Facebook Marketing Step-by-Step

by Bryan Bren

You can get as creative as you want while using the data from Facebook Analytics. If you are smart about it, the data you collect can help you identify your ideal target audience, the place and position of your ads, the channels to which you must divert the traffic, and also the kinds of content you must post. Spend some time and explore all the features of Facebook Analytics. Go through all the data reports carefully, target different sets of the audience, and use various combinations of funnels. Your understanding of Analytics will improve as you spend more time using it.

  Metrics to Track

  Facebook provides a lot of data, and it can be rather overwhelming if you cannot differentiate between the important and not-so-important data. Here are the best metrics you should track on Facebook.

  Engagement

  Engagement helps track the number of times a user acts on your Facebook posts. It can refer to actions like sharing a post, clicking on the associated link or event, leaving a comment, or any other type of interaction. Engagement is amongst the most useful metrics to track because it helps gauge whether the users like the content you post or not.

  It might also increase the exposure of your posts. Facebook’s algorithm is designed such that it determines the positioning of your posts on the follower’s feed. The algorithm displays posts according to the interests of the users. If a specific post of yours receives a lot of engagement, it signals to the Facebook algorithm that your post is popular, and the likelihood of it popping up in your follower’s news feed increases.

  Relevance score

  This is a Facebook metric that helps you measure the relevancy of your ads according to your target audience. This is usually measured on a scale of one to 10. A low score means your ads are barely relevant to your target audience, and a high score of 10 means the ads are quite relevant. This is a very important metric if you want to see how your Facebook campaigns are performing. If the relevancy score is low, then it means the frequency with which Facebook shows the ads will be quite low, and it directly increases your cost per click. On the other hand, a high score relating to relevance will increase how often it is shown and even reduce your overall costs. Reach and fan reach are the two alternatives of this metric.

  Impressions

  Impressions refer to the number of times your Facebook ads or posts have been seen. This applies to organic and paid-for Facebook content. You cannot get any clicks if no one views your content. Impressions help diagnose the performance of your ads. If other metrics in the funnel, like clicks or conversions, aren’t performing like you hoped they would, then you can use impressions to see how well the content is performing. The detailed metrics to this is Likes, Comments, and Engagement.

  Leads generated

  This refers to the number of potential customers you have gained via Facebook. This can come in several forms ranging from getting a user to sign up for a newsletter to having them provide their email in exchange for an eBook preview. Facebook helps you generate leads, and Facebook ads offer several built-in tools for generated leads within Facebook. All of this makes it easier for your targeted users to express their interest and for your content to generate leads.

  ROAS

  ROAS stands for return on an ad spend, and it denotes the return you stand to receive for every dollar you spend on advertising on Facebook. It measures the income you are generating through conversions via your Facebook ads.

  Why does this metric matter? You might have shelled out a lot of money on your Facebook ads, but you still might not have gotten very far. ROAS helps ensure your media budget is helping you attain the results you want.

  ROAS is calculated by dividing your total ad cost by the total number of website conversions you get. For instance, if you were spending $1,000 on your advertising campaign per month and managed to generate a revenue of $4,000 in that month, then your ROAS will be 4:1. This means that for every dollar you have spent, you stand to gain $4. If your ROAS is positive, it means you are making money, and if it is negative, your ad campaign is not successful and is incurring a loss. This helps you allocate your marketing budget accordingly to focus on campaigns that are making you more money. This can also include other similar metrics like cost per conversion or cost per action.

  Video metrics

  The different video metrics you must track are the view through rate, video retention, and video engagement. Video view through rate refers to the number of users your video reached and how many of those users viewed the video. A video view means a user has viewed the video for at least three seconds. If you have an audience of 10,000 users and 3,000 of the users viewed the video, it means your video view rate is 30%. Anything less than 30% means your videos aren’t doing as well as they are supposed to.

  If you are publishing a 7-minute long video, but most of your audience only views about 30-seconds of it, then you must consider cutting down on the video length. As with the regular Facebook posts, you can also measure the video engagement you receive. By checking the number of likes, comments, shares, or any other engagement metric for videos, you can gauge whether the videos are effective or not.

  Conversions

  Conversion refers to the number of times your intended audience has taken an action you wanted them to. This can include an action like purchasing on your website, registering for your newsletter, or any other related activities. The goal of any marketing campaign is to increase conversions. By measuring conversions, you can optimize your campaign to reach your goal.

  You have the option to select “conversions” as your whole goal. This creates a campaign on Facebook Ads where the program will automatically optimize your campaign to meet your goal. It ensures your budget is directed toward increasing conversions instead of focusing on other goals like clicks or impressions.

