Are your Facebook Ad Campaigns even working?

Are your Facebook Ad Campaigns even working?

Kirralee Coulter
By Kirralee Coulter

You might have heard of other businesses making impressive profits through Facebook advertising. But if you’re anything like us, you’ve got to see the results to believe it. 

Once you start running a Facebook campaign, how do you even know that it’s working? What are the signs of success and what are the false positives you shouldn’t pay too much heed to?

We’ve previously discussed the question “does Facebook advertising even work?” but in this post we want to dig deeper into how to know if your Facebook ad is doing well – and how to measure your results in a reliable way.

Let’s dive into it.

How to know if your Facebook ad is doing well

How To Know If Your Facebook Ad Is Doing Well

How do you know if your Facebook ad is doing well if you’re not tracking the results? Before you launch your first Facebook campaign, make sure you’ve set up conversion tracking so you can monitor your results.  

Conversion tracking allows you to give Facebook the right context around your goals so it can show your ad to the right people. For example, once you’ve defined a custom audience using tracked conversions, Facebook can use the data to identify other Facebook users who are likely to convert.

Without monitoring the right metrics, you won’t be able to see the impact of your ad campaigns. When you track your results in the right way, you can figure out what’s working and how you can make improvements moving forward.

Three of the best tools for monitoring Facebook ads results are:

  • The Ads Reporting feature in your Facebook Ads Manager dashboard
  • Meta Pixel – a snippet of code that allows you to track visitor activity on your website
  • Google analytics on your website

Now that you’ve got all that data at your fingertips, what do you do with it? Not all metrics are equal – it’s crucial to understand which metrics are worth looking at so you don’t get distracted when tracking your results.

The most important metrics depends on what your goals are

The Most Important Metrics Depends On What Your Goals Are

The first step to know if your Facebook ad is doing well is to clearly define your goals. Once you know what you are hoping to achieve with the ad, you can figure out what metrics are worth looking at.

The best metrics for monitoring success will change based on what you are trying to achieve – it's never really a one size fits all situation.

  • If you are looking at getting sales, then conversion campaigns are good. You should keep an eye out for Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), website purchase value and cost per sale metrics.
  • If you are looking at getting enquiries, then lead generation, messenger or website conversion campaigns are good. Keep an eye on your total spend, amount of enquiries and cost per enquiry.
  • If you are running a traffic campaign or trying to generate clicks, keep an eye on your click-through rates and average session duration from that traffic source.
  • If you are running a reach campaign, keep an eye on your cost per thousand impressions and frequency.

Watch out for vanity metrics

Watch Out For Vanity Metrics

While some metrics are really useful, others are what digital marketers like to call “vanity metrics”. They might look good on paper, but they don’t actually tell you anything useful about your campaign – or worse, they might cover up real issues with your campaign.

For example, engagement metrics such as likes, comments and shares can lead you astray if your goal is more sales or enquiry based, rather than social growth. 

So it’s not just about knowing what metrics are out there – it’s crucial that you monitor and pay attention to the ones that are truly important to your campaign and your goals. If you’re not sure how to do that, speak with the team at Dilate.

6 Facebook Ads metrics to measure success

6 Facebook Ads Metrics To Measure Success

If you’re wondering how to know if your Facebook ad is doing well, here are 6 useful Facebook ads metrics to track.

1. Impressions, Reach and Frequency

If your goal is brand awareness, you probably want to take a look at impressions, reach and frequency metrics.

Here’s the Facebook ads difference between reach and impressions:

  • Reach refers to how many unique people saw your ad
  • Impressions refers to how many times your ad was seen – a single person seeing your ad three times is three impressions.

The frequency metric tells you how many times your ad was viewed by a single person. It’s calculated by comparing the relationship between reach and impressions. 

If reach is 100 and impressions is 1,000 it means each person saw your ad 10 times. A high frequency like this can lead to audience fatigue or annoyance – no one likes seeing the same ad too many times.

For lead-generation and e-commerce campaigns, it’s best to keep your frequency low. If your frequency is too high, try changing your ad creative to serve something new to your audience or adjust your targeting parameters to reach new people.

2. Click Through Rate (CTR)

Click through rate is how many people clicked on your ad vs how many people saw your ad. It can give you a general indicator of how engaging your ads are to your audience.

Facebook provides you with a couple of different click metrics, depending on what type of click you got.

  • The Link Clicks metric tells you how many people clicked on a link in your ad and the benchmark for this is usually between 1-2%. 
  • The Clicks (All) metric counts all types of clicks, including links, images, likes, comments, shares etc. It can give you a false impression of how much engagement your ad is getting, so beware.

If your click through rate is high, it means your ad targeting is good – but be careful not to put too much weight on click through rates. 

