Facebook ads is by far and away one of the biggest and most in-depth ad platforms on the planet. At the time of writing this article, Facebook says there are 1.908 BILLION people using their platform each day. Using the Facebook Ads platform to get the right people to visit your website is one of the best ways to grow your business when starting out.
So, you have your business website up and running. It looks great and works well. It’s very easy for potential customers to buy from you and get in touch. But instead of the sounds of a cash register, you are hearing crickets.
Regardless of what product or service you are offering you need customers. You need a way to promote your business and gain the attention of potential customers.
It can be tough and it takes a long time for you to build up an audience on Facebook and get people to visit your Facebook page. Luckily Facebook has provided a way for you to build an audience to get eyeballs on your products and service. As well as other ways to promote your website and business, using their Ads platform.
Facebook Ads – Reaching Your Audience
You have created an amazing website. It’s a great way to introduce your products or services to customers. Trying to get visitors to your website can be a challenge. If you are willing to spend money and have a budget. Then running a Facebook Ads campaign is a great way to get your website in front of the right people.
There are a variety of different ads that you can run using the Facebook Ads platform. I won’t go into detail about the type of ads in this post. I’m going to focus on the Facebook Ads metrics that you can review, no matter what sorts of ads you’re running.
Regardless of what product or service you’re offering, you need customers. You need a way to promote your business and gain the attention of potential customers. Facebook Ads solves this problem for you, but how do you know if your ad campaign is working or not?
This is where Elementary Analytics comes in. You need to focus on the key overarching metrics. Helping you see which ads are driving the most traffic and getting a conversion. So you can optimize these ads and test your messaging. In turn, increasing sales from your website.
Top 5 Facebook Ads Metrics To Track
Your website has been up and running for a good few months now. You have a number of products and services that you want to promote. You have created a marketing plan, identified who your customers are, and what problems you can solve for them. Then tailored your message to show people how you can help them.
“How do I know if my marketing plan and messaging is going to work?”
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve turned to Facebook Ads to get a website, landing page, products page, and eCommerce store in front of people.
For example, I know a lot of marketers log on and use Facebook day to day, and one of their major headaches is efficiently producing marketing reports. I could create a specific landing page on Elementary Analytics to explain how we can help people generate marketing reports. I can then create a Facebook Ads campaign that would show an ad in a news feed, targeting people who would find the ad intriguing.
Here are the 5 metrics I would look at when reviewing Facebook Ads campaign insights. To see if the ads are working, if my landing page and messaging engage people. Finally to see if people then convert by signing up to our 14-day free trial.
Impressions
Impressions relate to how many people see your ad. Regardless of whether they interacted with the ad, scrolled past it, or ignored it completely.
This insight is an interesting one for me. you can see how your ad(s) is performing by reviewing this stat.
If you planned your ad campaign correctly and correctly defined the audience to display ads to. Your impressions number should be relatively high. It is a very quick way to see if your ad strategy is getting in front of people.
Clicks
Facebook Ad’s clicks metric shows you how many times your ads have been clicked after it has been displayed to someone.
For me, this is the most important stat from the Facebook Ads metrics. This means someone found your ads interesting and wanted to read more. They clicked the link, image, or video and went to your website.
If you click numbers are high. This should improve the Page Views metrics in your Google Analytics stats too.
Click Through Rate – CTR
The ‘click through rate’, shortened to ‘CTR’ is also another interesting stat. It’s represented by Facebook’s Ads platform as a percentage. A percentage of what though?
To calculate the CTR: divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions. Then times it by 100.
So let’s say you are getting 23 clicks and 491 impressions. Divide 23 by 491 and multiply by 100, this gives you 4.68%. Almost 5 percent of people who saw your ad clicked to view the content. Not bad, not bad at all.
At the time of writing this post, the average CTR across the whole of Facebook’s ad platform it 1.11%. That is low, very low.
If an ad is getting a lot of impressions, my rule of thumb is to try and get a 5-10% click through rate. If you’re hitting this number, or even higher, then you know you are doing something right.
But what if you aren’t even getting the 1% average. What if, like me, you have some ads that have had a 0.50% click through rate. What can do you?
First, check your ad(s). Is the title intriguing? Does the image/video stop the scroll? Does it make people want to click the link? Does the description also want to make people click? Is it providing enough information? The right information? Are people scrolling past it and ignoring it?
Second, have you setup your audience targeting correctly and are using the best display network. If you’re running an ad about generating marketing reports. But the ads are appearing in the news feeds for people who work in the financial sector. Then you will need to review the ad campaign and make sure your keyword strategy is right.
If all else fails, you may need to go back to the drawing board and review what audience you are trying to reach.
Conversions
Tracking conversion on your website can be difficult to set up, but it is well worth the effort.
First, you need to decide what the single goal of the ad campaign is to be. Do you want to track purchases on an eCommerce store? Do you want to track sign-ups on your website? Do you want to see if someone downloaded your free report?
Once this has been configured for your ad campaign, you can easily monitor this using Elementary Analytics. This Facebook Ads metrics is a great way to instantly see if your ad campaign is working.
If you’re an eCommerce store selling t-shirts (one of the many businesses I’ve dabbled in over the years). Your conversion could be a purchase, if the number is zero then you’re spending money with nothing coming back in return.
But let’s say you are spending £10 on ads, and you need to sell 3 t-shirts to be profitable, you can easily see if you’re ads are working as you would like.
Cost
This sounds simple but you need to know how much you are spending.
I’ve spoken to so many business owners and marketers who have run Facebook Ad campaigns and haven’t watched what they were spending.
Then, at the end of the month, they get an invoice for thousands of pounds from Facebook. But, they have made little or no sales from an ad campaign. It can be disheartening.
So tracking the amount you are spending on each campaign over a period of time. Combined with your conversion count it is the best way to see if you are running a successful ad campaign or not.
Viewing Your Top 5 Facebook Ads Metrics
It can be a pain viewing all these metrics using the Facebook Ads dashboard. Even more so, if, like me, you have a couple of ad campaigns that you are running side by side. To see what the conversion numbers are, and how much you are spending per campaign.
This was one of the reasons I started building Elementary Analytics. I wanted a cut-down and very specific view of my Facebook Ads stats. In turn, how that affected my Google Analytics stats, impacting my sales and profit margins.
“Elementary” Or Simplified View Of Your Facebook Ads Insights
With our dashboard, you can view your top 4 metrics on a single widget. Creating as many widgets as you need for Facebook Ad campaigns as you would like to review.
Below is a screenshot of the last 30 days’ stats for Elementary Analytics.
The widget gives a total of 4 metrics over the past thirty days. These metrics are clicks, impressions, average click through rate (CTR), and conversions.
There is also an indicator that highlights if a metric has gone up or down compared to the previous thirty days. As well as showing you by what percentage the metrics as gone up or down by.
A graph breaks down the 4 key metrics by day. There is also a more detailed view if you click the ‘View more detail’ link within the widget.
The graph displayed is the same as the previous widget. Here though, you can change the period of the graph, ranging from the last 7 days, up to the last 90 days.
Our dashboard also gives a breakdown for not only the last seven days. But stats for this month, last month, and the last ninety days. As well as any KPI’s that have been set.
So you can see how your Facebook Ads campaign is performing.
There you have it. Elementary Analytics’ guide to the Top 5 Facebook Ads metrics to track. A great way to monitor and stay on track in the early days after you have launched a website and trying to promote your business.
I would love to hear your thoughts on which metrics to track and if you found this post useful.
Regards, Phil.
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Thanks for reading.
