I want to show you how I turned $111K of Facebook ad spend into $344K in revenue, (3.09x ROAS). Right away, here’s the main screenshot with the final numbers:

To appreciate the full transformation, let’s take a quick look at how the store was doing in terms of monthly revenue before I started working with this client:

And here’s a screenshot of our highest revenue month:

It wasn’t an overnight success. I’ve been working with this client for over a year working closely by combining my hands-on Facebook ad experience with their deep knowledge of their industry. They know the exact lingo and pain points that resonate in their industry, which are things that I didn’t have the best insights on going in. And I know how to set up and optimize Facebook campaigns that can scale. Merging those two skillsets helped generate these results to scale this store.

Along the way, I used the same approach I’ve tested across millions of dollars in ad spend, including weekly optimization, creative refreshes, and logical analysis.

In this blog post, I’ll break down the 6 Effective Strategies that got us here. If you’ve been struggling to push your own Facebook ads past break-even—or you just want a more dependable ROAS—this might be exactly what you need. Let’s jump in.

 

1 – Prioritizing High Quality Traffic (Don’t Sacrifice Quality for Quantity)

 

During this 12-month stretch of spending $111K on Facebook ads, every single bit of ad spend was going towards high-quality traffic. Facebook will often suggest settings that “lower your traffic costs,” but low-cost clicks rarely turn into purchases. Instead, you fill your custom audiences with people who never intended to buy, making your future retargeting and lookalike audiences far less effective.

Short term, chasing cheap clicks might bring a spike in website visitors—but most of those visitors won’t buy anything. Long term, that’s a double negative: your ad spend goes up, and your warm audience data is mostly junk. When you finally retarget or build a lookalike, Facebook can’t zero in on real prospects because it’s pulling signals from irrelevant traffic.

It’s far better to pay a bit more per click and aim for quality leads who can actually boost your ROAS. By sticking to purchase-optimized campaigns, I ended up with a cleaner funnel and gave us long-term results. That higher-quality data fed back into retargeting and lookalikes, which delivered consistent, profitable results—even with a bigger up-front CPC.

 

2 – Launch Retargeting Right From Day One (and Scale It Over Time)

 

From the very start of running the ads for this account, I set up a retargeting campaign the moment we launched the cold ads as well, even though the ad account was practically brand new. A lot of people think you have to wait a few weeks to let your audience build up before running retargeting, but that’s not true. In reality, the instant you run cold ads, you’re already collecting data into your custom audiences: video views, ad engagement, social page interactions, and so on.

 

To keep things efficient at the start, I usually split the budget so that 70–90% goes to cold campaigns and 10–30% goes to retargeting. If someone wants to start at $100/day total, for example, we might do $80/day to cold audiences and $20/day to retargeting. Even $80/day on cold is more than enough to feed that retargeting pipeline.

 

Early on, conversions in the retargeting campaign can show up by the second or third day, provided your cold ads are drawing in the right people and your creatives match what buyers want. 

 

3 – Scale Retargeting Based on Frequency

 

Over the course of these 12 months, I didn’t just “set it and forget it.” When results looked great, I’d ramp up the retargeting budget; if the frequency got too high or engagement started dropping, I’d scale it back. In some cases, retargeting grew to as much as 50% of our total daily ad spend, but only when I was confident the custom audiences were both large enough and full of potential buyers. By constantly watching performance and refreshing ad creatives, we kept retargeting campaigns profitable—and that consistency played a big role in hitting our 3.09x ROAS.

Now, one reason I pay so much attention to frequency is that it can spike right after launching instant retargeting. In some cases, the frequency might start above 3.0 during the first week, then settle closer to 2.0 by weeks two or three. Dropping into that lower frequency range usually means your audience is cycling in fresh prospects without hammering the same people repeatedly. At that point, if the ROAS and CPA are looking good, I’ll scale retargeting by 50% or more while also bumping up the cold campaigns. It’s all about striking the right balance—push your best audiences harder when they’re responding well, but don’t oversaturate them to the point of fatigue.

