What follows are a few of the ways to determine your ad’s return on investment:
- Regular posts versus paid posts: When you select Posts on your Insights dashboard, you receive an overview on how your posts are performing. You can also see whether a post is paid or unpaid, enabling you to make a comparison.
- Likes: When you select likes on your Insights dashboard, you can compare likes achieved during paid campaigns with organic likes.
- Reach: When you select Reach on your Insights dashboard, you can see at a glance how much of a boost a paid post received and how many people were reached as a result of that boost.
- Engagement: On your Ads Manager dashboard, you can see a list of your advertising and how much engagement each received. You can even see the cost per engagement.
- If your goal was to receive likes to your Facebook page or to have more people see a specific post, you can analyze the numbers and determine whether you achieved the results you were hoping for. If you spent $100 and received one like, your campaign probably didn’t work for you. But if you spent $100 and received 50 likes, you have to determine if spending $2 per like is a worthwhile investment for you.
- If you wanted to drive traffic to your website, you can easily measure your success through the Ads Manager’s click-through reporting and your own website’s analytics. On days you purchased advertising, how much traffic did it send to your website, and was the amount of traffic worth the money spent? Moreover, how many of the people who came to your website as a result of the ad will continue to visit in the future? Measure traffic over time and see whether you have a nice steady rise and repeat visits as a result of your ad.
You can also measure sales. If you receive traffic and no sales, the ad might need to be reworked or retargeted or maybe Facebook ads aren’t a good fit. In this case, consider trying more than once, just to make sure. However, if you notice a rise in sales as a result of your Facebook ad, continue with this investment.
It’s important to determine whether a Facebook ad campaign is worth the investment. If you don’t take time to analyze the numbers and determine whether you’re meeting your goals, you’re throwing away money.