Facebook ads are still one of the most profitable avenues for any business that wants to advertise today. The highly advanced targeting options, the low cost per click (compared to LinkedIn and Google Ads), the enormous opportunities to get creative. These are some of the many reasons to be using this platform today.
To know if you’re doing a good job or not, you need to track and measure your success. We’ll show you the most important Facebook ad metrics you need to stay on top of in your paid ad campaigns.
Cost per result
This is a great metric for any marketer because it lets you define what a result is in your sales funnel. This could be a conversion, a booked demo, a signup for a newsletter, or something else. However, a result is usually tied to some type of conversion.
Your cost per result is a number that shows how much you’re spending to get a specific result. This does not have to be a single conversion. Instead, a result can be an overarching result of a campaign, such as driving 100 new demos from a Facebook ad.
Click through rate
This is the number that shows how many clicks you were able to get on your Facebook ads compared to the total number of impressions. Needless to say, the higher your click-through rate (CTR) is, the better.
A low click-through rate could mean many things, but usually, it’s the ad or the targeting that are not suitable for your target audience. Following the CTR diligently is a great idea because if all your ads are getting is impressions, it might drain your ad budget very quickly without significant results.
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Cost per conversion
The lovely thing about this metric is that anything can be a conversion. For eCommerce brands, this could mean a purchase, for SaaS brands, it could be a free trial signup. It can be a new email on your newsletter, which you can later target with a cold email, a booked demo, or something else.
You’re going to pay for each of those conversions from Facebook and this is the main metric that will show you how much that action costs per user. If your cost per conversion is higher than the lifetime value of that customer, it’s a clear sign that something is off and that you should drive your costs down - or maybe that Facebook isn’t the best platform to drive conversions.
Ad relevance score
How do you know if an ad is working out for your audience? Well, you can see pretty easily through some of the metrics mentioned here if things are working or not. However, Facebook will also give you a score to tell you how relevant the ad is for your target audience.
The ad relevance score can be broken down into three categories:
- Quality ranking - what quality the ad is compared to other ads for the same or similar target audience
- Engagement rate ranking - how well the ad is performing stacked against other ads being served to the same target audience
- Conversion rate ranking - the conversion rate that Facebook thinks you’ll be able to achieve with the ad set up as is
Over time, you’ll get experience and you’ll instinctively know what type of copy converts better, for example. However, if you’re just getting started and you need some feedback without splurging your ad budget, the ad relevance score is a great starting point.
Ad impressions
If you’re building brand awareness, you want to be measuring ad impressions rather than any of the other metrics mentioned here. Simply put, ad impressions count the number of times that your ad was shown in someone’s news feed, regardless of which platform they’re on.
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If you want to build brand recall and get noticed, this is the right metric to stay on top of. If you’re not getting the ad impressions you want, not all is lost. This is the time to start tinkering with the graphics, the copy, and most of all, the targeting. Just because this metric does not track conversions, it does not mean that it’s not important - quite the contrary.
Return on ad spend (ROAS)
If you’re reporting to a manager or a client, you’ll see that they rarely want to see all the Facebook ad metrics. When reporting to decision-makers, you need to be mindful of their knowledge of marketing as well as the time they have to review your report.
ROAS is the total amount of money earned from your campaigns on Facebook. Or simply put, how much money you were able to generate from the ads that you ran for the company. In your social media marketing report, this should be one of the first metrics you list for your client or manager to see.
Ad clicks
While it is not immediately tied to conversions, this metric is a pretty important one. An ad click is each click that your ad gets, be it a like or a share, or a click-through. Essentially, any type of interaction that goes beyond just viewing the ad.
It is not the most important Facebook ad metric by far, but it is a relevant one to measure and keep track of. If you’re getting clicks but no conversions, it’s a clear sign that you need to change the CTA, graphics or copy to make them more compelling.
Discover how to beat ad fatigue and increase ad clicks.
Wrapping up
Even though many different social media networks have emerged since Facebook’s creation, this mogul is not slowing down. It’s still one of the most cost-efficient and effective ways to drive new revenue for a business (or increase brand awareness), even in 2023.
However, you may need some additional help producing engaging creatives for campaigns. This is where Hunch comes in, allowing you to create dynamic image and video creatives that will help you you scale your Facebook ads. Book your free demo today!
Bio:
Witten by Mile Zivkovic, Head of Content at Whatagraph, a leading marketing reporting tool for agencies and marketing teams.
