Are you new to advertising on Facebook and keep asking yourself “how do I know if my Facebook ads are performing well” or maybe “how do I analyse ad performance?”
We get it, advertising on Facebook can be overwhelming and understanding which metrics to track can be a stressful exercise without guidance.
Here is your guide to understanding the most important key performance indicators (KPI’s) for your Facebook ads and what they mean.
Organic reach on Facebook and Instagram is dead. As of 2022, Facebook and Instagram’s organic reach sits at around 5%. Meaning only 1 in 20 followers sees your content in their feed.
Facebook and Instagram are now pay to play platforms. If you’re not putting a paid budget behind your posts, no one will see them. Whilst this has been a blow for some small businesses, it can also be seen as an opportunity to show content to users who are more likely to engage with it. When you create a paid campaign for your organic posts, you can then define the audience type that will see your content.
Organic targeting through Hashtags
In the past, using hashtags to generate more likes and followers has been a popular method, however this has meant that some businesses built followings with socials users that aren’t the ideal customer. The benefit of Facebook ads is that a business can control who the content is displayed to, ideally users who are more likely to convert.
This all sounds great but where do we start with paid campaigns?
To run effective social campaigns, businesses need to understand the social analytics and metrics that Facebook uses to report on campaigns.
What are the most effective metrics for measuring Facebook ads efficiently?
At Business Assist we break up the most important metrics based on the three campaign objectives:
- awareness
- consideration
- conversion
A business marketing funnel can help contextualise where campaign objectives fit in your overall marketing strategy.
A business marketing funnel typically consists of 5 different stages that align with Meta Campaign Objectives:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Consideration
- Intent
- Purchase
So, how do I know if my Facebook ads are performing well?
To know if your ads are performing well and if you’re not just throwing money behind a campaign without seeing a return, you need to track the correct success metrics. Luckily, Facebook Ads Manger provides an all-in-one tool for managing when and where your ads run and tracking their performance.
It is important to regularly monitor your Facebook ads to ensure you are getting the most out of your budget.
But how do you know which metrics to track? We break down the three campaign objectives and their relevant success metrics.
An Awareness campaign in ads manager
The main goal of an awareness campaign is not to drive sales but to assist your business to be the first business users think about when they need a service or product you offer.
An awareness campaign objective maximises the number of people who see your ads and how often they see them. With this objective, you can choose to maximise your reach or impressions for the entire duration of your campaign. Reach campaigns are used to target specific audience segments and ensure that the ads are delivered to specified.
The metrics that should be tracked for an awareness campaign are:
Impressions
Impressions are how many times users have seen your post appear in their feed.
Reach
The Reach metric is how many individual users have ‘seen’ the campaign.
Cost per 1000 Impressions
How much it costs to get 1000 views of your campaign.
Cost per 1000 Users Reached
How much it costs to deliver your campaign to 1000 users.
Engagement
Total number of users who have engaged with a campaign. This could be a video view, click, like or share.
A Consideration Campaign in ad manager
Consideration campaign objective is to increase traffic to your site. It should generate high-quality users that will create leads/sales/other.
With more traffic comes more data and a large set of data opens potential to build “gold audiences” like lookalike audiences.
Consideration campaigns are also one of the most cost-effective forms of social media advertising. The metrics that should be tracked for these campaigns are:
Clicks
How many social users clicked on the campaign
Cost Per Click
The cost of each click. These can be compared to industry benchmarks.
Link Clicks
How many users clicked to view a website or landing page
Cost per landing page view
How much it costs for users to click through to website or landing page
A Conversion Campaign in ad manager
The conversion campaign objective is to drive the valuable actions you define as conversions. In most cases this is typically leads or sales, but Meta let’s you define your conversions as applicable to your business.
As your audience grows, the Meta algorithm will adjust the campaigns to focus on converting users to match your campaign goals.
Conversion campaigns cost more to run as Facebook views this audience and campaign objective as one of its most effective and charges accordingly.
Lead generation campaigns can be the quickest and most effective way of generating leads. This involves an on-Facebook lead form that allows users to fill in their contact details and any other relevant fields you have set and submit it. You can generate new leads without directing the user to exit Facebook.
It is important that key questions are asked of the user in the contact form so that the leads can be qualified. The ease of filling out this form; Facebook pre-populates user information, means that without those questions lead quality can suffer.
The metrics that should be tracked for these campaigns are:
Leads
The number of leads from Meta lead generation automatic forms, pre populated on Meta platforms.
Cost Per Lead
Cost of those leads generated on Meta platforms
Cost Per Result
Cost per website lead or submitted form
How do you track the success of Facebook ads?
Each Meta ads campaign objective plays a distinct role in a comprehensive Facebook advertising strategy. Depending on the campaign objective, Facebook’s algorithm will optimise the campaign to help you reach your Meta paid campaign goals.
To ensure an effective facebook advertising campaign, a business needs to make sure they measure the correct metrics.
Work out what your campaign objective is. Build your campaign around that objective and use the correct KPIs for that objective to ensure the campaign is successful.
Contact Business Assist today to help your business create a bulletproof social strategy that will help your business achieve your new business goals.
