KPIs & metrics

Top 12 Facebook Key Performance Indicators to Measure

Usually, launching a Facebook campaign doesn’t make an amazing impact from the first try. Problems come up here and there, and you must ensure they are removed. The best way to learn what to improve is to keep track of the marketing metrics that show the success on Facebook as a marketing platform.

Whatagraph marketing reporting tool
Dominyka Vaičiūnaitė

Aug 02 2022 8 min read

Whatagraph marketing reporting tool

Table of Contents

  • 1. Reach
  • 2. Impressions
  • 3. Link Clicks
  • 4. Cost per Conversion
  • 5. Follower Demographics
  • 6. Click Through Rate
  • 7. Engagement Rate
  • 8. Follower Growth
  • 9. Referral Traffic From Facebook
  • 10. Video Audience Retention
  • 11. Video Engagement
  • 12. Cost per Click
  • Bottom Line

This article will provide 12 Facebook key metrics that help to evaluate and examine campaign success. Pay attention to these KPIs and your next campaign will be a blast for your clients and your own marketing team.

1. Reach

What it is - Reach refers to the number of unique users who saw a post you published for your client’s account.

There are three different types of Facebook reach:

  • Facebook ad reach - measures users who saw your paid ad in their news feeds;
  • Facebook viral reach - measures users who saw the content on your client’s page in their news feed as a result of their friends' liking, commenting on, or sharing it;
  • Facebook organic reach - measures how many users saw the content on your client’s page, either through their news feeds or by going to your client’s Facebook page.

Reach can also be divided into post reach and page reach. The difference between the two is that the post reach measures a specific post’s reach and page reach - any posted content.

This metric is the first on the list because it affects other Facebook KPI metrics such as comments, likes, engagement, clicks, etc.

How it is calculated - Facebook reach is always measured over a specific time frame (think: 28 days). That implies there is no metric for your overall reach. Marketers should instead track their daily, weekly, or monthly reach.

So to calculate your client’s Facebook page reach - divide the average number of Facebook users reached per post by the number of the total page likes. white-label customize

Why it matters - No matter on what type of reach you are focussing, tracking them is important because it tells a lot about your:

  • Content quality - Make sure to optimize your content, so it’s highly relevant to the client’s target audience.

Advice: Find out what they want to learn about in terms of the client’s business industry. Find more interesting creative ways to promote clients’ products. Craft better unique captions. Utilize polls to find out what the audience wants to read about.

  • Client’s audience size - You may have a reach limit.

Your ability to grow your audience may be constrained if your client has a really narrow, niche-specific audience. In that case, investing more money in your audience is preferable to focusing on irrelevant audience members to grow it.

  • Targeting - You may be targeting the wrong audience.

To ensure you are targeting the right people, build custom audiences yourself. Identify the groups of people who have already produced the most profit for your client's business and target similar audience demographics.

  • Posting frequency - You may be posting too overwhelmingly or underwhelmingly.

These days it is clear - no matter how often you post, it all depends on the content published.

However, digging into data and experimenting with different posting frequencies could tell you what your client’s audience prefers better - more or less content.

We want to offer you a handy tool - Facebook reporting software. It will display all the Facebook metrics and allow you to learn more about your client’s target audience and how your ads perform.

Whatagraph Facebook metrics

2. Impressions

What it is - Impressions count how many times your Facebook ad landed on a user’s Facebook feed.

How it is calculated - Divide your advertising budget by CPM, then multiply the result by 1,000.

Why it matters - Tracking Facebook impressions enables marketing agencies to assess how effectively their ads reach the target audiences and measure the potential of generating conversions.

If the impression rate is low, consider this:

  • Alter ad copy and visuals. Experiment with different creatives, look for inspiration in other campaigns, analyze competitor content and examine what works for their audience.
  • Increase your budget. Increasing the budget for your client’s local business can seem a bit complex. If you cannot increase your budget, you might consider redistributing funds from a lower-priority campaign.

3. Link Clicks

What it is - Link Clicks are "the number of clicks on links within the ad that led to destinations or experiences, on or off Facebook," according to Facebook.

How it is calculated - Link clicks cannot be calculated mathematically. It's a "whole" KPI because it displays the total number of Facebook users' direct actions (link clicks). Link clicks should not be confused with post clicks, which count the number of times users have clicked anywhere on Facebook content.

Marketing agencies can use the Ads Manager to view link clicks Breakdown → By action → Link click destination.

Alternatively, you can skip all these steps and get link clicks presented automatically → here is a Facebook ads report template.

Facebook report template

Why it matters - Link clicks provide insight into how compelling or engaging your ads are. It is crucial to monitor this metric because doing so enables you to monitor other crucial Facebook Ads metrics like click-through rate (CTR).

4. Cost per Conversion

What it is - Cost per conversion tracks and displays the costs for each acquired conversion - the customer.

How it is calculated - Divide the amount you spent on an advertising campaign by the total number of conversions during the same period.

Alternatively, you can skip all these doing math and get cost per conversion KPI presented automatically.

Why it matters - Understanding how much you spend on conversions helps to keep track of the budget without overspending or, in some cases, underspending.

By tracking the cost per conversion, you can:

  • Find out how much you are spending for each conversion and how the costs are fluctuating;
  • Find out which ads convert the best;
  • Find out which ads are not effective, remove costly campaigns and, essentially, save clients money;
  • Find out which ad campaigns work best for the client’s target audience.

cross-channel report

5. Follower Demographics

What it is - This KPI offers insights into the client's audience by supplying details like age, gender, and location.

