Facebook ad campaigns can be unpredictable. Sometimes you work rigorously and still are unable to achieve any significant results. Some of the campaigns turn out to be so ineffective that you don't see any noticeable leads, impressions, or sales regardless of your hard work and the tactics and strategies you employ.
So, what to do when you see that your campaign isn't moving in the right direction? In this situation, reporting and tracking become crucial. It allows you to adapt and learn from your campaign and make necessary changes to achieve desired results.
In this article, you’re going to learn:
- Track data on your current and previous Facebook campaigns
- A deep analysis into the most relevant metrics by using campaign breakdowns
- Generate automated reports for your campaigns
- Overview of campaign objective and advertising objectives
- Add the metrics to a report
- Examine data at the ad set and campaign level
- Collate Ad Set results at Ads level
- Analyze frequency data
- Analyze frequency and data at the Ad level
So, let's dive in.
The sales funnel is relevant even in Facebook ads. Ad objectives and content are chosen according to the target user's stage in the sales funnel. The goal is to create the desired impact on users. It can be raising awareness, generating sales, or raising consideration.
Let's discuss an ad campaign to understand its objectives. Open your Facebook Ads Manager account and analytics dashboard and click the buttons in the following order.
When you click on the Create button, a separate window will open where you can choose your campaign objective.
The metrics will change according to the campaign objectives. So, the metrics for a sales campaign will be different from brand awareness. The emphasis should be on the metrics that can denote ROI on the ad. The metrics will also change according to the targeted stage in the sales funnel.
The first stage is the sales funnel, also known as the upper funnel, and it denotes the stage where a business tries to attract the audience. The second stage is the middle funnel, also referred to as the consideration stage, and this is where your target audience converts into qualified leads. The lower funnel metrics measure conversions and sales because a prospect becomes a paying client.
Hence the best metrics for the upper funnel can be click-through rate or impressions. The most relevant metric for the lower stages can be the cost per lead, which denotes the ROI on the campaign. The less cost per lead you achieve, the more cost-effective your ad campaign would be.
The selection of Facebook ad metrics to track the campaign performance mainly depends on the purpose and logic behind the metric.
We will try to explain it here. But, before we do it, we will explain how the Facebook Ads dashboard works.
How Does Facebook Ads Dashboard Work?
Facebook Ads Analytics Dashboard allows you to track your paid campaigns. It also helps you analyze what works and whatnot. So, it serves as the best tool that provides you deep insights into how to optimize your future ads and increase their ROI.
How to Create an Ad with Facebook Ads integration?
Facebook Ads integration allows you to amplify your marketing campaigns by tapping into social media audiences. With Facebook Ads integration, you can create ads for Facebook and set a budget for them. Facebook allows laser-sharp targeting through its various targeting options.
Make sure you follow Facebook ad requirements, or else Facebook can reject your ads.
How to Integrate Facebook Ads?
- Look for Menu > Integrations.
- Look for Facebook Ads integration and Click Details over it.
- Click Connect.
- And the integration will start.
- Enter your login details and start the integration process.
How to Create a Facebook Ad?
To create a Facebook ad, take the following steps.
- Look for Menu > Facebook Ads.
- Click on Create ad.
- Name the ad campaign.
How to Create an Ad in the Conversion Funnel?
Follow these steps to create an ad directly in the Conversion funnel:
- Look for Menu > Conversion funnel
- Choose your Conversion funnel
- Click on Create an ad.
- Name the ad campaign.
How to Add the Metrics to a Campaign Report?
To create your view of the Ads metrics, use the customize columns function.
Can you see the bulleted list of metrics in the picture above? These are the metrics you can choose for your custom view in the Facebook Ads Manager.
On the same screen, if you look at the list on the right side, you'll find a list of Facebook campaign ad metrics that you already use.
The items in this list can be dragged, removed, or arranged in the order you want.
If a suitable metric isn't available in the given list, create a new one by clicking on Create Custom Metric.
Now, we will explain how we add metrics.
For precise tracking, the following four metrics are pretty significant:
- CTR (Link Click-Through Rate): This Facebook ad campaign metric is relevant for precisely tracking link clicks and not all the irrelevant clicks while monitoring the campaign performance.
- CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions): The metric indicates the effectiveness of an ad.
- CPC (Cost per Link Click): It gives us an idea about the ROI.
- Frequency: The number of times a user views a particular ad.
You can search each of these metrics through the search field and check them as they appear in the search results. This way, you can set up your custom view to analyze Facebook Ads data.
Facebook Ads Integration with a White-Label-Platform
You can use DashClicks' Analytics app to manage your ad campaigns and collect leads on a single dashboard through Facebook Ads integration. It makes ads management easy.
Use DashClicks Agency opportunity and offer Google and Facebook ads services, among others. It has the following three features.
A. Facebook Ads Campaign Interface
Dashclicks displays granular level reporting for campaigns and ad sets to help you thoroughly analyze and review your ad strategy. It's challenging to analyze multiple pieces of disorganized data unless it's presented as meaningful reports that help identify which ads are performing better than others. With the help of DashClicks' InstaReports, you can also specify the best performing ad sets and the ad strategies yielding the best results.
B. KPI Reporting and Monitoring
Managers don't need loads of data. They need the KPIs that matter the most. After your Facebook Ads integration with the DashClicks' white-label platform, you get the desired KPIs with a single click. These metrics will help you dive into the nitty-gritty of ad analysis within seconds. Say goodbye to the old-fashioned tedious manual reporting and analysis. You'll find everything in one hub.
C. Facebook and Instagram Integration
With DashClicks' beautiful interface, you don't need to pull and export multiple reports to analyze your ads' performance. Pull and report on Facebook and Instagram metrics simultaneously, all at one glance.
