And then there’s cost per action, in which you only pay for selected actions. By measuring conversions on your social ad, you can better understand the ROI of your campaign. If your goal is webinar sign ups, that’s what you should pay for (and track), not just the number of impressions or clicks on an ad. Make sure you fill in the following: Source: Social network the ad is on Medium: Type of content you’re sharing Campaign: Name of campaign or campaign keyword Remember, you need to have Google Analytics on your website to track conversions. Click-through rate If you’re running cost per click ads, you should track the ratio of people who have seen the ad versus the number of people that took action by clicking. For example, if you’re running an ad campaign on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and you’re driving people to the same content, then you want to know which network and ad sent people to the site. How to track mobile traffic: You can create a mobile dashboard in Google Analytics. Customer conversion ratio If you want to go one step beyond tracking leads, you can track the number of leads from your social ads that convert into customers. Google Analytics will also let you add conversion tracking tags to your campaigns to monitor what people do after they click on your ad. Track your social ad performance By setting clear goals and knowing which metrics are important to your campaign, you’ll have a better grasp on what went well and how you can improve.
Social media advertising is a force in the digital advertising space. Facebook’s social ads accounted for more than $6.8 billion in revenue—and that was just in Q3 of 2016.
Social ads offer an effective way to reach your customers, increase revenue, and track your ROI down to the penny. But before you start running ads, you need to identify key metrics and learn how to track them.
Bonus: Download a free guide that reveals how to increase social media engagement with better audience research, sharper customer targeting, and Hootsuite’s easy-to-use social media software.
It’s unrealistic to think that one social ad campaign can address a year’s worth of goals for your organization, or help remedy problems in the absence of a solid strategy. That’s why you should begin any ad campaign by mapping your social goals to your business targets.
As our CEO Ryan Holmes has pointed out, it’s best to do a mix of paid and organic content on social and use your organic content as testing grounds for paid campaigns.
Just getting started with social media advertising? Check out our complete guide to social ads.
8 social media ad metrics you should be tracking
1. Cost per action
There are three ways you can pay for your ads: cost per impression (CPM), cost per click (CPC), and cost per action (CPA).
With cost per impression you pay every time your ad is viewed. This can be a costly approach that doesn’t necessarily lead to any type of conversion. Cost per click is commonly used for display ads; your ad can be viewed thousands of times but you only pay unless someone clicks on it. This is useful if you’re driving people to ungated content (content that does not require viewers to enter an email or other info to access the content).
And then there’s cost per action, in which you only pay for selected actions. For example, cost per action on Facebook includes Page likes, offer claims, mobile app installs, and link clicks—and you can select the ones that are the most relevant to your campaign. This is the best approach if you’re aiming to have the audience take an action beyond a click, for example, if you’re trying to get people to download gated content (which requires a form fill), sign up for a webinar, or redeem a code.
There are two big advantages to cost per action. First, you can drill down on and only pay for actions that are aligned with your campaign goals. Second, you can better track leads and new customers by optimizing for conversions like form fills or downloads.
2. Conversions
A conversion is defined as a specific action that you’ve identified for your campaign such as a purchase, download, click, sign up, form fill, or a webinar.
By measuring conversions on your social ad, you can better understand the ROI of your campaign. That’s because what you’re tracking is closely linked to an action that is relevant to your goal. If your goal is webinar sign ups, that’s what you should pay for (and track), not just the number of impressions or clicks on an ad. By creating CPA ads, you’re better set up to track conversions.
How to track conversions:
If your ad is driving people to your website, a landing page, or content, you should be using UTM parameters in all your links for ads. UTM parameters will allow you to track actions, purchases, and goal completions for every piece of content that you post.
Using Google’s URL Builder, you can create UTM parameters for the links in your ads. Make sure you fill in the following:
- Source: Social network the ad is on
- Medium: Type of content you’re sharing
- Campaign: Name of campaign or campaign keyword
Remember, you need to have Google Analytics on your website to track conversions….
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