6 Facebook Metrics Small Businesses Shouldn't Obsess Over

6 Facebook Metrics Small Businesses Shouldn’t Obsess Over

6 Facebook Metrics to Ignore and 6 to Watch

Page Likes < Number of People Engaged

Ad Impressions < Landing Page Conversion Rates

CPC and CPM < CPA

Page Views < Post CTR

Post Reach < Post Engagement

People Reached < People Engaged

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Ignore Page LikesWatch Number of People Engaged

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Ignore Page Likes

All Likes show is your potential audience. Unless you’re converting those Followers to customers it’s just another random number.

It’s better to have 100 Page Likes by people who are converting weekly than 1000 who Liked your Page and haven’t returned.

Focus on achieving Page Likes as a means to an end rather than an end in and of themselves.

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Watch Number of People Engaged

This metric details how many people engaged (clicked, Liked, Shared or Commented on) with your Posts.

The metric provides you with the best assessment of how your marketing strategy has been panning out in the time frame you’ve outlined.

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Ignore Ad ImpressionsWatch Landing Page ConversionRates

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Ignore Ad Impressions

Ad Impressions measure the number of times your advertisement is displayed. People may see multiple impressions of the same advertisement.

Ad Impressions give you an inflated perception of your ad’s auccess

There’s no way of knowing if your Ad was seen by 1.1 million people, or 100,000 people ten times.

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Watch Landing Page Conversion Rates

Tracking your conversion rate is essential as without it you can’t know if all the energy you’re spending on Facebook is resulting in real income.

Conversion rates help you evaluate if there’s a need for a change on your landing page, or if something you’ve recently implemented is beneficial or detrimental.

The best way to track a Facebook Ad’s success off-site is with a Conversion Pixel.

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A landing page is a page on your website with a clear value proposition and call-to-action. Your landing page is the most important part of your website as it’s where you convert a social media user into a customer.

Ignore CPC and CPMWatch CPA

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Ignore CPC and CPM

While CPM and CPC provide context, they don’t tell you how successful your advertisement is or has been in terms of anything you need to know.1

CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) and CPC (Cost Per Click) are exactly what they sound like, the cost of an advertisement or promoted Post divided by 1000 Impressions, and the cost of an advertisement or promoted Post divided by # of Clicks.

Watch CPA

Cost per Action is your most important Ad metric. Simply choose which Action you want your Ad to elicit and Ads Manager will watch it for you.

1Conversion Tracking Pixels are the only way to measure the off-site success of your Facebook advertisement.

If you want more information about Facebook advertising for small businesses, I highly recommend Jon Loomer’s article How to Measure Facebook Advertising Success.and my article 4 Ways to Combat Facebook Ad Fatigue.

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Ignore Page Views Watch Post CTR

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Ignore Page Views

Facebook users spend almost all of their time in their News Feed

Unless you’re running a Facebook contest on Facebook itself you are unlikely to be driving people to your Page at all.

Instead of focusing on promoting your Facebook Page itself, use Facebook Posts and ads to move users to your business’ landing page.

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Watch Post CTR

CTR is the bottom of your Facebook content funnel as it measures action

Your bottom line is knowing how many people were interested in your Posts enough to act on your Calls-to-Action.

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Ignore Post ReachWatch Post Engagement

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Ignore Post Reach

Your Post’s Reach is largely unimportant compared to your Post’s Engagement.

As a small business you’re on Facebook to convert Fans to customers, not see how many customers you’re talking to.

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Watch Post Engagement

Having your Post viewed by a lot of people is largely meaningless if they don’t interact with it. Engagement measures this interaction.

Dividing Engagement by Reach gives you a way to tell if good Engagement on a specific post is due to the quality of your content, or if it was simply shown to more people.

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Ignore People ReachedWatch People Engaged6

Ignore People Reached

The People Reached metric tells you less than the People Engaged metric.

You don’t particularly care about the demographics of who saw your posts - only who clicked, Liked, Shared, commented, or otherwise interacted with them.

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Watch People Engaged

The People Engaged metric is vital to ensure your content is reaching your target audience

People Engaged shows changes in your demographic.

If you’ve been writing demographically-focused posts this metric will tell you if you’re succeeding in targeting your audience

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