One of the most powerful ways to market your business is through Facebook Ads. But measuring advertising effectiveness is an often overlooked step that’s absolutely critical to finding success!
If you’re using Facebook Ads to connect with, nurture, and engage your audience, you definitely need to measure the effectiveness of those ads. When you measure and analyze your advertising effectiveness, you’re able to strategically create effective ad campaigns, saving you money, time, and energy.
But if you’re feeling overwhelmed at the thought of measuring your advertising effectiveness, you’re not alone! Many entrepreneurs and business owners struggle with metrics, and that’s okay. You don’t have to handle it alone—and with a few key insights and strategies, you’ll be able to track what’s important with ease.
4 Steps To Measure Advertising Effectiveness on Facebook and Instagram
Whether you’re just getting started with tracking your metrics or you’re looking to improve your metrics-tracking skills, these four steps are the perfect place to start. Luckily, you’ll be able to track both Instagram and Facebook Ad results inside of Facebook Ads Manager. That’s right—you don’t even have to do the work twice in two separate places!
If you’re ready to truly measure advertising effectiveness for Facebook and Instagram ads, here’s what you need to do.
1. Start Every Ad Campaign With Your Goals In Mind
Before you create a single ad for Facebook or Instagram, you need to clarify your goals!
There are lots of reasons that businesses create Facebook Ads, like:
- Driving sales
- Boosting website traffic
- Increasing engagement on social media
- Encouraging email list signups
Regardless of your specific goals, the ads you create should be tailored to those goals. And even more importantly, the metrics you choose to measure advertising effectiveness should be aligned with your goals!
Think about what you’re hoping to achieve with each Facebook and Instagram ad you create. What actions do you want your audience to take?
Aside from helping you create more tailored, effective, and compelling ads, you’ll be able to choose metrics that actually measure advertising effectiveness.
2. Select The Right Metrics Based On Your Goals
Once you clearly define your goals, it’s time to actually choose appropriate metrics.
There are lots of different metrics that can help you measure your advertising effectiveness, but choosing the right metrics matters! Make sure you think about what would actually indicate that you’re making progress on your goals.
Related: Why Measuring Marketing Effectiveness is Important (& How To Get Started)
3. Track Your Metrics
Now that you’ve clarified your goals and selected aligned metrics, you need to monitor your metrics and create some kind of report for yourself. Right inside Facebook Ads Manager, you’ll be able to monitor certain metrics for your Instagram and Facebook Ads.
But Google Analytics is another super helpful tool to help you gain insights into your advertising effectiveness!
You’ll be able to easily compare your Facebook ad results in a single report to know which campaign, ad set, or ad is generating the highest traffic and sales conversions. Honestly, this tool is a game-changer for any business owner hoping to understand advertising effectiveness!
4. Make Adjustments As Needed
You should also make sure that you adjust things over time. Both your ad strategy and the metrics you’re monitoring can (and should) change as you grow.
Whenever you create a new business goal, accomplish something, or start to pursue new avenues of growth, be sure to make adjustments as needed. Marketing is fluid, and a huge part of tracking your advertising effectiveness is so that you can adjust accordingly and replicate success.
What Metrics Measure Advertising Effectiveness?
Now that you know how to measure marketing effectiveness, let’s dive in and explore the metrics that help indicate your success (or lack thereof) when it comes to Facebook and Instagram Ads.
Conversion Rates
Your conversion rate is obviously one of the best ways to measure your advertising effectiveness. When someone converts (by taking the action you were hoping they’d take), your ad clearly succeeded in its goal.
But conversion rates can apply to more than just sales! And more importantly, they can actually highlight problems and fixable areas beyond your ad itself.
Let’s look at an example. For lead generation goals, your conversion rate applies to things like email signups, lead magnet downloads, or discovery call sign-ups. Let’s say your conversion rate is actually pretty low, but your clickthrough rate is really high. You’d know immediately that there’s some issue preventing conversions once people get to your website, somewhere on your landing page.
Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
ROAS (return on ad spend) is important for a few reasons. Obviously, you’re hoping to drive traffic from your ads to your website. But your goal should be to drive high-quality, targeted traffic, not just huge numbers of traffic!
Traffic itself isn’t actually that helpful if those leads aren’t highly interested in what you offer. When you’re using paid ads, return on ad spend is important for understanding advertising effectiveness.
If you have Facebook Pixel set up for your business, this will automatically show up! Otherwise, you’ll need to use other metrics to calculate ROI yourself.
Click-Through-Rate (CTR) and Cost Per Click (CPC)
The cost-per-click tells you how much it costs (on average) to generate a click from your ad to your website. But your clickthrough rate is the percentage of people who clicked over to your website from an ad.
If your CPC is high, it’s time to check your CTR. If these numbers aren’t aligned, there’s some sort of issue with your actual ad.
Measuring advertising effectiveness means selecting a comprehensive range of metrics that are aligned with your goals. This will give you the best picture of how your ads are doing, where you can improve, and how to replicate your most successful ads.