Facebook ads are a great way of increasing your reach to clients and candidates. Without knowing what all the jargon means, though, how can recruiters be sure their Facebook campaigns are doing what they want them to do? Here are a few tips from Christina Robinson at Green Umbrella Marketing on Facebook adverts.
Advertising on Facebook
If you have a great organic presence, why bother with advertising? Well, sorry, if you want to make the most out of Facebook, you will also need to invest in advertising to make sure you have a well-rounded social media strategy. No matter how good your organic build is, advertising reaches out to a target audience and builds your visibility to the candidates and clients you really want to see you. The problem a lot of recruiters run into, though, is understanding what all the metrics and seemingly never-ending flow of buzzwords and jargon mean. Don’t worry, you are not on your own, and anyway, why would you understand it? Your world is all about recruitment, and also, you are busy, so why would you waste valuable time learning all the marketing speak? To make things easy, then, let’s take a whistle-stop tour of what it all means.
Working out the Facebook ads Lingo
It doesn’t matter if you are talking about at ad set level or campaign level; you will be looking at pretty much the same metrics. So here are the main ones and what they really mean.
When you set up a Facebook campaign, you will choose an objective. This is the result you want from your campaign. For Recruiters, it will usually be centred on being seen by particular candidates or clients from a particular industry and then generating clicks, page likes or just more reach. This metric is, therefore, a good measure of how successful your campaign or adset has been at doing what you want it to do. This is the one to return to for an indication of how any tweaks or changes are working. So, let’s move on to the rest.
- Reach – This is a measure of people seeing your ad. The number represents individual Facebook users. 1000 reach means 1000 users
- Impressions – This is also about the ad being viewed, but it is not the same as reach. An impression is when the ad is seen. So, if your impressions are a lot higher than your reach, then individual users are seeing your ad repeatedly, and you need to tweak your targeting or the ad itself. See Frequency for more info on this.
- Frequency – This is how many times your ad is being seen by the same person. Don’t underestimate this one; it is far more useful than it initially sounds because it is a great indicator of how well your ad is working. If you have a frequency close to 1 then you are doing brilliantly. That means your ad is being noticed, or action is being taken on the first viewing. When that number is 6… well, time to ask some questions about why it is taking so many views. Usually, it will be down to design.
Another thing to remember about a high frequency is that if your target audience is seeing your ad too much, it could be giving the wrong impression. Imagine being a prospective client or candidate and seeing the same advertisement six times in a short space of time. The last thing you want is to have them remember you for being irritating or thinking that perhaps you are desperate for business. If you see a troublesome frequency, it’s good practice to change the ad or run multiple ads. That way, you are rotating the impact for viewers.
The frequency will also be a good indicator of which designs worked best so you can run similar ads in the future.
- Cost per result – This will tell that all-important return on your marketing costs. How efficient your ad is will affect this, so cost per result can be a good indicator of where you are getting things right or wrong in your design, targeting, and objective. Basically, you want this to be as low as possible.
- Budget – When you set up your campaign or adset, you will be able to set a budget. What you are looking for here is a return that justifies the costs. The great thing about budget is you can tweak it. Facebook will have a minimum daily spend, but anything above that you can adjust.
- Amount spent – As your campaign progresses, Facebook will spend money based on the criteria you set for it. While it will never exceed your set budget, it’s a good idea to see how it is progressing.
- Relevance – This is basically what it says on the tin; it’s how relevant Facebook estimates your ads are to your target audience and, therefore, how they will respond. You want to be as close to 10 as possible in all areas. As a convenient benchmark, anything the wrong side of 5 means you need to adjust your ads. Images, design, the text you use and, of course, how you targeted will all affect your score.
So how is all this useful?
Understanding what all those jargon words in your metrics mean is one thing; using them is another. You need to put them into context and use them as a guide to how well your ads and campaigns went. Break them down to where they are pointing to a success or a bit of a miss so you can adjust. Either way, ask what caused the result. You need to practice so you can see the good and the bad metrics, then look back at the ads and pinpoint what needs to change. Experimentation and development are key to getting great results.
Remember, though, Facebook advertising is not a sprint; it’s more of a marathon. Understanding what those metrics mean in terms of how well you are reaching your target candidates and clients is like getting coaching as you run that marathon. See the story they are telling you, and they will help you refine as you go.
