Social media continues to be a powerful tool for marketers. That said, to plan an effective campaign, it’s important to track certain key ad metrics. Knowing which metrics to focus on gives you an advantage over the competition by providing a clear illustration of how a campaign is performing.
It’s also important to keep in mind that metrics will vary from one platform to another. When getting started with social media advertising, it is a good idea to partner with an experienced firm. A knowledgeable Facebook marketing company or Twitter expert can help you gain essential online marketing skills.
Keep the following examples in mind to enhance your own social media marketing efforts:
Relevance Score
For brands, Facebook is a useful marketing platform because of its large user base. As of early 2018, Facebook has approximately 2.19 billion active monthly users. Businesses across a wide range of industries can leverage the site to target potential customers while casting a wider net than other social media platforms allow.
Facebook also assigns a “Relevance Score” to ads, ranking their strength on a scale of one to 10 based on several factors. The initial score serves merely as a prediction of how effective an ad will be. After the campaign is published and users actually interact with the ad, the score adjusts. By keeping an eye on this metric, a marketer can determine what steps they need to take in the future to develop stronger content.
Luckily, tracking the right metrics simplifies this process. Facebook also assigns a “Relevance Score” to ads and promotional posts, ranking their strength on a scale of one to 10 based on several factors. These include the amount of times it was liked and shared. The score also factors in potentially negative responses to an ad, like how often users reported it.
The initial score serves merely as a prediction of how effective an ad will be. After the campaign is published and users actually interact with the ad, the score adjusts. By keeping an eye on this metric, a marketer can determine what steps they need to take in the future to develop stronger content.
Post Volume
How often should you post on a given social media platform? There’s no one right answer, as it varies from one brand to another. That’s why it’s a good idea to track post volume and compare it to user reactions. Studying this metric helps marketers determine the perfect “sweet spot” for their business.
You should also maintain an automated social media calendar when tracking this metric. Understanding how often you should post is one thing. Actually posting according to a proper schedule, however, can be time-consuming if you’re also focusing on other marketing tasks. Once you have an idea of the ideal post volume, scheduling content ahead of time makes it easier than ever to implement the lessons you’ve learned.
Conversions
Your ads should do more than justs let a potential customer know your brand exists. They should link back to a page where a consumer can make a purchase or take a similar action. If you’re only tracking how many clicks an ad receives, you’re not actually learning whether that ad turned someone into a genuine customer. Tracking conversions is key to fully understanding how effective an ad is.
Luckily, some platforms offer tools that make it easy to track conversions. An example would be the Facebook Pixel. This piece of code can be inserted into your page so you can find out how many people took a desired action (like buying a product or registering for a service) after seeing your Facebook ad. Use it to efficiently determine how effective a Facebook campaign actually is.
Video View Time
Video should be an essential part of your marketing efforts. According to one report, video will actually account for 82% of web traffic by 2021. Video content is effective because it’s dynamic, and it lets you easily convey a large amount of information in a short period of time.
However, it’s worth noting that simply tracking views won’t tell you if a video campaign is successful. Facebook actually considers a “view” to be any instance in which a user played your video for longer than three seconds.
The problem is, many videos simply autoplay on Facebook when a user scrolls over them in their feed. That means a view doesn’t necessarily mean a user engaged with the content. Tracking the actual length of time users spend watching your videos is more important.
All marketers know that tracking ad metrics is key to developing stronger campaigns in the future. That said, it’s important to pay attention to the right ones. The examples listed here are four you should definitely focus on if you want to realize the full potential of social media for marketing.
