Are My Facebook & Instagram Ads Actually Making a Difference?
Have you ever ran Facebook or Instagram ads for your business and felt like nothing happened? Or wondered what impact these ads were making on your business? It is easy to get wrapped up in tracking the result that Facebook Ads Manager highlights for each ad, but there are so many other ways your Facebook and Instagram ads may be supporting your business. I’m going to share three key metrics that you can track & analyze in 10 minutes to see how your ads are growing your business.
1. Track Your Following
Who wouldn’t love to have a larger following on Facebook or Instagram? This fan base gives your business credibility as new people come across your account and get to know your business. Every ad on Facebook is connected to a Facebook Page and every ad run on Instagram is connected to an Instagram account.
Think back to the last time you were scrolling through Facebook or Instagram. When you see an ad pop up, it looks very similar to all the other posts on Facebook or Instagram. This makes your business advertisement appear as if it is coming from a friend. One key difference is below the upper left profile picture you will see the word sponsored. This is just a way to inform people that someone paid to show this ad to you.
Because your profile is connected to every ad you run, it is likely that you will gain new followers while you run ads. Take an inventory of how many followers you currently have and check back in after running ads. After I ran ads for my business my Instagram following increased by 20%.
2. Track Your Email List
Did you know that for every email list subscriber you earn roughly $1 in profit per month? That means if you have 10,000 email list subscribers you could be earning up to $10,000 a month in revenue just from your email list. Email lists are a powerful and profitable resource for any business. As you run ads on Facebook and Instagram keep track of how many new email list subscribers you are receiving.
Even if the main goal or objective of your ad campaign is not to grow your email list your ads are building awareness, and driving traffic to your website. This could easily lead to an increase in email list subscribers, especially if you have pop-ups on your website that invite people to opt-in to your email list.
3. Track Your Sales
As promised the last thing to analyze is sales. If your ads are set up to optimize for purchases then Facebook will track this data for you. However, if you ads are not set to optimize for sales you will still likely see an uptick in sales. If you do not already track your sales each month. If you can find an average over the course of multiple months compare that to the sales you get when you are running ads.
Bonus Tip: When to Analyze the Data?
Pro tip: Keep in mind that Facebook has a 15 day lookback window. Which means Facebook and Instagram ads will continue to collect data and occur results up to 15 days after the ads have stopped running. For this reason, it is best to wait roughly two weeks after the ads have run to analyze all the data and results from that ad.
There you go, those are three ways to analyze the difference your ads are making on your business. Likely you will see results in one or more of these categories. Tracking this data is key to noticing where your ads can improve and how your investment in ads is building your business. You should be able to track and analyze these three categories in less than 10 minutes.