I describe running Meta ads as making scheduled bets every day. You know roughly what you can spend per creative to get a purchase, and you set the daily budget so the brand makes money. When something's working, the temptation is to triple the budget and go to the moon. I get it. But I've watched it happen enough times: spend triples, volume follows for a bit, and efficiency falls off a cliff.
the rules we run by
- Find the efficient range, then scale in small increments. Every account has a spend level where it's at its best. Push past it in one go and you're paying more for every sale. Step up, check efficiency, step up again.
- Stay in one country until you're properly spending. Below six figures a month in spend, stay single-geography. Wider targeting dilutes the data and makes it much harder to see what's actually working.
- Spend at least your product price per day. If your product's £40 and you're spending £10 a day, you're not really in the game. As a rule of thumb, you need to spend at least the product price daily to expect a purchase a day.
- Give it a couple of weeks. Warm-up and creative learning takes one to two weeks before results settle. Judging an account on day three helps nobody.
- Plan for peak. The weeks around Christmas can deliver brilliant returns on flat spend. That's the window to lean in, not the quiet months after.
conversion campaigns only
We don't run awareness or reach campaigns. Being honest, I think they're a strategy from ten or fifteen years ago. If a campaign isn't optimised for purchases, it's not making you money, and making you money is the only metric that counts.
"0 to 1 is hard. 1 to 100 is easy, as long as you don't rush it."
Stephen Miles
Founder, Smiles Consulting
Founder, Smiles Consulting