One of the many attractive features of Facebook Ads is that you have a ton of built-in tracking opportunities, which allows you to monitor dozens of metrics in order to tweak your campaigns and get the most bang for your buck. Of course, this is a double-edged sword, because you and your Asheville internet marketing company also have to devote resources to monitoring, analyzing, and cross-referencing metrics to gain the best insights into how you’re doing and how to improve.
Ostersund, Sweden – Feb 5, 2015: Close up of Facebook for business webpage on a computer screen. Facebook is the largest social media network on the web.
In truth, not every metric is going to hold equal importance to every company. You’ll find that there are metrics you’re more interested in based on how much you’re spending, how frequently you launch new campaigns, and what you hope to accomplish. Some companies are only interested in returns, while others are looking to boost brand awareness or simply see more click-through and repeat traffic, for example.
Still, there are certain metrics that are likely to serve the vast majority of businesses well. Here are just a few Facebook Ad metrics you should probably be tracking.
Conversions
Okay, you know it’s important to track conversions, but there are so many possibilities. Which ones are the most important for you and your Asheville branding and marketing partner to focus on?
Impressions and Reach
It’s easy to get these two confused because impressions are how many times an ad was viewed, while reach is the number of people who viewed your ad. If a single viewer saw your ad three times, your reach would be one, but impressions would amount to three. Why is it important to track both of these metrics? If you’re getting a lot of impressions but very little reach, you may want to rethink your strategy to get more unique views and avoid burnout from people who have seen the same ad a dozen times and are starting to get annoyed.
CTR
The click-through rate is obviously a biggie. While it’s always nice to raise brand awareness with advertising, the main goal for you and your branding services agency is to compel action and clicking the ad to be directed to your website is where the journey begins.
CPA
Cost per action is a measure of how much you have to spend to generate the desired action, such as playing a video, joining a mailing list, or making a purchase, for example. When you understand the cost, you can start looking for ways to reduce costs without harming outcomes, creating more efficient and effective advertising campaigns.
Lead Generation
Advertising is intended to help you gain new customers or bring back old ones. If you’re spending money, you need to make money, and this relies on customers making purchases. Still, you often have to negotiate this proposition and woo customers, starting with lead generation, or getting them to offer contact information of some sort. When compared to CTR, you can start to determine if people are clicking ads, but not converting to leads, in which case you can examine whether your landing pages don’t match ads or if they’re simply not compelling.
Results
Every campaign has set goals, and results will tell you how you’re performing in relation to the goals you create at the outset. These metrics will differ among companies and campaigns, but at the end of the day, you and your Asheville branding and marketing firm need to know if your goals are being reached so you can double down or make necessary adjustments.
ROAS
Tracking return on investment (ROI) is always important. You want to make sure the money you spend is generating equal (or ideally, excess) profit. Return on ad spend (ROAS) metrics go beyond likes, follows, and shares to tell you what revenue is actually being generated as a result of consumers clicking on ads, which you can easily compare to expenses to determine a profit margin. An embedded tracking pixel can help you to get the specific, ad-related information you need.
Viewing Frequency
This metric is going to be more relevant for companies with a robust daily ad spend and a lot of ads showing each day. Frequency actually goes hand-in-hand with impressions and reach. You really need to have some visibility on how many times the average viewer is confronted with your ad to make sure you don’t oversaturate and leave consumers irritated instead of aware or interested in your proposition.
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