Facebook advertising is incredibly lucrative, as you can target your message to a very specific audience. It has become known as one of the best online advertising options, competing with Google’s AdWords for the top spot. Key metrics to keep in mind when you run a Facebook ad are your click-through rate and conversion rate.
The click-through rate is calculated by the number of people who click your ad, divided by the number of people who saw it in their Newsfeed. To find the click-through rate, view the Ads Manager in your Facebook profile. Click on an ad’s name in your Ads Manager. You will see many metrics. Here are what they mean:
Result: This was what you measured at the beginning of your campaign. This was the goal. Did you want people to click on your ad, or did you want people to click on your ad and enter their name and/or email when they arrived on the next page? You can choose between “Clicks”, “Conversions” and other goals.
Cost: This shows how much money it took to get one “Result”. For example, you wanted clicks for your ad. If the “Cost” column says $0.12, it costed you 12 cents to get one click.
Reach: Often termed impressions by other online advertising platforms, this is the number of people who saw your ad.
Frequency: The number of times your targeted audience saw your ad, on average. So, how do you know how many times your ad appeared in your intended audience’s Newsfeed? The frequency column tells you.
Clicks: How many times your ad was clicked over the life of your ad campaign. This could include Likes, Shares, if someone clicked “See More”, or if someone actually clicked ad and went to the website. These are not all website clicks. I will show you how to see those momentarily.
The Click Through Rate then appears. To reiterate, the click-through rate is calculated by the number of people who clicked your ad, divided by the number of people who saw it in their Newsfeed.
If you click on your ad in Ads Manager for more information, you can see the true number of website clicks. The column on the right hand side of the page will say the number of website clicks, how many people entered their name and email (otherwise known as a registration, this is recorded by the conversion tracking pixel Facebook has you put on your website).
The conversion rate is very important to a Facebook ad, if that is what you are tracking. The number of sign-ups (registrations, or opt-ins, how many people gave you their name and/or email on their landing page) is divided by the number of people who clicked the ad and went to your website.
Setting goals is important when creating a Facebook ad. Good numbers to strive for in the following categories are:
Click Through Rate: No lower than 2%, a realistic and attainable goal is 4-6% over 5 to 7 days.
By the way, as an ad runs longer, it’s click-through rate falls. This is why you need to change and tweak the ad occasionally, especially if it does not have at least a 2% click-through rate in the first 5-7 days.
Conversion Rate: No lower than 20%. The goal should be 40-60%.
You can calculate this rate by dividing the number of website clicks (not “Clicks”, actual website clicks as seen in the drop down menu of your Facebook ad in Ads Manager), by the number of people who registered for your page, if you are using a conversion tracking pixel. You would only use a conversion tracking pixel if your “Result” was “Conversions”.
Interestingly, if your “Result” (the goal for your ad) was clicks (which cost less than conversions), you could calculate conversions an alternate, and potentially cheaper, way.
Let’s say your ad received 30 true website clicks.
- Make a new list in your email service provider (email service providers include MailChimp, Constant Contact, iContact and others) for the landing page that your ad brings people to when they click on the ad.
- Look at the number of people on that landing page’s list.
- Use this equation: (The number of People on Your List) Divided by (The number of true website clicks you received).
This is your conversion rate. You could use Facebook’s tracking pixel to track it, but this may increase the cost per conversion.
Have you ever ran an ad on Facebook, and if so, how did you do? Were your conversion and click rates better?