Do you use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track your business’s digital advertising performance? KPIs are necessary to include in your Instagram and Facebook ad reporting to know where your campaign stacks up not only against your other ads, but the performance of competitors too.
Notes: Facebook has rebranded to "Meta" but we're going to stick to calling it Facebook for now because, well, we're old school. Also - Facebook and Instagram are both owned by Mark Zuckerberg under the Meta umbrella but since users on the platforms digest content differently, we still like to keep them separate in terms of strategy, content, and metrics.
Now back to the important things. Since you’re putting money into advertising on social media, it’s a good idea to track your KPIs for every campaign. After running thousands of Instagram and Facebook ads, we've found the below KPIs to be important when optimizing your campaigns for success.
Awareness
Awareness KPIs don’t deliver value on their own, but it’s important to track them because they give you an idea if Facebook/Instagram thinks your ad is valuable to the viewer and if it actually is.
Impressions
This is the total number of times your ads appeared on-screen. Impressions may include multiple views of your ads by the same people.
Reach
Reach is the estimated number of people who saw your ads at least once. This is different from impressions because it counts unique views, not total views.
Frequency
Frequency measures how many times each person, on average, viewed your ad. Multiple touchpoints increase the chances of conversion, so the higher the frequency, the higher the chance someone absorbed your message. Also keep an eye on this as too high of a frequency means you are hitting the same person, which will not lead to more conversions.
Engagement
Engagement generally tells you how compelling an ad is to your audience from a social media perspective. This KPI includes post reactions, post likes, post comments, post saves, post shares, and page likes.
Financials
Money talks, after all. You need to track your financial KPIs for calculating ROI, managing your marketing spend, and optimizing ad costs over time.
Cost per result
This is the average cost you spent per result on your ads. In some cases, this metric might be estimated and reported by a third-party API so keep that in mind.
CPC
Cost per click measures how much you spend each time someone clicks, taps or swipes on the ad's text, media or call-to-action (excluding clicks on content or links in the comments section of a post).
Amount spent
How much did you spend on this campaign, in total? This KPI is the estimated amount of money you’ve spent on a campaign, ad set, or ad during the duration of its schedule.
Results (the Good Stuff)
So, what did you get in exchange for your ad spend? These KPIs are the quantitative metrics business leaders are most interested in because they indicate whether the campaign was a success or not.
Clicks, Leads, and Conversions
What did you want people to do after viewing your Facebook or Instagram ad? Depending on your business, you might track KPIs like:
Clicks: This is the number of clicks on links within the ad that led to your specified destination (website, app, Marketplace, click-to-call, lead form, etc).
Leads: This KPI tracks how many times an embedded lead form was submitted by people interested in learning more about your business.
Conversions: This measures the amount of times people took a desired action after viewing the ad. For reference, Facebook’s average conversion rate is 9.21%.
CTR
Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of times people saw your ad and clicked on it. Facebook ads have an average CTR of 0.9%. A high CTR generally indicates that people are interested in learning more about your brand.
Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
ROAS is a KPI that measures the total return on ad spend. In other words, it takes the amount spent on ads and subtracts it from the sales generated from those ads. You always want to see a positive ROAS!
Instagram &Facebook Ad Reporting... the Bottom Line
There are a number of platforms available that will track your Facebook and Instagram ad KPIs like Facebook Audience Insights, Ads Manager and Google Analytics. Tracking these KPIs is one thing, but optimizing for them is another matter entirely.
If you’re trying to squeeze more out of your Instagram and Facebook ads, go with an experienced marketing consultant like Thrive Marketing Consultants. We have years of experience managing social media ads that turn heads for Fortune 500 companies as well as small businesses.
Contact us today to see how we can take your business to the next level with digital advertising!