Understanding Facebook Ads – Even Facebook Is Not Quite There Yet

Facebook ROIYesterday, I had the opportunity to read this really great article from eConsulstancy. In this article, a couple of top execs from Facebook are quoted with their reasons for why ROI is an irrelevant metric for measuring the success of your Facebook campaigns. These guys, as smart as they are, are incredibly close to getting the point, but they’re just not quite there yet. Incredibly, Facebook has been doing more to hurt the image of what’s actually possible through advertising on their platform than anyone else by failing to understand that, through cross-channel attribution, one can actually measure the results of using Facebook ads as part of a larger strategy.

Facebook CTR is low. Mmhmm

Those of us who are involved in Facebook advertising know that the CTR is lower on Facebook than it is on, for example, Google. It’s the nature of advertising on a website where visitors are, let’s face it, otherwise engaged. On a search engine, if you’re not capturing the click, you can point to some methods of improving your ad. The fault is with you; your ad failed to engage the person you were targeting and they opted for another result, or you placed your ad in the wrong spot. On Facebook, the fault may lie with a video of the cuddliest kittens in the history of the interwebs.  Look at Facebook ads Still, there are methods we can employ to increase CTR, but the fact remains that it will always be lower on a site like this.

Facebook is missing the point

What Facebook execs would have us believe is that we should not be looking at how well our ads are doing in terms of clicks, but rather that we need to discover the intangible benefits; that we need to think of it like a billboard ad where you can’t actually measure the direct benefit, but you believe that it works; that there is no solid metric to prove the success of Facebook ads. But we’re here to tell you this: That solid metric exists. You CAN give your customers real, solid, and very exciting data on how Facebook ads can improve your overall marketing strategy. When Jeremy Waite says, to quote the article, “social isn’t like Google where campaign success can be measured in clicks,” he’s actually wrong. It’s where marketers are looking that’s wrong.

Get out of the silo

Marketing SiloIf you’re just looking at the overall CTR, and even the ROI of your Facebook campaigns in a silo, then you are missing the big picture of what it is that can be accomplished. What we know, and this is data that we have seen proven time and time again, is that adding a social advertising element to an overall marketing strategy will help to increase search volume and lower your cost per acquisition. And even if you’re just attempting to measure customer engagement at its purest level, then why wouldn’t you measure clicks? If you’re engaging your customers, you’re doing it by getting them interested in everything that you’re doing. And if all you’re doing is engaging them on your Facebook page, you’re overlooking incredible opportunities for further customer engagement, sales, and retention.

Demonstrating Facebook success

The article asks, “in a digital world where everything is measured in clicks, will agencies be able to sell this to their clients who need solid metrics that help them to justify their budgets?” Here is the meat of the matter: As marketers, we have a hard enough time trying to get ad spend out of clients without having to say things like, “You should do it just because you should.” It’s incredibly important, yes, to create that emotional connection with customers via customer engagement strategies.

Facebook is a distraction

Haha, made you look.

It’s also important to understand how different online marketing channels influence each other, and how the deployment of Facebook ads combined with a Paid Search strategy can lower the CPA of your Search strategy while vastly increasing the volume of searches performed for your brand.

Learn How!

If you’re interested in learning more about how this works, and how you can more accurately measure the true value of your Facebook ads through available metrics, then you should check out this webinar with Dan Thut of Rocketer. You’ll learn, in depth, how you can, not just use Facebook to increase your ROI, but how you can show your customers how you’re doing that. You can show them the clicks. You can show them the tangible value. He’ll show you actual statistics and real-world examples. Watch it now!

Mark John Hiemstra

Mark John Hiemstra

Mark John Hiemstra is a content and social media marketing consultant to Acquisio. He got involved in digital marketing purely by accident, and has spent the last several years learning about building relationships with consumers online through the many channels available to those who are willing to get involved. He is loathe to discuss himself in the third person, but can be persuaded to do so, from time to time.

The First Machine Learning Marketing Platform
Built to Scale Search for Local Resellers & Agencies

Automate, optimize and track more campaigns, more profitably.