How to get data on follower demographics? You can’t do it mathematically. You need to use tools like Facebook Insights or Whatagraph.

Why it matters - It’s simple! How do you create content if you know nothing about the audience who will receive it?

Grab the Facebook page dashboard template and get a breakdown of your client’s audience.

Find out who makes up the audience and:

  • Shape your tone of voice;
  • Messages;
  • Customize content to meet the audience’s language;

This information is also useful when creating and setting up your ad campaigns. Define the follower demographics and develop a Facebook strategy that will help the account grow.

6. Click Through Rate

Let’s make the difference between link clicks and click-through rate clear:

When a Facebook user clicks the link on a Facebook post and opens a homepage - that’s a link click KPI.

On the other hand, if a Facebook user clicks the link on a Facebook ad and opens the client’s business website - that’s a CTR KPI.

Now let’s return to the definition of CTR.

What it is - CTR is a Facebook ads KPI, which signifies the percentage of users who clicked the advertisement ads after seeing them.

How it is calculated - Subtract the number of link clicks from the total ad impressions, then multiply the result by 100%.

Why it matters - By monitoring this KPI, you can ensure that:

  • You offer your client's audience quality content;
  • Your Facebook ad design is appealing and understandable, and your CTAs are strong.
  • You target the right audience.

7. Engagement Rate

Nathan, from Diggity Marketing says that to their marketing team engagement rate is one of the top KPIs they are focusing on. It is because:

' It gives an overall understanding of how the marketing strategies function in the company’s favour. It also provides an idea about what else should be done and the areas for improvement.

What it is - Engagement is a Facebook KPI that measures the percentage of people interacting with your content. It could be: liking, commenting, sharing, saving, or clicking the post.

How it is calculated - Total engagement should be multiplied by 100%, divided by total followers.

Alternatively, get a social media reporting tool and automatically get the engagement rate KPI presented to you. You can also benefit from comparing Facebook engagement rates to other channels.

Why it matters - By tracking the engagement rate, you can:

Find out what type of content is most popular;

  • Examine your content strategy and optimize it according to the engagement rates;
  • Save time by not wasting it on the content not relevant to the client’s target audience.

40+ data

8. Follower Growth

What it is - Follower growth calculates the changes in the number of new followers on your client’s Facebook account.

How it is calculated - Divide the number of followers your client’s Facebook account now has by the number you had when they first started, then multiply the result by 100%.

Why it matters - Tracking and seeing growth in followers tells you that your client’s account is progressing and improving.

Moreover, it helps to understand how many people are starting to engage with your client’s brand and content.

9. Referral Traffic From Facebook

What it is - Referral traffic from Facebook measures the number of visitors who landed on your client’s site after clicking an inbound link from another site.

How it is calculated - Use Google Analytics to pull this data: Go to acquisition → All Traffic → Referrals.

Alternatively, you can skip these steps and connect Google Analytics to Whatagraph. Here is a Google Analytics report for that.

Why it matters - Measuring referral traffic from Facebook gives insights into potential customers.

It also benefits the client’s website by boosting website ranking in SERP and increasing page rank.

How to get more Facebook referral traffic for your client? Here is what tortoiseandharesoftware recommends:

  • Update your page information.
  • Host a Giveaway.
  • Place Links In Image Captions.
  • Go Live.
  • Place Static HTML.
  • Use post teasers.
  • Ask a question or solicit feedback.
  • Create Facebook Messenger links.

10. Video Audience Retention

What it is - Audience retention for video measures the user engagement length with the video you published on the client’s Facebook page.

How it is calculated - It’s a complex KPI to measure manually. Yet, you have the option to use the Facebook Insights tool or Facebook reporting software that would show you audience retention patterns over time.

Why it matters - a 50% video retention rate is considered okay.

A lower percentage might indicate that your videos are:

  • Are not engaging;
  • Not relevant to the audience;
  • Videos are of low quality.

11. Video Engagement

What it is - Video engagement measures the percentage of people interacting with your content. It could be: liking, commenting, sharing, saving or clicking the post.

How it is calculated - Take the total number of video engagements, divide it by the total number of video impressions, and multiply it by 100%.

Why it matters - By tracking video engagement, you can:

  • Find out what type of videos are most popular;
  • Examine video strategy, optimize it and publish videos that are of interest to your client’s audience;
  • Save time by not wasting it on videos not relevant to the client’s target audience.

12. Cost per Click

What it is - CPC measures the costs of a single click your Facebook ads get.

How it is calculated - Divide the total amount paid for clicks by the total number of clicks.

Why it matters - To put it simply, to raise the click-through rate while lowering the cost per click. To do that, tracking CPC will make it possible to determine which ad campaign's keywords, ads, and copy perform best overall.

40 data sources

Bottom Line

Facebook's key performance indicators are the key to developing successful Facebook strategies and ad campaigns. However, due to the large number of marketing KPIs available, it may be difficult to decide which ones to use.

This list provided only the most important ones you should consider and that would provide the most value.

If you want to track your Facebook KPIs (for yourself or your clients) in an easy and modern way, you'll need a dependable Facebook analytics reporting tool. Try Whatagraph for free today!

Published on Aug 02 2022

Whatagraph marketing reporting tool

WRITTEN BY

Dominyka Vaičiūnaitė

Dominyka is a copywriter at Whatagraph with a background in product marketing and customer success. Her degree in Mass Communications/Media Studies helps her to use simple words to explain complex ideas. In addition to adding value to our landing pages, you can find her name behind numerous product releases, in-app notifications, and guides in our help center.