Part 2 - How to Use Meta Ads for B2B: Campaign Objectives, Budget Strategy & Account Structure
In Part 2 of our Meta Ads deep dive, we go beyond audience targeting and creative placements to break down the nuts and bolts of running high-performing campaigns in 2025.
We cover:
Campaign Objectives: awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, app promotion, sales, and when each actually makes sense.
Prospecting vs Retargeting: budget split best practices and how to stay flexible with smaller post-iOS14 pools.
Budget settings: CBO vs ABO, when to let Meta’s algorithm optimise spend and when to keep tighter control.
Account structure: why consolidation beats over-segmentation, when to split campaigns, and how to keep accounts clean.
Ad set logic: testing audiences vs creatives, emotional triggers, hooks, pain points and formatsNaming conventions: why a consistent taxonomy matters for scaling, reporting and CRM integration.
Transcript
Unqualified Leads – Episode 005 Highlights
Hosts: Harry Hughes & Daniel
Topic: Deep dive into campaign objectives, settings, account / ad constructs, and best practices for Meta ads in B2B / high-ticket lead gen.
This episode builds on Part 1 by going deeper into how to make Meta work — not just why or where.
Campaign Objectives & When to Use Them
Meta’s objectives (as of Sept 2025) include: Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Lead, Sales / Purchase, App Promotion.
Here’s how Harry & Dan break them down:

Key nuance: Meta encourages 50 conversions a week per objective to exit the learning phase — but Harry / Dan argue that you don’t always need that volume to get high-quality leads, depending on your business.
Prospecting vs Retargeting & Budget Splits
Prospecting: Cold, new audiences (exclude known audiences).
Retargeting: Audiences already familiar (website visitors, engagers, video viewers).
Default split: ~70% to prospecting / 30% to retargeting.
Adjust depending on the size of retargeting pool: small retargeting → heavier prospecting (80–90%), large established audience → potentially 60/40 split.
Always monitor frequency (avoid over‑saturation) in retargeting (e.g. frequency of 10 over 7 days is too high).
Budget Strategy: CBO vs ABO
CBO (Campaign Budget Optimization): Budget at campaign level; Meta allocates across ad sets.
ABO (Ad Set Budget Optimization): Budget per ad set; gives more control and fair testing across audience segments or creatives.
Use ABO when testing multiple ad sets / audiences to ensure each gets spend. Use CBO when you trust Meta’s algorithm to allocate optimally (especially after testing). You can also set minimum / maximum caps per ad set inside a CBO campaign to maintain some control.
Account Structure & Ad Set Logic
Consolidation over fragmentation — avoid creating dozens of campaigns just for the sake of it.
Only split when needed (geos, product lines, prospecting vs retargeting).
Structure:
Prospecting campaigns
Retargeting campaigns
Testing campaigns (to isolate new creatives / audiences)
Scaling / evergreen campaigns
Ad Set Logic:
Keep ≤ 5 ad sets per campaign (unless high budgets).
Use ad sets for audience testing (e.g. Advantage+, 2% lookalike, 5% lookalike).
Use same creatives across ad sets when testing audiences (so audience is the variable).
Once a winning audience + creative emerges, scale and migrate winning ads into evergreen campaigns.
Naming Conventions (Taxonomy)
Use consistent naming at Campaign / Ad Set / Ad levels — this helps in analysis, exports, and cross-team clarity.
Use underscores (not dashes or slashes) so names are machine / CSV friendly.
A sample pattern:
meta_geo_stage_objective_audience_angle_format_date
e.g. meta_NYC_prospecting_lead_LAL2_emotive_video_240925
Consistent naming + structure helps when you tie ad data back to CRM, GA4, post‑IDs etc.
Final Takeaways from Ep 5
Meta’s campaign objectives each have a place — use them strategically, not by default.
Lean into lead and traffic objectives for B2B, while using Awareness for reach when needed.
Prospecting / Retargeting splits and frequency control are key guardrails.
Start with ABO for testing; consider CBO as structure matures.
Focus on creative testing (angles, hooks) more than over-engineering account structure.
Use naming conventions, consolidate campaigns, and keep things as streamlined as possible.