  Ad frequency

  This refers to the number of times your ad was viewed by a user. This is calculated by dividing the total impressions per ad (the number of times your ad was shown) by its total reach (the number of users who viewed your ad). If your reach stays dormant while the impressions increase, it means there is an increase in your ad frequency. The more a user views your ad without taking the necessary action, the less likely it is that they will convert, as a Facebook ad often interrupts the user’s experience.

  If a user is not interested in your ad even after viewing it a couple of times, it is unlikely that said user will develop an interest in what you are advertising. If you continue to keep showing the ads to uninterested users, you will merely be increasing your marketing costs.

  Click-through rate

  The click-through rate or CTR helps measure the percentage of users who clicked through to the landing page after viewing the ad. This is an important metric while measuring the performance of your marketing campaigns by directing clicks to a specific page or landing page. Clicks can help measure this, but they don’t provide data on whether your targeted audience is interacting with your ads as desired or not. High CTR means users are taking the desired action, and it means you did well while selecting your target audience as well as choosing the ads you are showing them. A low CTR means the opposite of that.

  Cost per click

  Cost per click or CPC refers to the average cost incurred while earning one click on your Facebook campaign. You can calculate CPC by dividing your total ad budget by the total number of clicks you receive. However, to measure the effectiveness of CPC, you must take your ad budget into account.

  For instance, you might be running two ad campaigns on Facebook. One campaign receives 1,000 clicks, and the other receives only 100. The one with 1,000 clicks must be doing better. Well, that’s not necessarily true. If the cost of the first campaign is $1,000 and the other is only $50, then your answer about the CPC will change. The CPC of the first campaign is $1, while that of the second campaign is only $0.50.

  Best performing ads

  This shows the ads that are performing well and are earning the most impressions, clicks, or conversions. The success of a Faceboo
k ads campaign depends on monitoring and optimizing that information by closely monitoring the ads, you can see for yourself which of the techniques is working well with your target audience. Once you have this information, you can start removing the ads that aren’t doing too well and create content for future ads based on the content of the ads that are doing well.

  Start Tracking Your Facebook Metrics

  Apart from using Facebook Analytics to track metrics, you can use other third-party apps too. Below is a list of the best apps you can use for getting started.

  Likealyzer

  This is a free tool that is easy to use. You can open any Facebook page and then measure or analyze its effectiveness. This tool grades a page on the total score of 100 and then compares it with other similar pages. This means you can easily obtain a preview of your competitor’s pages. It gives you the required metrics and some suggestions for changes. The metrics it provides include the rate of engagement, the length of posts, as well as the timing of the posts.

  SimplyMeasured

  SimplyMeasured offers four different Facebook reports. The four reports are an Insights Analysis report, a Competitive Analysis report, a Fan Page Analysis report (a fan page is the same as a business page), and a Content Analysis report. The Insights report prepares the data provided by Facebook Insights into various forms of charts. The information included within the reports relates to reach, stories, follower statistics and demographics, follower activity, page likes, impressions, and engagement. The program allows you to compare pages of similar companies or brands. It presents all the metrics in the form of charts.

  The Fan Page report provides detailed information about content metrics, community, and project metrics. The top users are classified according to the number of posts, comments, and overall engagement. The Content Analysis report analyzes the breakdown of content you share including the types of messages, their engagement, and general keywords.

  Soziograph.io

  After receiving the necessary authorizations, you can use this tool to analyze every Facebook fan page for free. It displays the average number of likes, shares, and comments received from each post; the different types of posts; and the top posts for a specific period. You can return to the news since the page was created. It is certainly easy to use, but it doesn’t provide a lot of actionable data like the other tools.

  Quintly

  This is a very powerful tool that allows you to create detailed analyses of different social networking platforms. It helps you track your business on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Quintly also helps you compare the features that allow you to compare performance with the competitor and industry metrics. The Quintly toolbar also offers customization options so you can focus only on statistics that are the most important to you instead of worrying about all the other ancillary statistics.

  Agorapulse

  It offers two free Facebook tools. The first tool helps you set a benchmark for the kind of content you want to create. You can then compare this with other pages to see their performance. It helps you measure if your content is above average and helps track the associated metrics. The second tool lets you run contests, quizzes, and lotteries on your Facebook timeline. It does this while tracking your response time to messages. This tool covers the most influential users and users who most frequently mention your brand. It provides page-level analytics, timeline-level analytics, and other detailed reports. On Facebook, you can see a detailed breakdown of the organic, paid, and viral coverage of your brand. This will help you understand which content is best for you. It also provides a return on investment calculator that helps you determine your marketing and advertising budget on Facebook. You can customize the reports it provides and even download them as a PowerPoint presentation of 20 slides.

