How to Use Data & Advertising Metrics for Better Facebook Ad Tracking

August 22, 2019 by Christine

You sit down to put some Facebook ads together… You’ve done some target market research, and you’ve got it in front of you. You know you’ll adjust the ads once you start to see your advertising metrics, but once they start running, you realize it’s not that simple.

You start to wonder what you did wrong. Why isn’t the ad performing the way you had hoped? And why is it turning out to be so expensive?

The Importance of Up-Front Data

Here’s the thing…

Most people run their ads this way—they are guessing in the beginning and hoping they can readjust once their advertising metrics start coming in. But that’s not how marketing companies are doing it. Instead, they’re starting with actual data and running their ads off of that.

For example, at Viral Solutions, we start with the facts. We don’t guess at who we should be targeting. We don’t use general demographics to determine our target market. We use real data to tell us how to proceed.

When you are setting up Facebook ads, you’ll end up putting a lot of money toward ad spend if you don’t have the data to import into Facebook before you even run your ads. If you’re guessing at your targeting parameters or going by gut feel (or worse—letting your ego guide you), your ad is sure to be a bust.

This is true now more than ever since Facebook ads are becoming increasingly more competitive and complicated for those who aren't 100% sure what they're doing (and let’s face it—most business owners and marketers for small businesses get overwhelmed when it comes to Facebook ads).

Integrating Your Data with Facebook

Facebook’s algorithm uses the massive amount of data they have accumulated from their advertising platform to determine who is most likely to be interested in their advertisers’ offers and who is most likely to convert from ads based on ad set targeting.

By far, the best data to provide Facebook with so that they can make all of these determinations is your order data. With your order data, Facebook can match the best people to your offers because it can find the people who are most like your existing customers.

As an added bonus, when Facebook has that kind of data to work with, they give your offer priority placement for those people who are a match, so you can beat out your competition at a much lower cost. Bam! That’s how you do Facebook ads!

But how in the world do you give Facebook your order data?

Wicked Reports recently partnered with Facebook to put together a new technology called Facebook Offline Conversion Sync + Attribution, which pushes out your order data every day to Facebook in the way Facebook wants it so that only the best people for your offer are seeing your ads.

Now, Wicked Reports is one of our most trusted resources. They help us polish the diamonds and dump the rocks so we know where to focus our advertising dollars. With their help, we are able to create an advertising machine for each of our clients that pays off big time.

So, when they brought this new feature out, our ears perked up. If Wicked Reports is putting an importance on giving Facebook this kind of data, we know we’re on the right track, and we know that our inclination for data, data, data is correct.

This feature also offers a way to see real sales and revenue right within Facebook based on the last thing viewed in the platform. This tells you what your real customers are seeing on Facebook.

Plus, you can use Facebook’s data to increase your attribution. If a last click is not detected, it asks Facebook what the last view was to complement the attribution models. This gives you better campaign ROI because it tells you for sure if your ad is impacting people even if they don’t click on it. FB ad tracking is no longer a guessing game.

To enable this Facebook Offline Conversion Sync + Attribution feature, follow the steps in this article.

But What About Advertising Metrics?

Once your ad is running, your advertising metrics are what will prove the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of your campaign. They will tell you what is working and what isn’t so that you can further adjust and improve your results even more.

Advertising metrics are the essential data you’ll compile throughout the life of your ads so that you can track, measure, and improve your results. You’ll use them to prove your ads are (or aren’t) generating the ROI you want.

How to Find the Advertising Metrics That Really Matter

When it comes to Facebook ads, the most important advertising metrics are unfortunately tucked away while the ones that make you think your ads are working great (Reach, Clicks, Relevance Score, and Video Views) are at the forefront.

You’ve got to ignore all of those fluffy metrics and dig deeper to get to those that actually matter. For FB ad tracking, the advertising metrics you should be looking at are as follows:

• Impressions – This metric shows you how many times your ad was shown, whereas Reach shows you how many people saw your ad.
• CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions) – This tells you how much it is costing you on average to show your ad 1,000 times. This number will fluctuate depending on demand, and you want to find the audience that gives you the cheapest CPM.
• Frequency – This advertising metric is calculated by dividing Impressions by Reach. It reveals the average number of times each person has seen your ad and it can help you to know if you are oversaturating your audience with your ads.
• Amount Spent – Simply put, this tells you how much you’ve spent overall on your ads.
• CTR (Click Through Rate) – This number is calculated by dividing Link Clicks by Impressions and it reveals the percentage of people who saw your ad and then clicked it.
• Link Clicks – This is similar to CTR, but instead of giving you a percentage, it will show you the number of people who clicked your ad. You can use this to find the Conversion Rate of your opt-in page when you divide it by Leads.
• Leads or Registrations – Here, you’ll see how many people opted into your offer after clicking your Facebook ad. You’ll either look at “Leads” or “Registrations” depending on how you set up your category in your conversion tracking pixel.
• Cost Per Lead – Calculated by dividing the Amount Spent by Leads, this advertising metric tells you how much each opt-in cost you.

If you are running Facebook ad campaigns with the intention of making sales, you’ll also want to watch these advertising metrics:

• CPC (Link) – This tells you the cost of each click on average from your ad to your website.
• Checkouts – This metric reveals how many people converted to customers as a result of your ad. You’ll need to have conversion tracking set up on your thank-you page for this to work.
• Cost Per Checkout – This metric comes from dividing the Amount Spent by the number of Checkouts and it allows you to see how much it costs you in ad spend to make a sale.

Let’s Sum It Up

While advertising metrics are essential to any successful advertising campaign, it’s important to look at the right metrics. But before you even get to that part, you need to first feed Facebook the data that will start the campaign off with a bang. With the help of technology such as Wicked Reports, you can dial in on your marketing efforts and get the most accurate FB ad tracking possible. 

Have more questions about Facebook ads? Jump on a chat with us. We're happy to clear up the confusion! Just click the orange chat button in the bottom-right portion of your screen.

Filed Under: Analytics Tagged With: conversion tracking, facebook advertising, marketing data, marketing metrics, Wicked Reports