Solved: When is the Right Time to Scale Facebook Ad Budget?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some of my initial thoughts on your situation. A 6-7 ROAS at $10 cost per purchase is a fantastic start, so congrats on that. It's a common question, when to hit the accelerator. The thing is, the answer isn't as simple as just picking a moment and upping the budget. In fact, thinking about it that way is probably the fastest route to ruining a good thing.

The real challenge isn't about scaling, it's about rebuilding for scale. What you've found is a small, profitable pocket of customers. Trying to just pour more money on top of that same pocket will likely just drown it out, increase your costs, and tank that lovely ROAS you're enjoying. So, let's talk about how to do this properly, without setting your money on fire.

We'll need to look at the myth of "scaling up"...

First, lets get one thing straight. The idea that you can take a winning ad set, double the budget, and get double the sales is a myth. It just doesn't work like that. Facebook's algorithm is a funny beast. It's found a sweet spot for you at $20 a day, serving your ad to the people it thinks are *most likely* to convert within your target audience. You've got the 'low-hanging fruit'.

When you suddenly tell it to spend $100 a day, you force its hand. It has to go broader, faster. It starts showing your ad to less-qualified people, the 'maybe-buyers' instead of the 'hell-yes-buyers'. Your frequency will shoot up, annoying the people who've already seen your ad five times, and your cost per purchase (CPA) will almost certainly climb. That 6-7 ROAS could easily become a 2-3 ROAS, or worse, before you know it. Suddenly your profitable campaign is a money pit.

I've seen it countless times. Someone gets excited by initial results, goes all-in, and the whole thing falls apart. They then blame the platform, but the issue was the strategy. Scaling isn't a single action; it's a process. It's a fundamental shift from finding a few customers cheaply to building a machine that can predictably acquire many customers profitably.

The campaign you have now has proven a concept: your product, your creative, and a specific audience segment work together. That's a massive win. But it's just the first step. It's the blueprint for a single room, not the whole house. Now we need to think about building the rest of the house without the foundations cracking.

I'd say you need a proper scaling framework, not a bigger budget...

So, how do we do it without breaking everything? Slowly. Methodically. You need to treat the budget increase like you're taming a wild animal, not flipping a switch. The rule of thumb we use is to never increase a campaign budget by more than 20% every 2-3 days. This gives the algorithm time to adjust, to learn, and to find new pockets of customers without going into a panic.

Let's say you're at $20/day.
-> Day 1: Increase to $24/day. Wait 48-72 hours. Watch your CPA and ROAS like a hawk.
-> Day 4: If metrics are stable, increase to $28/day. Wait again.
-> Day 7: If things still look good, push to $33/day. And so on.

Yes, it's slow. It's tedious. It's not as exciting as going from $20 to $200 overnight. But it's sustainable. At some point, you'll hit a ceiling. Your CPA will start to creep up consistently, and your ROAS will dip below your target. That's your current limit for *this specific ad set*. When you find that ceiling, you pull back the budget slightly to the last profitable level. This is now your baseline performing asset.

Here's a more detailed look at what that might look like over a couple of weeks, and the kind of notes you should be taking. This is the grunt work that separates amatuers from pros.

This process gives you a real, data-backed understanding of your audience's capacity. But this is just step one. To truly scale, you can't just rely on this one ad set.

You probably should build a full-funnel system...

Real scale doesn't come from one campaign. It comes from a system of campaigns that work together, guiding a customer from not knowing you exist to becoming a loyal fan. This is the classic ToFu/MoFu/BoFu (Top, Middle, Bottom of Funnel) structure. Your current campaign is likely a BoFu campaign, targeting people ready to buy now.

ToFu (Top of Funnel): Finding New People
This is where you'll start testing new audiences. The goal here isn't immediate sales (though they are a great bonus). The goal is to feed your funnel with new, interested people at a low cost. You need to go beyond your initial winning audience.
-> Lookalike Audiences: This is your most powerful tool. Once you have at least 100 purchases, you can create a Lookalike audience. Start with a 1% Lookalike of your purchasers. This tells Facebook "go and find me more people who look exactly like the ones who've already bought from me". This is often the single most effective way to scale. You can then test Lookalikes of people who 'Added to Cart', or 'Initiated Checkout'. The closer the event is to a purchase, the better the Lookalike will likely be.
-> New Interest Targeting: What other interests does your ideal customer have? If you sell handcrafted jewellery, maybe you've targeted 'Etsy' and 'Handmade Jewelry'. What about targeting magazines they might read like 'Mollie Makes'? Or brands they admire? Or related hobbies like 'pottery' or 'watercolour painting'? You need to build out seperate ad sets for each new interest 'theme' and test them with a small budget. The goal is to find more winning pockets, just like your first one.

