Today we’re getting a little nerdy into some Facebook ads lingo, because this information is so important!

I’m talking about how to scale your Facebook ads fast when you have a tight timeline and big goals.

My agency works with some clients who have really big budgets. That means we have to get really strategic about what and how we advertise.

If you’re working with a big budget and bigger goals, this email is especially for you.

And here’s the key: Pre-Planning the Budget.

My Team uses simple spreadsheets to record all the information about each ad and its budget, because we plan to pace the whole budget over a certain amount of time.

Evergreen ads are easier, because you can start low and scale up. Ads with a timeline are much harder, because you have specific goals to meet in a certain time.

You have to start big enough, because every second counts.

When you’re on a timeline, you can’t waste time in the beginning with smaller ads that people won’t see; you have to start big enough to make an impact. You don’t have time to scale up.

Plan out what you need to spend daily to hit your cost-per-lead goals.

What about lifetime v. daily budgets?

I’ve used both. For a campaign that ends, I prefer a lifetime budget, because Facebook’s algorithm will pace it better.

How much should you increase your budget?

Remember that it’s important to start big enough. If you’re running ads for a warm audience (maybe your email list), you can start at $50 per day, per ad set. If you’re running ads for a cold audience (lookalikes or interest-based), you might start at $20-25 per day, per ad set.

But that means, if you have a massive budget, you need a lot of ad sets. You might have only one image in each set so you have more versions to work with.

From there, we typically encourage a 20-30 percent increase per day (although you might not increase that much every day). And you have to be careful not to increase too much, or your ads will simply stop converting.

If it’s going insanely well (like under $1 per click), I might encourage a 50 percent increase in a high-pressure time.. but typically I encourage less than that.

*Remember to incorporate this into your pre-planned budget.*

Now, pay attention to what happens during your ads campaigns.

Sometimes you’ll have ad sets that don’t spend their full budget. And if that happens, it might be caused by overlap, meaning some of your ads are reaching too many of the same people. (Facebook can show you the overlap inside your ads manager.)

To fix that, you can exclude certain audiences for those ad sets.

For example, if I’m running ads to lookalike and interest-based audiences (or to video viewers and email lists), I can exclude one or the other to take away the overlap.

A few other tricks:

If you have a top-converting ad set you’d like to increase faster, sometimes it works to duplicate that ad set and run it to the same audience at a smaller budget.

For any sales ads people might see over and over, you might stagger your ads during the time when the cart is open, so people see different ads from you every couple days.

Evergreen ads are much easier to scale, BUT.

Evergreen ads generally have a lifespan of 30-40 days before you need something fresh. It’s really important to (1) have new content ready to switch with old content, and (2) watch what’s happening so that you’re ready. You always want to have a backup ready to go.

Those are my best tips for scaling quickly. Remember that the #1 takeaway is to pre-plan your budget: It’s too stressful to try to reach your goals after you get behind.