A high click through rate doesn’t necessarily mean a successful campaign. For example, you might be getting a lot of clicks on your ad, but no conversions once people are on your website. In this case, you might need to work on your landing page.

Keep your eye out for a low click through rate too. If your cost per click is high but CTR is low, your ad probably isn’t appealing to your audience or your ad targeting is off.

3. Cost Per Click (CPC)

What is CPC in Facebook ads? Cost per click – also known as cost per link click – shows how much each click costs you. It’s calculated by dividing your total ad spend by the number of link clicks your ad received.

Knowing how much you’re paying per click can help you figure out if you’re paying too much for your ads – or not getting a good return on your investment.

Keep in mind CPC benchmarks can change from industry to industry. It’s important to look at your CPC in the context of typical results for your industry – and the lifetime value of your customers. 

For example, businesses in the medical and finance industries tend to have customers with high lifetime value, which means they’re often willing to spend more on acquiring those customers.

Cost per click isn’t the only cost metric you can look at. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, cost per thousand impressions might be worth paying attention to.

4. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate tells you how many people converted after clicking on your Facebook ad. You set your definition of a conversion when creating your ad – whether that’s signing up to your offer, filling out a contact form or buying a product.

Conversion rate is an important metric because it measures how many sales or sign ups you got from your Facebook ad. 

Try comparing this metric with your overall number of sales or sign ups to see how much Facebook advertising contributes. Or compare conversion rates from Facebook with your other social media advertising efforts to see where most of your customers are coming from.

If your click through rate is high while your conversion rate is low, it’s worth taking a look at the bounce rate on your landing page. If people are quickly leaving your website without converting, you might need to work on optimising your landing page or try repeat marketing.

5. Number of Assisted Conversions

When tracking conversions, it’s a good idea to look at both the metrics Facebook gives you as well as your website’s analytics. That’s because not everyone who sees your ad will convert straight away.

Someone may have come to your website through your Facebook ad the first time, then gone away, thought about it and come back another time through Google. Organic search is then attributed with the conversion, even though your Facebook ad was what made the customer aware of your brand in the first place.

So on paper, some branding campaigns might look like they’re not working because conversion rates are so low. But it might be because the results are actually being measured in branded search volume in Google.

6. Cost Per Conversion

Cost per conversion tells you how much you’re paying for each lead or sale. It’s a useful metric if your goal is to make sales or sign ups and can help you figure out if your investment is paying off.

For example, if you sell a product that costs $500 and your cost per conversion is $20, you’re probably still making a decent profit on the sale. However, if your cost per conversion is $50 and your product costs $30, you’ve got a problem.

If your cost per conversion is too high, you can work on lowering it by improving your relevancy score, experimenting with ad placement and following Facebook ads optimisation best practices.

Our guide “How to place an ad on Facebook” is a good place to start if you’re new to Facebook advertising.

Similar metrics that eCommerce businesses should pay attention to include Purchases and Purchase Value. Cost per result might also be worth looking at – it can help you figure out how efficiently you achieved your ad objectives or compare your current campaign to other Facebook ad campaigns.

How do you know if the metrics you’re looking at are accurate?

How Do You Know If The Metrics Youre Looking At Are Accurate

It’s important to be confident in the data you’re collecting. Afterall, you’re going to make marketing and budgeting decisions based on this information. But how do you know if the metrics you’re looking at in the ads manager dashboard are accurate?

Knowing what metrics to look at and how to interpret the data is the first step. If you’re new to Facebook, getting professional help from a Facebook marketing agency could be a smart move.

Experts stay on top of changes in the digital world and know how to spot a vanity metric from far off. For example, with iOS14, less data is making it back to Facebook making “all numbers” referencing off Facebook activity less accurate.

We highly recommend tracking data with both Facebook and Google Analytics to paint a full picture.

Split testing your ads should also be standard practice. This involves changing one element of your ad and testing whether version A or version B performs better. 

Another tip is to make sure you split audiences so that you can tell which audience you’re getting results with. If you combine 4 audiences, 2 might be working and 2 not working and you would never know.

Get help from the experts

Get Help From The Experts

You can have a lot of fun on Facebook, but you also want to know that you’re getting the most out of your efforts. If you’re advertising on Facebook, remember to stay on top of your metrics and in the loop with your audience.

If you’re not sure how to run a successful Facebook ads campaign or just want to put the responsibility in experienced hands, our social media experts at Dilate can help. We’ve helped many big and small businesses achieve their Facebook marketing goals and we’re keen to get results for you too.

To see how we can help you, book a business consultation with one of our local marketing superstars who can take you through the processes and help you to develop your own procedure and strategy.

Call the team on to get started.

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