Are your Facebook Ad Campaigns even working?

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.