 

4 – Deep Audience Insights for Strong Foundations

 

One thing that kept performance steady over these 12 months was having a strong foundation by going deep into the details of the target demographic. I always start with detailed questions that only the business owner can accurately answer: the most common complaints they hear, their customers’ deeper motivations, and the language their market naturally uses. Because they’re in the trenches, they know these nuances firsthand—and that information is gold when it comes to crafting more relevant ads.

By understanding the precise pain points and goals of their audience, I could pinpoint better interests for cold campaigns and write copy that resonated on a personal level. For example, whenever we tested a new angle or offered a fresh ad creative, we built it around the concerns and desires the client had heard directly from their buyers. That’s how we kept both interest targeting and ad copy fresh and aligned with real needs—rather than guessing.

This approach also meant each new campaign launch was more likely to succeed right out of the gate. Instead of spending budget testing random audiences or vague messaging, we based our decisions on actual feedback from the field. 

 

5 – Staying Patient Through Ups and Downs

With running Facebook campaigns over the span of a long period, it’s perfectly normal to have a day or two when sales dip. A few times during the 12 months, I’d get a message from the client along the lines of, “Hey, sales look lower today—everything okay?” As any experienced Facebook advertiser knows, daily fluctuations are part of the game and patience is oftentimes the solution in these situations.

If you panic every time numbers drop—even temporarily—you’ll end up making a lot of rushed changes that can actually hurt performance. I’d reassure the client that these short-lived dips usually bounce back. Sure enough, we’d see a 0.9x ROAS campaign jump to 4x the very next day, or a day with only 1 sale followed by a day with 13.

Instead of obsessively tweaking budgets or killing ads the moment results slip, it’s often best to step back, let Facebook’s algorithm do its job, and focus on week-to-week trends instead of hour-by-hour or day-by-day. This kind of patience helps you avoid sabotaging campaigns that are just going through a normal ebb and flow.

6 – Time-Tested Methods Beat Shiny New Tricks

After running Facebook ads since 2015, one thing I’ve learned is that sticking with proven fundamentals often beats chasing every “new hack” people talk about online. You’ll often see exaggerated headlines about broad targeting, Advantage+ campaigns, or some genius ad hack that supposedly transforms results overnight. But most of those are lightly tested, often with only a couple hundred dollars in ad spend, and there’s no guarantee they’ll still work a week later.

Meanwhile, the method I used here was the same blueprint I’ve relied on for years. It’s seen millions of dollars in ad spend and endless refinement. I’d rather double down on something that’s worked across multiple clients and markets than gamble on the latest trending tactic. If something truly innovative comes along, I’m happy to test it—but only after my solid foundation is in place.

In consulting sessions, I often have to redirect people away from YouTube-driven “breakthrough secrets” and back to these tried-and-true basics. It’s easy to get seduced by a flashy new approach if your campaign stumbles, but nine times out of ten, the real fix is improving your current setup. Make better ads, refine your campaign structure, and iterate on what you know already works based on the ad account behavior.

 

Next Step: Get an Expert-Level Facebook Campaign Audit

If you’d like my help in taking a closer look at your own Facebook ads to spot the biggest issues and areas to better optimize, my $7 Facebook Campaign Audit is your best next move. I’ll personally dive into your account, check your campaign structure, targeting, and ad creatives, then show you exactly what to improve.

This isn’t a long phone call or a huge consulting package. It’s a quick, direct audit delivered straight to you:

• See what’s working and what’s not without guesswork
• Uncover hidden obstacles that might be tanking your ROAS
• Get actionable next steps to boost performance ASAP

For just $7, it’s a fast, low-risk way to start raising your ROAS and to stop burning budget on weak strategies. If that sounds like what you need or you’d like to learn more about how it works:

Click here to get your $7 Expert-Level Facebook Campaign Audit