With 55.8 million users in the UK, Facebook can be a powerful marketing platform to reach a large audience. It is the go-to for many businesses that want to create brand awareness, increase engagement, and generate revenue – and healthcare businesses are no different!
Facebook is full of businesses, and with new ones joining the platform every day, they end up competing for a spot on newsfeeds. As a result, it can be hard to make your clinic stand out through the noise.
With poor organic reach and little exposure, businesses often opt to run Facebook ads to reach a broader audience that wouldn’t necessarily find their business otherwise.
These ads take time, research, and money to create, and once the campaigns are published, they’ll need to be optimised continuously.
In this blog, we will discuss the metrics you’ll need to track once your ads are up and running. You’ll need to start doing this straight out the gate to measure the ROI (return on investment) you are generating.
If you are running Facebook ads to try and attract more private patients to your clinic, this blog post is definitely for you! Grab a cup of coffee, open your ad manager and let’s get those patients in.
How do you track Facebook Ads?
Once you’re logged into Ads Manager, click on ‘’Campaigns’’ where you will be able to see all your ads. On the right-hand side, select the ‘’Columns’’ drop-down menu.
You will see the default view of all the metrics that Facebook has automatically chosen for you. This view doesn’t offer you all the metrics you will need, so we suggest selecting the following metrics:
- Delivery
- Frequency
- Reach
- Impressions
- CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions)
- CPC (all)
- Clicks (all)
- Link Clicks
- CTR (all)
- CTR (link click-through rate)
- Attribution selling
- Results
- Cost per result
- Amount Spent
- Landing page views
Now, let’s go through the key Facebook ad metrics that will help you analyse and optimise. We will cover seven of the metrics you will now have selected to show up on your dashboard, as these are the most important to successfully track your ad. (You’ll find them highlighted in the image above.) The other metrics included in the list help us to understand these seven key metrics.
#1 – Results
Under ‘results’, you’ll be able to find the number of times that your ad achieved the outcome you have set. In your case, you will probably be looking at the leads (new patient inquiries) that your ad has achieved.
This is a crucial metric in showing you how well your campaign is performing, and it is arguably the most important to track. If you see the number of leads is low, you know you’ll have to adjust your ad. If you see it is high, find out why so you can keep doing what is working!
The results depend on each campaign, the amount you are willing to spend and numerous other factors such as competition in the area.
#2 – Cost per Result (CPR)
This measures the cost for each desired outcome. In your case, you will be tracking the cost per lead (new patient enquiries). Regardless of your goals, this is an incredibly important metric to track to measure your campaign’s success.
In different industries, the average CPR (cost per result) will vary. In the dentistry industry, for example, we want to see a maximum CPR of £20-£25; however, for anything above £15-20, we will start looking at making adjustments to reduce this cost.
#3 – CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions)
The CPM is the cost per 1,000 impressions. It is how much it costs you to show your ad 1,000 times to people. Some people may see the ad several times, some just once. This helps us measure the cost-effectiveness of an ad campaign.
If your CPM is high, this could mean your target audience is competitive, or your ad is weak, and Facebook doesn’t find it relevant enough to show it to your audience, so you should either tweak your ad or broaden your audience.
The average CPM we are looking for here is £10-12. At Ignite, if the CPM reaches more than £10, it is usually from high competition in the area. That’s to say, we are competing with other businesses in the same area. We then would increase the budget to ensure Facebook shows our ads to our target audience, so our ads get seen above the ads of our competitors. Essentially, we are all bidding for a spot on their screens, such as on their newsfeeds and stories.
#4 – Landing Page Views
The landing page views show the number of times someone has clicked on your ad link and successfully loaded your landing page.
Setting up a good landing page is vital in order to get those prospective patients booked into your clinic. Once they are on your landing page, the ad has done its job. Now it’s up to you to make sure they convert.
We cannot stress enough the importance of this!
#5 – Link Clicks
Link clicks refer to the number of times somebody has clicked on your CTA (call to action). For your campaign, it will probably be the number of times someone clicks the button saying something along the lines of ‘’Book now’’ to book a consultation. This will lead them to the landing page.
You may find discrepancies between this number and the landing page views when you expect them to be the same. This can happen when users click on the CTA and the landing page takes too long to load, so they simply click off. If a page takes over 3 seconds to load, over 50% of mobile users will abandon the site. Make sure your landing page loads quickly!
To test your website speed go to Google page speed insights.
Accidental clicks are also counted where they instantly abandon the site, so the landing page views don’t increase as the page hasn’t loaded properly, yet the link clicks will be higher.
#6 – CPC (cost per click) and CTR (click-through rate)
CPC stands for cost per click. This is the average amount you pay for each link click.
CTR is the percentage of people who have clicked anywhere on the ad – whether on the link, on an image or to read the full copy. This metric is usually a great indicator of overall engagement with the ad.
CTR (link click-through rate) only tracks the link clicks hence the discrepancy between the two.
If your CPC is high, you’ll need to check your CTR. A low CTR indicates that your target audience isn’t appropriate for your ad, or your ad isn’t relevant or attractive enough to your audience.
Ideally, you’re looking for a high CTR (the average we want for healthcare businesses is around 2.5%), which will, in turn, reduce your CPC.
#7 – Frequency
The frequency is the average number of times each person has seen your ad. The calculation is done by dividing the number of impressions by the reach, which is how many people have seen your ad. Remember that this is an average. Some people may have seen your ad 5 times, while others have seen it once.
When prospective patients see your ad around 2.5 times each, the ad will generally stop performing well. This is because it is being shown to the same people who are not engaging with it, and continuing to show it to these people is unlikely to achieve anything – you might just annoy them slightly! We’ve all been there when we see ads that don’t interest us pop up time and time again.
To stop Facebook from continuing to show the ad to the same people who aren’t interested, you’ll need to reset your ad set or change your ad copy or creative (new video or image!).
If you opt to reset your ad set, which you can do by clicking ‘edit’ under ‘Ad sets’ on your dashboard, you’re effectively getting a new audience which meets the same criteria as your target audience. You should notice your ad performing substantially better after this, but you may have to reset the ad set several times throughout the running of your campaign to ensure the ad isn’t being shown to the same people more than a couple of times.
Inaccuracies in Facebook Reporting
There is an important factor which may be affecting your results. Since an iOS update in 2021, Facebook has been showing inaccuracies with their reporting of conversions. They offer some tips on how to help reduce these inaccuracies, but it is less than ideal. Many ad agencies use a third-party program to monitor their ads accurately. This can be pricey, but it is something to bear in mind when looking at the results.
At Ignite, we have all the tools to create and optimise Facebook ads effectively. If you’re interested in a call to find out how we can help you and your business, book a free growth call. There are no strings attached; on the call, we work with you to build a strategy that is tailored to your needs.
Let us know how tracking the performance of your Facebook ads is going and if you have any questions. If you need more support, why not book a free growth call with our growth expert Meg.
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