Picking the right optimization for a campaign is easy in theory but can be difficult in practice. Some good questions to ask yourself during this process are “How did I determine my optimization? How did I decide what levers to pull to strengthen my campaign? What were my results and were they what I expected?” If you do not know how to navigate these questions before you create your campaign, you might already be steps behind your competition.
Let me show you how we optimize campaigns for our clients to guarantee maximum results. For this example, let’s use Facebook/Instagram as our platform.
The Current State of ROI
According to HubSpot, 40% of marketers say that proving ROI is one of their top challenges. But this isn’t to say that businesses don’t think they know how to track their return. In fact, 73% of businesses regularly track their social media efforts, they’re just looking at the wrong metrics. With 97% of the top brands on Facebook still using organic posting as their lone social strategy, many marketers are left trying to figure out how likes, comments, and shares lead to overall sales (hint, hint: they DON’T). If revenue is what you’re looking for (which it’s probably safe to say it is), vanity metrics will never get you the return you’re looking for. Here are three reasons why real-time ROI tracking is the missing ingredient to your business’ success:
Determining the Campaign Optimization
When thinking of the results you want from your ad campaigns, you’re probably saying, “I want more sales! I am going to optimize for sales!” You’re definitely on the right track but how are you going to optimize for purchases? Unfortunately, there isn’t an “I want more purchases” button on Facebook. Are you going to optimize for conversions? Website Views? Reach? Engagement? There are a lot of options to choose from so it’s important that you know which route to take. The first step is to always determine your optimization based on your Key Performance Indicators (KPI). Then, you’ll want to make sure it’s measurable. If sales is your KPI, that’s a good start, but what kind of sales do you want? Do you want more new customers? More repeat customers? Do you want to push a certain product or line? Whatever your KPI is, you have to make it measurable. If you don’t, you won’t be able to see the fruits of your labor and you’ll be relying on total revenue to tell the story of your success. Once we know what we are measuring, it will be easy to determine how we want to measure it. For this example, it’s been determined that you want to increase sales by getting new customers into your brick and mortar store. To do that you will set up a reach campaign optimized to hit people in a 5-mile radius of our store.
How to monitor success during the campaign
Let’s say that your campaign is set to run for 3 months. After it has started, you’ll want to make sure that you’re checking in on the campaign at least once a week to ensure everything is running smoothly and that you’re on track to hit your KPIs. To track your campaign’s success, it’s CRUCIAL that you upload your store’s new-customer transaction data on a weekly basis at a minimum. By doing so, you’ll be able to determine your cost per acquisition (CPA) on this campaign and how to decrease the cost to acquire them. If you do not upload the data, you will be aimlessly running your campaign and it will be a failure!
Determining the Success of Campaigns
You should always be looking at your return on investment (ROI) to determine the success of your campaign. If you’re only looking at new customers, you’ll want to look for a 3x ROI on the lifetime value of those new customers. Let’s just say that a new customer spends $100 with your brick and mortar for example. In order for your $500 Facebook ad campaign to be successful, you will need to obtain $1,500 from these new customers, which would break down to 15 new customers acquired from this particular campaign.
Run Your Campaigns like a Pro
Facebook campaigns are a great way to increase your website traffic, leads, and sales. If you are new to creating campaigns or have been trying with no luck, follow the tips above and you’ll be an expert in no time. When done correctly, the new world of marketing is less expensive and exponentially more effective than traditional marketing efforts.
Are you ready to save some time and money? Contact us for a free consultation or click here to read more about our paid social services that will maximize your ROI!