Facebook provides advertisers on their platform with many different metrics to monitor the performance of their ad campaigns. However, some people go on to advertise their businesses without paying much attention to these metrics.
This absence of attention usually happens because they don’t know these metrics or why they’re essential to their marketing efforts. If you fall into this group, this post is for you.
We’ll look at the top 8 Facebook metrics to track and why they’re essential to your overall marketing strategy. Let’s roll.
1. Engagement
The engagement metric can also be called post engagement, audience engagement, or user engagement.
It’s a crucial metric that tracks the total number of actions your posted content receives on Facebook. The actions here can be in the form of clicks, likes, shares, comments, or reactions.
Why Engagement is Important
Tracking engagement helps you to understand your content’s worth to your target audience.
A high engagement rate is usually a sign that people love your content and find it interesting and valuable. In contrast, a lower engagement rate shows a lack of interest in your offer.
This knowledge can help you figure out the type of content your audience loves the most, so you can continue creating and serving them more. Be sure to check out our tips for increasing your Facebook engagement.
2. Reach
Reach is a metric that measures the number of unique people who’ve seen your posted content on Facebook.
Many brands have witnessed a significant drop in their organic reach over the years, and as a result, they’ve resorted to using Facebook ads to boost their content reach.
Why Reach is Important
One reason to track your reach is that it affects your engagement directly. The more people you can reach with your content, the higher the chances you’ll get a good engagement and vice versa.
3. Impressions
Another metric worth tracking is impressions. Unlike reach, which measures the number of unique people viewing your posts, impressions measure how many times your posts have been viewed.
For example, when the same person views your post 5 times, you’ll have 5 impressions but only one reach.
Why Impressions are Important
Tracking your impressions and keeping them high ensures that your marketing posts are viewed multiple times by your target audience, which helps significantly to increase your brand awareness.
This metric is especially important in the current digital age, where consumers are bombarded with daily content. When your impression counts are high on a particular post, you’ll know something about that particular piece worth investigating further.
Most audiences require repeatedly seeing a product or service before they develop an interest in buying it.
4. Facebook Referral Traffic
This metric measures the website traffic you get from your Facebook page. The traffic can come from people clicking on the links in your profile, posted content or shared posts.
Why Referral Traffic is Important
Tracking your Facebook referral traffic can help determine whether the content you’re sharing pulls people back to your website.
An increase in your Facebook referral traffic indicates that your shared content is compelling enough to make people click through to your website to learn more or take further action.
On the other hand, a decline in your referral traffic is a sign that something isn’t right. Either your content isn’t getting enough reach, or people aren’t getting value from what you share. Whatever the cause is, you need to look into it and fix it ASAP.
5. Facebook Page Likes and Follows
These two metrics measure how many people have liked and followed your business page on Facebook so they can continue seeing your content in their feed.
Why Page Likes and Follows are Important
Though page likes and follows are not considered as important as other metrics like engagement, you still need to track them to get a rough idea of the size of your Facebook audience.
The more likes and follows your business has, the more people you can reach with your content and the higher the potential for your growth.
So, your aim should be to maintain your present followers and increase your numbers as time passes.
6. Facebook Ad Frequency
This is another key metric that Facebook advertisers often overlook. It’s defined as the average number of times a target audience sees the same ad on their feed.
For instance, if an audience views the same ad 7 times a week on average, the ad frequency will be 7.
A higher ad frequency isn’t recommended because people get bored and tired when they repeatedly see the same thing. This further causes them to lose interest in engaging with your ad, which can harm your click-through rates.
Why Ad Frequency is Important
Therefore, keeping a close eye on this metric can help you to know when your audience has seen the same ad too many times.
If this is the case, you can create multiple versions of your ads by changing their visuals and/or copy to keep the audience interested throughout your campaign.
7. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
This metric measures the percentage of your target audience who sees your Facebook ad and clicks through it to visit your landing page.
Getting a high CTR means that a higher percentage of the people who see your ad are clicking through to your landing page to take action. This usually indicates that your ad has good quality and relevance score.
Why Click-Through Rate is Important
So, why is tracking your CTR on Facebook important? Because it helps you to evaluate the effectiveness of your ads in converting prospects into customers.
Getting a low CTR constantly should tell you that something is preventing people from taking action after viewing your ads. So, try improving your ad headline, image, or copy to make the ads more relevant and compelling to your target audience.
It’s also a great time to consider using some A/B testing to identify what is having the best impact.
8. CPC and CPM
Lastly, when you’re using ads to market your business, Facebook allows choosing the way you want to be charged. CPC and CPM are two of the most popular ways to pay for your advertisements.
- CPC refers to the cost per click
- CPM refers to the cost per thousand impressions
CPC pricing tells you how much you’re supposed to pay every time somebody clicks on your ads, while CPM tells you how much you need to pay for every 1000 impressions your ad gets.
Often advertisers prefer the CPC pricing model because it allows them to pay for actual user actions rather than just impressions.
However, CPM also has its place in Facebook marketing. For instance, you can choose it when testing multiple variations of your ads before launching your campaign.
CPM can be a faster and more cost-effective way to determine which version of your ad performs better.
Why CPC and CPM are Important
Keeping an eye on these two metrics will help you, in the long run, to manage your marketing budget more cost-effectively and maximize your ROI.
It’s essential to understand what your specific goals are with every campaign. CPM can have substantially better results when it comes to influencing brand awareness or demand generation.
Final Thoughts on Facebook Metrics to Track
Overall, tracking Facebook metrics that are the most important to your marketing goals offers many benefits. For instance, it can help you to create better ads that drive more conversions and know the right time to post your ads to reach more people.
The above list can be a good starting point if you don’t know which Facebook metrics to track when trying to grow your online business.