Requirements: An understanding of Facebook Business Manager and Facebook Ads Manager
With reports of Facebook earning ad revenue of $16.6 billion USD in the second quarter of 2019 we know that Facebook is full of advertisers. I know it because I spend a whole lot of time on Facebook viewing a whole lot of ads (many of them are completely irrelevant to my interests or demographic).
Given so much is spent on Facebook Ads, more and more Facebook Ad “Gurus” are coming out of the woodwork daily with training, workshops and programs to teach everyone how to become super Facebook Advertisers. Many of these gurus don’t have all the answers and are trying to sell you on a system that works in the United States (with a population of 300 million). The techniques do NOT work in Australia because we have a much smaller population and different demographics. To gain results on Facebook in Australia you need to understand the platform very very well.
We hear about new Facebook advertising methods promising to deliver high ROAS (return on ad spend), AI-driven software promising to find the perfect audience for your product or service, and funnels that guarantee greater sales for $1 a day! (ever heard the saying if it looks too good to be true…..)
Whilst many of the programs, Facebook groups and training methods are absolutely legitimate, many fail to do the one thing that will guarantee continued Facebook Ad success – take you through Facebook Analytics.
Why Data Matters Most
You cannot refine any marketing campaign unless you understand the results. Advertisers must understand the performance to be able to apply improvements.
Coming from a background of Psychology and Accounting, my passion lay in analytics. The two platforms I spend most of my working day are Google Analytics and Facebook Analytics.
I work with both clients and other agencies to set up, monitor, manage and report on multi-channel analytics. Data is not everyone’s cup of tea (or coffee in my case), but it is definitely mine. The more I have to analyse the happier I am.
From analytics come the answers we need to be able to improve our websites, content, campaigns and earnings.
Analysing Facebook Ads Results For Better ROI
It’s all well and good learning how to set up a Facebook Ad Funnel, but the key is to dive deeper into the results to know exactly what has worked and to maximise on these findings to improve results.
So, with that, let’s take a dive into Facebook Analytics and the strategies I use to improve our client’s Facebook Ad campaigns.
FACEBOOK AD ANALYTICS
Analysing Facebook Ad Data must correlate directly to the stages in your ad funnel. Why? Because the audience and goals differ (even slightly) at each stage of the funnel. We need to improve each stage of the funnel, therefore, we need to analyse each step of the funnel.
Let the fun begin ??
Log in to Facebook Business Manager and navigate to Ads Reporting.
Once inside Ads Reporting you are presented with the option of creating a report from a template or creating your own report.
Given there are a bunch of templates to select from, this is where we will work from (why reinvent the wheel? )
The basic key metrics we want to measure for the TOF Ads (and I stress basic as I personally go into greater detail, but this will give you a head start) are as follows:
- Which audience responded best?
- Which locations performed the best?
- Which ad performed best?
- Which placement & device performed best?
1. Which audience responded the best?
I’m assuming you have used a saved, custom or lookalike audience for your ad. If not, that’s okay, stick with it and read on.
The one thing to know here is that there is no report in Facebook that shows you how each of your audiences performed.
My workaround is that I name each campaign based on the audience I am targeting. I also define each campaign by whether it is TOF (Top of Funnel), MOF (Middle) or BOF (Bottom).
Examples:
- Male Avatar – Brand Awareness – TOF
- Tennis Players – Brand Awareness – TOF
- East Coast Golfers – Brand Awareness – TOF
Naming my campaigns this way enables me to easily identify which audience performed the best in my TOF, MOF & BOF campaigns.
For the purpose of this exercise, I’m going to look at reporting on TOF and MOF.
Creating the Report
Select the Facebook ‘Campaign’ Report Templates and click on Create.
The screenshot below shows my TOF campaign audience performances for the past 28 days.
I’m a tester, so the goal for each of these audiences is slightly different, and TOF can be very much a test and learn journey. However, what I see from my TOF Campaign & Audience Report is that my Male Avatar & Lookalike audiences were my top performers.
In case you are wondering what an Avatar is, head to this article on Facebook Funnels for more info.
So, in answer to my question “which audience responded best in my TOF campaign” it’s the Male Avatar.
Below, I have done the same thing for my MOF campaigns.
Based on the knowledge I have of my goals and knowing the e-commerce results achieved (and using the report above), the answer to my question “which audience performed the best at MOF” it’s Web Retargeting – MOF (as an aside this campaign has an ROI of 722%).
2. Which locations performed the best?
The account I am using for the purposes of this article is based in the United States and is an e-commerce retailer in the beauty industry.
Being a niche product I need to ascertain exactly which locations are performing the best so that I can target the better performing locations.
Creating the report
This time we are going to select the ‘Region’ Facebook Reports Template.
This report is going to tell you exactly which regions performed the best so you can define which regions you should and should not target.
The great thing about each of these reports is that you also have the ability to drill further into the report by selecting additional metrics.
In the example below, I have added ‘Campaigns’ to the report so that I can analyse which locations performed best for my TOF campaigns.
3. Which ad performed the best
I want to see which ads are performing the best at each stage of the funnel.
I generally create 4 – 6 ad sets per campaign, so the purpose of this data is to determine which ads have been most effective.
Creating the report
For this report, select the Facebook ‘Ad’ Report Template.
The screenshot below has been filtered to only display MOF ads. I can see that the most successful ads were the top two (FYI these are both dynamic catalogue retargeting ads).
5.Which placement & device performed the best?
Unfortunately, unlike Google Ads, we are unable to bid on a device, but we can target specific devices or run smaller budgets and different campaigns across different devices.
For this particular client, I know, from data in Google Analytics and also Facebook Attribution Data, that 20% of traffic for this client’s website, begin their journey on a mobile device but convert on a desktop. This in itself helps with the campaign planning.
Creating the report
For this report, we will select the Facebook ‘Placement & Device’ Report Template.
The screenshot below is from one client’s ad account, however I can assure you this could almost be for every account.
I have filtered for MOF ads.
Nb. We have more success from News Feed placement than anywhere else. Other advertisers may debate this but in 10 years of Facebook Advertising, this is always consistent.
What this report tells me is that in 28 days, the Facebook News Feed using the Facebook Mobile App on Mobile Devices delivered 1269 Add to Carts. Whoa! Pretty good I think (and tells me a lot about how this audience is interacting with the ads).
What have we learned from this data?
Just from running these 4 reports we have learned the following:
✔️ ‘Male Avatar’ is our best performing TOF audience
✔️ Dynamic catalogue ads are our best performing MOF ads
✔️ Florida is our strongest performing location for TOF campaigns
✔️ Newsfeed placement on mobile devices outperforms any other placement device combo
In Summary
I personally use a much broader selection of analytics tools and attribution modelling to analyse data for best results, however, Facebook Ad Reporting Templates are a fantastic way to obtain the data you need to start tweaking campaigns and increasing conversions.
If Facebook is getting the best of you and you know your business could be doing a lot better on Facebook, schedule a free 30-minute consultation with Tracey Munn from Munn Digital, or visit our Facebook Page!
