How to Create a Facebook Ad: Step 5 (Making Sense of the Data)
This post is the fifth of a five-step process to set up, measure, and manage your Facebook ads.
You’ve set up your ads, you’ve started measuring their success, and now you’ve started measuring conversions. You’re done, right? Nope. You can’t just leave those ads stagnant for long. The last step in the series? Making sense of your Facebook ads data.
Here’s what to do if…
My bid is higher than my Avg. CPC/CPM?
More often than not, the actual CPC/CPM you pay will be less than your bid since your bid is just that – the most you’re willing to pay per click or per impression. If your bid seems to be too high, you can certainly decrease it.
My CTR seems too low
A low Click Thru Rate might be from any number of reasons, but include:
- Is your ad copy enticing enough? This might be an opportunity to test different ad copy to see what works and what doesn’t.
- Is your image enticing enough? They say an picture says a thousand words…try adding more ads with different images.
What should I use: CPM/CPC?
It depends on the ad. If your ad is going to get a lot of impressions, you probably want CPC – it’ll be cheaper. [This might be an ad targeted to a large audience.]
For ads that won’t get as many impressions, CPM is probably going to be cheaper. [CPM is best suited for very targeted ads that don't have as many impressions.]
Should I send visitors to my fan page? or to my website?
Do you want to build up your following on Facebook? Or do you want to pass go and send folks directly to your website?
A good strategy may be to start by sending folks to your fan page. Then once your following is where you want it to be, start sending them over to your website.
There are many, many analyses you can make from Facebook ad data, but these hit the major ones. Now get out there and analyze!