Agency owners use InstaReports to generate multi-channel business reports on the fly for their prospecting campaigns.
Analysis of the Results At the Campaign Level
It is the most popular method to check a campaign's performance. The relevant metrics are impressions, reach, results, and Cost per Result. If you want more adjustments, analyze data at the ad level.
First, determine how much you can afford to invest in your ad campaign. You can decide this amount based on the niche you are operating in and your business requirements.
Paying a high Cost Per Click or Result isn't logical when promoting a free webinar or boosting branding. It won't pay off. On the flip side, if you are selling a premium product such as VIP coaching or a high-end course, paying a high Cost Per Result may be justified.
Similarly, we can also track data at the ad set level.
Analysis of the Results At the Ad-Set Level
Let's begin by pressing the Ad Sets tab.
Even if some ads perform better than others, it won't signal a campaign success. Good results of an ad set don't mean that the campaign is achieving its desired objectives. If you dive deeper, you'll find that Impressions and the Cost Per Result are useful metrics here.
You need to keep a tab on your overall ad spend and keep low-paid ad sets running. You should control your spending by paying a higher amount per Result to allow this to happen. It becomes even more critical if the ad-set yields more results.
If you want to make a cost projection and are clueless about it, use Ad Set Budget Optimization. Doing a campaign budget optimization wouldn't be helpful here.
To do that, go through the following steps.
Find the Campaigns tab>>Press the Edit button>>Uncheck the Campaign Budget Optimization box.
If you don't check the campaign budget optimization, you let Facebook decide which ad-set to focus on and spend more funds on. However, if you uncheck it, you get complete control over which ad to focus on and divert your funds.
You can also check the Ad Set Optimization option. Another option is to create different Ad sets with similar ads running. So, the change in results would not be because of the ad variation but due to the audience.
Pro Tip: To see normalized Cost Per Result, you may require at least 50 events, such as conversions and purchases. So, you can delay your budget decision till you complete this many events. If the number of events is less than 50, your budget estimation may be slightly skewed.
How to Compare Ad Set Results at the Ad Level?
Regardless of the number of ad sets running, Facebook will pick only one to utilize the budget and get more reach, even if it's a bit expensive.
Sometimes Facebook chooses a particular adset simply because it has more ads. More variables and formats mean more data to analyze and, therefore, more leads. It also allows Facebook to serve people's needs with greater flexibility.
Besides the number of ads, another crucial consideration is frequency while analyzing Ad Set level data.
What is the "Frequency Metric" in FB Ads?
Frequency is an exciting factor while running ads. You might have seen irritating ads appearing over and over again while using Facebook. It often leads to user frustration and ad fatigue. Apart from that, this will increase your Cost per Result, squeezing your budget faster.
To prevent this from happening, reschedule your ads as soon as the frequency value crosses two. It's possible to analyze frequency at the Ad set and Ad level.
Frequency again becomes a crucial metric when running retargeting campaigns. You don't have a vast audience compared to the primary ads while running "retargeting" ads. When running several ads, your frequency may go down, but it will increase if you have a high budget. Increased funding becomes a prerequisite since you target a smaller audience during a retargeting ad. You can use Ad Set Budget Optimization to resolve this issue.
How to Analyze Data at the Ad Level?
If you are looking for the ads data, go to the Ads tab. You can easily find the specific ad sets with the most impressions and reach.
Many factors can cause the difference in the engagement levels for different ads, such as background, colors, message, etc. You can remove the ads with poor results and divert your resources to the best-performing ads.
Now imagine another scenario. Spot the ad with higher reach and lower Cost per Result. You must be wondering what caused such gaps in ad performance even though the target audience is the same. Let's analyze this.
Visibility and size of the various elements on the ad, such as logo, etc., can also be responsible for this variation. For example, smaller icons have more visibility for users familiar with your brand. A large logo can be distracting and difficult to identify and differentiate. If you dig into why some ads aren't performing that well, you can vastly improve your future ads. Once you form an opinion, test it by adding new test ads.
Now, test an ad within an ad set to see why it's performing better than others.
You will achieve a higher click-through rate if the featured images in the ad are known faces for your target audience. A straightforward ad strategy analyzes different ads and adds the features of the best performing ads in your next ad. Combine the best ad features identified after a deep analysis. Still, the best performing ad would be the one with reduced Cost per Result.
How to Analyze the Frequency at the Ad Level?
Now, you'll learn to monitor the frequency metric at the ad level. You can't dramatically increase the frequency value by just multiplying the number of ads running. So, when frequency increases, the Cost per Result should go down. It would be a folly to pause an ad even if it's generating leads and attracting eyeballs. It's time to halt an ad set at a high frequency when the cost per click increases.
However, you can still tweak that ad for better performance, and in most cases, this strategy will work. There is no need to pause an ad that's performing even if it's less than other ads.
To tweak an ad, you can analyze it as explained above. Take care of the user perspective while making any changes to an ad.
Conclusion
We have summed up some practical strategies and tactics you should know as a marketer. You can create a few templates for a fair analysis of the ads if you're still a beginner. But, once you understand how Facebook's ad platform works, you can create your custom views and custom metrics for better analysis. You can download various pre-made templates from the Internet. If you can collect more data about your customers, you can create custom ads based on those insights into user preferences. The objective should be to minimize the Cost per Result.
Facebook also offers a fantastic feature known as Facebook audience interest suggestions. You can use this feature to create laser-sharp targeted ads.
If you want to boost the performance and ROI of your Facebook ad campaigns, you should consider hiring our white label Facebook ads services.
Share the metrics you would use in your custom view. Is there any metric that works better than the ones we have mentioned above? What else would you do to analyze Facebook ads data? Let's know in the comments.