Horizontal Facebook Ad Scaling
To scale your Facebook ads for reach, try adding new ad sets to your campaign as you increase your ad budget. This process is known as horizontal scaling, and it involves researching new audiences using Facebook Audience Insights. Alternatively, you could create Facebook lookalike audiences, which expand on your existing lookalikes; for example, a 5% lookalike vs. a 1% lookalike.
With horizontal scaling, you spread testing across multiple ad sets, audiences, and ad creative. All of the following horizontal scaling strategies can be effective ways of growing and scaling your Facebook campaigns.
#1: Increase the Geographic Area of Your Audience Targeting
The type of business you run may determine the size of the audience you’re targeting with your Facebook ads. If your customers are located in a particular area, for instance, you may start by targeting your ads to that spot.
But if you’re looking for a way to scale your Facebook campaigns, consider increasing the geographic area you’re targeting.
Whether you can do this may depend on the product you’re selling and the distribution system you have in place to fulfill orders. However, if you identify other markets and regions to sell to and see traction from these campaigns, you’re well on your way to attracting new customers. If the products you’re selling can be shipped internationally, it’s worth testing your ads in new locations.
Once your Facebook pixel has collected enough data about what your ideal customer looks like in one country, you can apply these lessons to target markets in other countries. To visualize this, if your initial campaign targets customers in the Italy and those campaigns are seeing success, there’s a good chance the same campaigns may work in other countries as well.
When you change the target location of your ad campaigns, you may need to make a few tweaks to your ads, especially if they refer to a specific place. Keep your ad spend small when you’re targeting a new location with your ads.
#2: Increase the Size of a Facebook Lookalike Audience
A Facebook lookalike audience will likely be filled with prospects who are similar to your best existing customers. When you build a lookalike, you choose a source audience, which is a custom audience built using data from your Facebook pixel. Facebook then identifies the common qualities of the people in your source audience and lets you deliver an ad to people who are like them.
You can choose the size of your lookalike audience—the smaller the audience, the closer it will match your source audience. While a higher-percentage lookalike can increase your potential reach, the audience will be less similar to your source audience.
If you want to scale a lookalike audience by increasing the audience size percentage, it’s worth starting off with a small audience and seeing how receptive they are to your ads. If your ads perform well with a small lookalike, slowly scale your lookalike to see if a larger audience is receptive.
Successfully scaling a lookalike audience will get more eyes on your product or brand and can be an effective way of scaling your Facebook campaigns.
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