Tracking Your Facebook Marketing – the Statistics that You Should Watch
Facebook has become an important part of most online marketing campaigns now because it is so cheap and user friendly and almost anyone can set up a brand page and get some click through ads or sponsored stories started by themselves. A really great feature of Facebook advertising is the access to its analytical tools to its users. By using Facebook Insights, it is possible to see at a glance who your message is reaching, how many likes you have picked up, and how many Facebook users are talking about your page or how many clicks you have generated on your ads in real time.
On the surface it might appear that the number of ‘likes’ that you collect on your Facebook brand page might be the most important statistic to track. After all, people that have ‘liked’ your brand and are following have shown a direct enough interest in your business to follow your posts in their newsfeeds. While the number of ‘likes’ is a sort of general rule of thumb measure of how popular your brand page is on Facebook, the breakdown of demographics that Facebook Insights provides is far more useful. Examining these personal details of the people that are ‘liking’ your brand, gives you a good indication of who to target with your marketing on Facebook.
A closer look will reveal that ‘likes’ are only the first step in the marketing process on Facebook and that the really vital statistic is the reach that your posts have. When your fans interact with your posts, they become visible to their friends for the life of that particular post. These are the people that your messages are really reaching and the number of them is always more than the number of people that have ‘liked’ you. In order to grow your following on Facebook and extend that reach your message has to encourage these people, many of whom will be seeing your brand for the first time, to ‘like’ your page. The more detailed statistics that Insights offers are also providing useful information about how many times your message has reached people. If you have a high percentage of one person being reached one time it may indicate that your posts aren’t engaging them and enticing them to connect with you.
The third, and perhaps the most important statistic that Facebook Insights provides, is the number of people that are talking about your page. This statistic tracks the number of people that have shared your link or ‘liked’ your post. These statistics are further broken down for users in the Facebook Insights Dashboard where it is possible to separate the different ways that people have shared your stories and graphing the viral reach of each method.
Facebook ads also offer useful tracking statistics that allow you to judge the effectiveness of your advertising. The important variable in Facebook advertising is the amount that is bid per click which if it is too low will limit the page impressions while if it is too high will be costing you money unnecessarily. Tracking the number of impressions for your ads as a guide to gradually increasing your bid per click is an effective method of finding the right level of spending for Facebook campaigns while tracking clicks can give you a clear indication of how effective your ad’s call to action really is.
To get the most out of your marketing efforts on Facebook it is necessary to look beyond the number of likes on your page and to examine the traffic more closely. By using that information to target the right audience it is possible to get the most bang for your marketing buck on Facebook.
