In part one of this series, Facebook for Business, we got you well on your way to setting up a successful Facebook Page for your Business. In part two, we discussed the difference between Facebook’s organic, boosted and paid advertising and how to set up campaigns for each. In this final installment of Facebook for Business, we’re going to talk about how to analyze and get the most out of your data after your paid campaigns have run their entire campaign flight with free Facebook Insights. You won’t want to miss these few final things we think you should be familiar with before we set you loose into the world of social media for your business.
Measuring the Success of Your Ads
Facebook provides analytic tools to measure different business outcomes like audience, brand and sales; however, it’s important to be able to understand the basics behind the analytics before you begin diving into the data. Let’s start with understanding analytics that can help you understand your audience, determine the success of a campaign and are good metrics to understand in general.To measure the success of a campaign and better understand your audience, you must first evaluate reach, frequency and cross-device performance so you can optimize your audience and how you connect with them. That sounds very fancy and could be confusing, but it’s actually pretty simple once you understand what reach, frequency, and cross-device performance are — and which ones should matter to you most.
Let’s start with reach. A lot of people confuse reach with impressions, which are the number of times a post from your page is displayed to a user. Impressions count multiple views of the same post. So if the same user sees your ad three times, it would count as three impressions. Reach does not count multiple impressions. For example, if you post an offer and one of your fans shares that offer, the user sees the offer twice, but reach would only represent one. Determining the organic, paid and total reach of your post can tell you different things, suchas, how many unique users saw your post. This is a much clearer number than the one you would get if you were to only calculate impressions. That leads us to frequency. It’s easier to understand frequency if you understand the difference between reach and impressions. Frequency is the average amount of times each user saw your post. To calculate frequency, Facebook divides impressions by reach.
That’s all well and good but let’s get down to what all this means for you and your ad campaigns. According to a study conducted by SJ Insights, a market intelligence and research company, the average person is exposed to 362 ads per day. However, people usually ignore all but 86 of them, and they are usually only able to recall 12 ads that made an impression on them. To cope with the bombardment of advertising, the brain does a tricky little thing that hinders advertisers. The brain begins to “tune out” ads that it’s seen before, thus making your audience less-engaged and less likely to click your ad. While it’s still true that consumers must see an ad a few times before the message becomes solidified in their mind, you don’t want your frequency rate to become so high that you annoy them and they tune you out. Ad life, it’s a delicate balance.
Next, let’s understand cross-device performance. This is something Facebook added in the last few years as a way for advertisers to see how people are moving between devices, across the web, apps, etc. before you convert them. Being able to understand this kind of user behavior is important, because it allows you to become more aware of how your fans want to interact with you. It allows you to adjust your strategy on the insights you receive.
For example, let’s consider that I see an ad for “$10 off oil change” while browsing through my Facebook feed on my phone while waiting in line for a coffee. Because I know I will need an oil change soon, I mentally take note of the name of your shop. A few days later, my oil change light comes on and I remember seeing your offer. I Google the name of your shop from my computer and click your downloadable coupon to print. That cross-conversion would be measured by Facebook. Understanding this number will help you really put a value on the success of your Facebook campaigns in a way that is directly related to trips and sales.
A few key items worth noting and looking at when it comes to optimizing your future ad campaigns are cost-per-click (CPC), click through rate (CTR) and conversions.
Facebook provides you with a multitude of ways to measure tons of other measurable insights such as Likes engagement and demographics. It is truly up to you how little or how deep you want to dive into understanding your audience, success and campaign outcomes when it comes to ad sets. But just as you wouldn’t encourage your customer to drive in a rainstorm without windshield wipers, we don’t encourage you to blindly run ad campaigns on Facebook without evaluating the performance of your old campaigns first.
Now that we’ve walked through how to set up your Facebook for Business page correctly, gone step-by-step through paid, organic and boosted advertising, learned how to set up paid media campaigns and what analytics are important for you to pay attention to, the only thing left for you to do is get online and start experimenting. This stuff will become second nature to you the more you do it. While many like to classify it a “young man’s job,” we’re certain anyone can figure it out and successfully take advantage of everything social media marketing has to offer the fast lube industry.
Glossary of Facebook-Related Terms
- Admin: A role available for people who manage your Facebook page; can do things like make other people admins, manage settings, etc.
- Boosted Posts: Kind of like the power-up icons in Mario Kart; you put money behind Facebook posts that are doing well to push them out to more of your followers.
- Click Through Rate (CTR): The ratio of users (or percentage) who click on your ad to the number of total users who viewed your ad.
- Conversions: Actions the customer can take such as downloading your coupon offer.
- Cost-Per-Click (CPC): The actual price you pay for each click.
- Cross-device Performance: A way for advertisers to see how people are moving between devices, across the web, apps, etc. before you convert them.
- Facebook Insights: A tool available through Facebook that lets users track interaction on their Facebook Business page. It can be seen by all the admins of your page, and it can help you track the number of active users to better understand page performance.
- Frequency: The average amount of times each user saw your post. Is calculated by dividing impressions by reach.
- Impressions: The number of times a post from your page is displayed to a user. Impressions count multiple views of the same post.
- Organic Reach: The total number of unique followers who see your unpaid Facebook posts.
- Reach: The number of unique people who saw your content.
