Social Media Marketing

7 Best Ways to Analyze Facebook Ads to Sustain Growth

Arnoldas Rogoznyj

June 23, 2021

Measuring the success of your Facebook ads is not always as easy as it seems.

Sure, there are certainly some straightforward measurements — ROAS being the most important — but there are other important factors to consider.

It’s especially critical when you have multiple sets of ads and variations that have a positive ROAS. How do you choose which ones to keep running or scale up?

Let’s start with the easiest way to analyze your Facebook ads and work our way up to the more abstract methods.

#1: Track Facebook Ads ROI (ROAS)

ROAS stands for return on ad spend.

If you put $1 into your Facebook ads, you want to get at least $1 in profit.

With the instantaneous results you get from digital sales, you can usually measure these results in a matter of a few hours (giving customers a little extra time to check out), but that isn’t always the right way to do it.

We’ll discuss the right way to measure your ROAS at the end of this article in more detail.

#2: Review Reach and Engagement

Reach is how many people see the ad, while engagement is a measure of people interacting with it, either by liking, clicking, sharing, or commenting.

You want your Facebook ads to have a good ratio of reach to engagement. If too many people see the ad without interacting with it, you have a dud.

What’s a “good ratio”? In general, a 1-2% engagement rate is considered decent, but your real goal should be to improve on your own numbers. If you already have a 2% engagement rate, aim for 3%.

#3: Check the Conversation

Read that again: check the conversation, not the conversion.

What are people saying in response to your ad?

Are they calling it a scam? Are they making jokes about your company?

If the feedback is deeply negative, you’ll want to reconsider your approach. A good way to make sure people trust your ad is with user-generated content: videos from real people, rather than a typical ad.

92% of consumers trust user-generated content more than traditional ads.

Another important point: if people are asking too many questions in the comments, your ad might need more clarity and information.

#4: Use Your Facebook Ads Performance to Improve Your Sales Page or Landing Page

Ad variations can help give you immediate insight into what your target market likes and cares about.

Let’s say you make two ad variations.

Ad #1 focuses on saving money.

Ad #2 focuses on the money-back guarantee.

After a few days of testing, you find out that the money-back guarantee has a bigger impact on conversions than the cost-savings.

You can then use that information to make your landing page more effective by changing the emphasis of your headline to the guarantee.

#5: Don’t Assume Linear Growth and Costs

Ads become less effective as you increase your budget.

An ad that turns a profit at $100 a day might be a dismal failure at $1,000 a day.

This is an important fact when testing your ads. When trying out your early variations, don’t settle for ads that just barely make a profit. One way to improve your results quickly is by implementing videos. Video ads perform better than image-based ads.

#6: Track Facebook Ad Likes, Follows, and Email Captures

Likes and follows are collectively the second most important measurement of your Facebook ads success, aside from conversions. Follows can ultimately become sales down the road, so you don’t want to focus exclusively on the sales that happen that day.

If your sales page has an exit-intent pop-up, or your ad leads to a lead-capture form, you’ll also want to keep a close eye on those email addresses. And that leads us to the final tip.

#7: Analyze Weekly Success VS Instant Success

Customers need time to make purchasing decisions, especially when your product or service is expensive or unique.

Assuming you’re following up with email marketing, both non-buyers and customers could ultimately generate more money than you make in initial conversions.

If your email campaign is especially elaborate, it may take several weeks before you see the final results of your ads. Keep that in mind when making decisions about which ads to keep running.

The Key Takeaway

Assessing your performance marketing is deceptively difficult. You can’t simply look at Facebook’s instant reporting and assume that information is an accurate measure of how the ads will do overtime.

More importantly, your ad variations can provide useful insights into how to sell your products and services more effectively.

If your ads aren’t working well enough, user-generated video content can give a significant boost to your ad performance and sales.