perfect, unforgettable anniversary gift".

A powerful framework for writing ad copy is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).

1. Problem: You identify a specific, urgent pain point your ideal customer is experiencing. You enter the conversation already happening in their head.
2. Agitate: You pour a bit of salt in the wound. You remind them why this problem is so frustrating and what the negative consequences are of not solving it.
3. Solve: You introduce your product as the perfect, simple solution to that specific problem.

Let's apply this to a fictional small business selling custom pet portraits via Instagram messages.

See the difference? The second example isn't just selling a product; it's selling a feeling. It's solving a pain point. Your ad creative—the image or video—must do the same. It needs to be scroll-stopping. For a product business, this means high-quality, professional-looking photos and videos. Show the product in use, show people enjoying it, show the craftsmanship. Don't just use a flat product shot on a white background. Make it come alive. I remember one of our e-commerce clients in women's apparel saw a 691% return on their ad spend, and a huge part of that success was having ad creative that truly resonated with their audience.

You'll need to know what good performance looks like...

Finally, how do you know if any of this is actually working? You need to look at the right numbers. When you were considering an 'awareness' campaign, you might have been told to look at metrics like 'Reach' or 'Impressions'. As we've discussed, these are vanity metrics. They make you feel good but don't pay the bills.

When running a conversion-focused campaign, your North Star metrics are different:

• Cost per Result (or Cost per Conversation Started): This is your primary metric. How much does it cost you to get one person to send you a message? You should compare this number to your 'Max Affordable CAC' from the calculator earlier. If your cost per result is well below what you can afford, you have a profitable campaign.
• Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): This is the ultimate measure of success. For every £1 you spend on ads, how many pounds do you get back in revenue? A ROAS of 3x (or 300%) means for every £1 spent, you generate £3 in sales. This is generally considered a good benchmark, but it depends entirely on your profit margins. We've had clients achieve over 1000% ROAS, but even a 200% ROAS can be very profitable for a business with high margins.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): This measures what percentage of people who see your ad actually click on it. A low CTR (e.g., below 1%) often indicates your ad creative or copy isn't resonating with your audience. It's a good diagnostic tool.
• Conversion Rate: In your case, this would be the percentage of conversations that turn into a sale. This isn't a metric Meta can track, so you'll have to track it yourself. If you're getting lots of conversations but few sales, the problem might be in your sales process within the DMs, or your pricing.

What should you expect to pay? That's the million-dollar question. It varies wildly by industry, country, and the quality of your ads. I can give you some very rough ballpark figures based on our experience. For a direct sale of an e-commerce product in a developed country like the UK, a cost per purchase could be anywhere from £10 to £75 or even higher. For a lead or a message, you'd hope for it to be lower. One of our clients, a home cleaning company, was getting leads for £5 each. Another, an HVAC company in a competitive area, was paying around $60 per lead. The key isnt to chase the lowest possible cost, but the most profitable cost.

It’s about finding the sweet spot where you're acquiring customers at a rate that allows your business to grow profitably. It takes testing, patience, and a bit of data analysis. You won't nail it on day one, but by following this logical structure, you avoid the fundamental mistake of 'warming up' and give yourself the best possible chance of success from the outset.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

This is a lot to take in, I know. But getting these foundations right is the difference between ads being a growth engine for your business or a money pit. Here is the main advice I have for you, all summarised in one place:

Trying to manage all of this yourself can feel overwhelming, especially when you're also trying to run your business, fulfill orders, and handle the sales conversations in your DMs. The learning curve can be steep and costly. Many small business owners spend months and thousands of pounds making easily avoidable mistakes before they start to see a return.

Working with an expert can shortcut that process dramatically. Instead of guessing which audiences to test or how to write compelling copy, you're leveraging years of experience from someone who does this day in, and day out across dozens of accounts. We've seen what works and what doesn't in countless niches, from B2B software where we got a client 4,622 registrations, to e-commerce where we helped a brand launch and get 1,500 leads at just $0.29 each. That experience helps us make much more educated guesses from the start, saving you time and, more importantly, money.

We typically start with a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We'd have a proper look at your business, your goals, and what you've tried so far. From there, we can give you a much more specific and tailored strategy than this letter allows for. If it feels like a good fit for both of us, we can talk about what working together might look like. If not, you'll still walk away with a ton of valuable, actionable advice you can implement yourself.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh