When you run a business that sells products or services online, digital advertising may be critical to your business. Depending on what you’re selling and your advertising performance, scaling your ad budget could be the perfect step to take your business to the next level. But if you haven't done your research, increasing your advertising budget could be a critical mistake. Here’s a closer look at what you need to know to scale your advertising budget the right way.
What Does It Mean To Scale Advertising?
Let’s say you run a business that sells widgets online. On a typical day, you spend around $50 per day on Facebook ads, which works very well in generating new sales. That’s when you start to think, “if I double my advertising budget, will I double my sales?” That is the central concept of scaling your advertising budget.
But of course, it’s not always that simple. Many advertisers increase their budget with only moderate success. Hence, it’s essential to understand what’s working well in your ad campaigns to scale your advertising budget the right way.
When you increase your advertising budget, you should see the same results, but on a larger scale. For a growing software as a service company or seller or a popular item, seizing the moment when your ads are working well to grow your business can be an excellent growth strategy.
Signs That It's Time to Take Your Advertising Budget to the Next Level
So, how do you know when it’s time to increase your advertising spend? It’s all about the numbers. While some business owners are tempted to simply follow their instincts, looking at the performance results of your current advertising, you can make informed decisions around advertising.
Here are two milestones to take note of that could signal it’s the right time to boost your advertising campaign:
Clear ROI: The first place to look is the advertising ROI. Every savvy business owner or manager should know their product and sales margins, which tells you how much you’re earning on every sale. More advertising should increase your total profits if your cost per conversion is less than your profit margin.
Strong audience response: If you run an ad that performs exceptionally well, it could be time to double down. Again, make sure you’re paying attention to the numbers. Just because an ad is converting doesn’t mean it’s profitable. Overpaying for online ads could leave you with losses instead of profits.
Even when an ad is doing well, never forget about optimization. You and your team can continually test and work to improve the results from your ad set.
How to Scale Your Advertising Efforts
When you think it’s time to increase your daily budget for social media advertising, it’s important to scale your efforts to give you the best return. As you work to grow your audience size, it’s wise to stay focused on the best potential customers.
One standard method to scale up is increasing your audience size. To start, consider creating a lookalike audience, something Facebook and others make easy. Starting with a 1% lookalike audience will target online users with similar interests. As you expand your lookalike audience to 3% or 5%, you may notice a change in performance. Pay close attention to this to maintain a high return on your advertising investment.
Also, consider expanding internationally. While you may be located in the United States, adding targeting to the European Union, Canada, and other locations could expand your reach without diluting your results.
When increasing advertising spending, it’s vital to consider efforts to keep potential buyers warm to your brand and products. Retargeting can lead to repeated brand and product exposure, increasing the likelihood of a sale. For high margin or high-value products and services, spending a seemingly high amount on the cost of acquisition may be prudent.
If you know your average customer lifetime value, you can set clear advertising budgets while maintaining and growing your bottom line.
Increasing Your Ad Spend
Going from $10 per day to $100 per day can feel like a lot. After all, spending 10x more on anything can be offputting. But when you know that every dollar you spend will give you more than a dollar in return, you can confidently scale up your top-performing ad creative. Try out a different ad for the same audience. You can scale up other creative or additional campaigns if it performs well. Sometimes a new ad is all it takes to convert additional customers on the fence about buying.
If you’ve saturated your target audience with Facebook advertising, you may try to mimic the campaign on another platform. You can also test different Facebook ad campaigns and Google search ads on new audiences. Setting a limited campaign budget on more than one target audience may help you identify additional demographics to target.
The learning phase is critical to successfully increasing your ad spend. Pay close attention to the metrics in your ad account while you’re ramping up your ad spend, looking for any anomalies or underperformance.
Depending on your industry and product, you may try increasing your CPM to reach more competitive audiences and keywords. While this increases your customer acquisition cost, spending more for profitable sales, even with slimmer margins, could be a worthwhile marketing strategy.
How dash.fi Can Help You Scale Ad Spend
You probably put a lot of effort, money, or both into creating the perfect custom ad for every placement. Whether you’re running a video ad, image ad, text ad, or a combination of different creative types, it’s just as important to manage your spending with the right partners as you scale up your ad spend.
At dash.fi, we understand that bringing in new customers is the lifeblood of your business. The dash.fi card is explicitly made for ad spend at Facebook, Google, Instagram, Pinterest, and other search engines and social media platforms.
dash.fi customers get access to performance data on 5,000 media buyers across the industry, so you go into every negotiation and purchase with the best information available. The card includes high daily spend limits, so your campaign is never cut off by your credit card company, and you can create a new virtual card for every ad or campaign to track spending and performance to the penny.
New users start with an unlimited 3% cash back on every dollar they spend for the first two months. After the introductory period ends, you will continue to earn unlimited cash back on advertising with opportunities to continue earning at the 3% rate indefinitely.
If you’re looking for a partner with the expertise to help your small business, agency, dash.fi is here to help you reach your best potential from online advertising. Learn more and get started here.
