New Conversion Metrics Coming to Facebook Analytics

Metrics are everything when it comes to social media. Without them, you'd struggle to measure the success of, and subsequently improve, your content and adverts.

Facebook analytics cover everything from likes, comments and web traffic, right on through to what visitors from Facebook are specifically doing on your website. Are they reading blogs? Making purchases? What do they like? What don't they like?

With users accessing the internet through a variety of devices, Facebook metrics are becoming more and more advanced - and necessary for that matter. So much so, that Facebook is updating its conversion metrics to measure customers' omnichannel behaviour.

What does this mean?

These new Facebook Insights will introduce the following reporting features to help with your metrics:

1. New Customise Column Interface in Ads Reporting
   This will make it easier for you to choose specific metrics to measure and display on your reports.
2. New omnichannel metrics for standard and custom events
   These metrics will enable you to better measure customers' paths, including instances in which a customer has seen and clicked on an ad on their mobile then completed the subsequent purchase on another device or offline.
3. Removing some types of conversion metrics
   Cleaning up the Facebook Insights user experience by getting rid of metrics that are no longer deemed necessary. This will help you focus on the metrics that determine the more important business outcomes.

When is this happening?

These changes are being made right now, and some of you will notice the new features in the coming weeks, with Facebook launching the new conversion metrics in September 2018.

What Facebook Ad Metrics should I be measuring?

The answer to this question very much depends on your overall business goals, as well as the aims of any campaigns and content you're currently running. Oftentimes, this is link clicks, conversions and brand awareness. These latest updates will allow you to focus even closer on the return of investment when it comes to ads in these categories.

Facebook Ad Metrics to keep an eye on:

• CTR - The Click Through Rate of each Facebook Ad reflects the percentage of people that see it and decide to click on it. A recent WordStream study showed that the average CTR is 0.9% on Facebook.If your CTR is low, it means people are seeing your ad but aren't enticed enough to click. If this is the case, you should update your imagery and copy. Make sure your ad includes a call to action to drive people to click on them.
• CPC - The Cost Per Click is exactly what it says on the tin. The more attractive and eye-catching your ad is, the more likely people are to click. The more people that click, the lower you pay for traffic to your website. It's as simple as that! With this in mind, always look to optimise your campaigns by investing in the ads with a low CPC and consider removing ads that appear to be increasing your campaign's spend with little results - after you've given them time to develop and learn of course.
• CPA - Facebook allows you to measure the Cost Per Action, in case you want to track more than just clicks. A CPA could track conversions such as app downloads, email subscribers, purchases or bookings. Measuring a CPA requires a Facebook Pixel being installed on the relevant webpage. Instructions on how to do this can be found in our Facebook Pixel Tracking guide.

Organic Facebook Analytics to focus on:

• Engagement - How many times someone takes action on your content. This could be anything from clicking a link, commenting, tagging their friend, liking or sharing. Log onto Facebook Insights and see what content is proving popular. Are there particular images people engage with more than others? Could there be a trend in the type of blog posts people are clicking on this time of year?Engagement is especially important thanks to social media algorithms. The more people who engage with your post, the more likely your content is to appear on people's News Feeds.
• Reach - The number of people who see your content on Facebook. This is obviously very important in terms of brand awareness and simply getting your message out to your target audience. Keep track of the reach of your posts to optimise your content.
• Impressions - Not to be confused with reach, impressions tell you how many times your post was seen. So, one person seeing your post five times counts as five impressions, but only one tracked reach.Impressions and reach are what help posts "go viral". If you're a believer of the Rule of 7, we recommend keeping a close eye on your impressions.
• Page Likes - It's easy to get bogged down and obsessed with page likes, but the truth of the matter is that you should focus on the quality, not the quantity, of your audience. After all, wouldn't you rather have 200 potential buyers following your account than 500 people who will never purchase anything from you?However, this does not mean page likes and followers aren't important. Keep a close watch on the growth (or reduction) of your Page likes over time and look for trends. Did your likes increase during a particular campaign you were running, for example? Maybe the opposite happened - you began posting a particular type of content and saw a drop-off?A straightforward yet effective way of increasing your audience is to run Page Like Ads. If you'd like to learn more about these, call us on 01652 638290.

Know your business's measurements of success but struggling to achieve them using Facebook analytics? Need more help tracking Facebook's new metrics? Call 01652 638290 to get some expert advice and support!

Oliver Wilkinson
Content Marketing Executive
Knapton Wright