  Chapter Ten: Sales Funnel

  There are various options available when it comes to Facebook advertising. For instance, you can increase your brand awareness, improve the engagement rate, direct traffic from your Facebook page to a landing website or webpage, and even increase the rate of conversions. The benefits you receive essentially depend on the specific goals you want to achieve. However, Facebook is quite different from Adwords or other conventional PPC platforms. Basically, Facebook is so much more than just buying impressions or clicks. If you use Facebook optimally, you can create an excellent sales funnel.

  Before delving into all of it, you must answer a simple question: What is your purpose when you log into your Facebook profile? Are you merely there to check the updates of your friends and to check about the general news or do you log into Facebook to search for products and purchase them? Chances of it being the former are greater than the latter.

  Facebook is more about socializing and networking than buying. Seldom does a Facebook user think about purchasing while going through their Facebook feed. This all means the overall intent of buying displayed by Facebook users is quite low. This may make you wonder, what is the point of using Facebook marketing and ads to grow your business if Facebook users are particularly interested in shopping.

  Well, this might be the case for some brands that end up being rather disappointed with their ROI. They might acquire new followers, increase their engagement, and such but their rate of conversions doesn’t improve. The important thing to remember is that this problem isn’t with Facebook; it instead lies in the approach marketers adopt while using Facebook. Hard selling on Facebook is not a good idea. You must create a good sales funnel if you want to generate positive results from your Facebook marketing and advertising campaign.

  Creating a Sales Funnel

  Before learning about creating an optimal sales funnel on Facebook, you must learn about the different stages a potential buyer goes through before making a purchase. A buying cycle includes the recognition of an opportunity, discovery of alternatives, comparison of solutions, making a decision, and implementing the solution. If a potential buyer is in the stage of opportunity recognition, it is unlikely that such a person will immediately skip to the purchase stage. However, there will be some customers who will be ready to purchase. That said, a majority of Facebook users don’t intend to make a purchase when they log into their Facebook accounts. This is where you must try to gently coax them to make a purchase. The best way to go about this is by developing a sales funnel. Here are the steps you must follow to create a good sales funnel.

  Step one: Creating segmented content

  To start with, you must have a couple of different types of content available. It can be in the form of videos, infographics, blog posts, webinars, eBooks, or even slideshows. The specific path you opt for doesn’t matter much as long as you provide content which is engaging, relevant, and high-quality. You must ensure that whatever you are promoting can be purchased on your website. This comes in handy when you start to retarget your leads to work them further along the sales funnel. You need different forms of content to reach different segments of your target audience.

  You cannot depend on a one-size-fits-all approach because different individuals will be at different stages of the buying cycle. Some might not be interested in making an immediate purchase and might be browsing through their options while others might be considering the idea of buying something. Once you have the right content according to the audience you are targeting, they will enter your sales funnel.

  Step two: Promoting content to “warm audience”

  You must start promoting your content to “warm audience.” It essentially means you must target those users who have been exposed to your content or your brand in some way and have shown some level of interest in the same. This category of users will essentially comprise of your existing Facebook followers and can also include the list of users who have associated with your business or brand in the past. You must pay attention to the level of engagement and determine the type of content which leads to most purchases. Take some time, analyze the different metrics available to you, and m
ake a note of the content that’s doing well.

  Step three: Targeting lookalike audiences

  A lookalike audience is a term that’s used to describe those users who share similar interests, behaviors, and habits like your existing target audience. You can think of them as a cold audience who can be easily warmed up to your brand and can be converted into potential leads. Therefore, you must ensure your marketing strategies target this section of the audience along with your core audience. If you want to do this, you must open Facebook ads, go to the Audience section of it, and click on the option “Create a Lookalike Audience.” Once you do this, a pop-up will show up on your screen, and you need first to select the source. You can create a custom audience or use the data from a tracking pixel or page. Choose the source that is ideal for you.

  The next step is to select the audience’s location and size, which ranges from anywhere between 1% to 10% of the population in the area, country, or countries you choose. While selecting the audience size, keep in mind that the smaller the percentage, the more similar your lookalike audience will be to your existing audience. Once you select the necessary parameters, the next step is to click on “Create Audience” option. The lookalike audience thus created will be a part of the overall cold audience who need some persuasion to warm up to your brand or business.