MoFu/BoFu (Middle & Bottom of Funnel): Retargeting
This is where the magic, and the profit, really happens. As you spend more on your ToFu campaigns, you'll get more website visitors, more video viewers, more people adding to cart. These people are warm. They know you. They're interested. You absolutly must have seperate campaigns to talk to these people specifically.
-> Website Visitors: Anyone who visited your site but didn't buy in the last 30 days. Show them a different ad. Maybe a testimonial or a showcase of your best-selling product.
-> Add to Cart (but no purchase): These are the hottest leads. They were *this close* to buying. You should hit them with a specific ad within 24 hours. Remind them what they left behind. Maybe offer a small discount or free shipping to nudge them over the line. This is often the highest ROAS campaign you will ever run.

By building out this structure, you're not just 'increasing the budget'. You're creating an ecosystem. The ToFu campaigns find new people, the BoFu campaigns convert them. As you find more winning ToFu audiences, you can increase their budgets (using the same slow, 20% method), which feeds more people into your high-converting BoFu campaigns. This is how you scale from $20/day to $200/day and beyond, while maintaining, and sometimes even improving, your overall ROAS. I remember one client, a subscription box business, where we managed a 1000% ROAS using this exact funnel methodology. It works because it's systematic, not speculative.

You'll need to know your numbers, really know them...

A 6-7 ROAS is great. But what does it actually mean for your business? To scale intelligently, you need to understand your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). This is the metric that tells you how much a customer is truly worth to you over their entire relationship with your brand, not just their first purchase.

Knowing this number frees you from the tyranny of a low CPA. Let's do some back-of-the-napkin maths. I don't know your exact business, but we can use an example.

Let's say:
-> Average Order Value (AOV): $65 (this is what your 6-7 ROAS at $10 CPA implies)
-> Gross Margin: 70% (you make £45.50 profit per order)
-> Repeat Purchase Rate: 30% of customers buy again within 6 months.

Your LTV isn't just $65. It's closer to $65 + (30% * $65) = $84.50. And that's a very simplistic model. A proper LTV calculation would be more complex, but the point is this: your customer is worth more than their first sale.

Here's a more standard way to think about it for a subscription or repeat-purchase business:

Why does this matter for scaling? Because if you know your true LTV is, say, £350, then a CPA of $10 is an absolute steal. A CPA of $20 is fantastic. A CPA of $50 might still be incredibly profitable! When you start scaling and your CPA inevitably rises from $10 to $15 or $20, you won't panic. You'll know it's still well within your profitable range. This knowledge gives you the confidence to spend more and to be more aggressive in your testing because you understand the real value you're acquiring. Without it, you're just guessing.

You'll need an arsenal of creative...

One final, crucial point. The ad that's working brilliantly for you right now at $20/day will die. I can guarantee it. At a higher spend, it will saturate your audience much faster, and people will get sick of seeing it. This is called ad fatigue, and it's a campaign killer.

Before you even think about significantly increasing spend, you need an arsenal of new creative ready to go. You can't wait for performance to drop before you start making new ads. You should be testing constantly.

-> Different Hooks: Your current ad has one opening line or image. Write three more. Test them.
-> Different Angles: If your ad focuses on the beauty of the product, make another that focuses on the story behind it, or another that shows customer testimonials. I remember one campaign for a medical job matching SaaS where we reduced their CPA from £100 to just £7 by testing completely different messaging angles. It makes a huge differance.
-> Different Formats: If you're using an image ad, test a video ad. Test a carousel ad. Test a user-generated-content style ad. Video is particuarly powerful. A simple video of you talking about your product, or showing it in use, can feel much more authentic and often outperforms slick, professional shots.

You should have a dedicated testing campaign or ad set running at all times, with a small budget, just to find your next winning creative. Once you find a new winner, you can swap it into your main scaling campaigns. This constant refresh is non-negotiable for long-term, scalable success.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

As you can probably tell, this is a lot more involved than just sliding the budget bar to the right. It requires a strategic approach, constant monitoring, and a deep understanding of how all the pieces fit together. It's a full-time job in itself, and mistakes can be very costly, quickly turning a profitable venture into a loss-making one.

This is where expert help can make a significant difference. We do this day in, day out, managing complex funnel builds and scaling campaigns for businesses just like yours. We take the guesswork out of it and implement proven systems designed for profitable growth.

If you'd like to have a chat about how we could apply a robust scaling strategy to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We could take a proper look at your account together and map out a precise plan of action. Feel free to get in touch if that sounds helpful.

Either way, hope this has given you a much clearer picture of what's ahead. You've got a great starting point, just be smart about how you build on it.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh