5 Metrics To Track to Know How Your Ads are Performing | 170
Struggling to keep up with the performance of your online campaigns? Fear not, as we dive into the rhythms of daily and weekly tracking that keep your finger on the pulse of your marketing efforts. We'll explore evaluating cost per result, unveiling the true story behind your click-through rates, and interpreting cost per thousand impressions (CPM) without breaking a sweat. Learn how to spot ad fatigue before it ravages your returns and make adjustments that resonate with your audience. Our toolkit will empower you to make informed decisions, streamline your strategy, and grow your market presence. Don't miss out on this strategic deep dive – your next level of advertising mastery awaits!
In this episode, we chat about…
Defining Key Metrics for Customer Journey [00:06]
Daily and Weekly Tracking Metrics [02:03]
Analyzing and Adjusting Ad Performance [06:52]
Signs of Ad Fatigue [10:08]
Episode Transcript:
Welcome back to the podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about metrics that I recommend that you're tracking on a regular basis. Three of them are daily tracks. And then two of them are a little bit more like weekly tracks, if you will. And this is going to help you to know whether or not your ads are working.
So the biggest thing, whether you use the same metrics that I'm talking about or not. The biggest thing is that you want to pick one key metric for each step of the customer journey. That way, you're not going to get bogged down by numbers and data. And I hear a lot of people who talk about that. Like feeling overwhelmed, feeling like there's too many numbers, too much information, too much data.
And so if you think about the customer journey, every single step that they need to take. What is one metric that you can look at and consider as the, the metric, if you will. So if we're taking a lead generation ad, for example, they see the Facebook ad and then click on the ad or taken to a landing page, put in their email address and their name. And then are taken to a thank you page. The freebie is emailed to them. And then they drop into a welcome sequence where if we're talking about something like that, the steps that someone takes are they see the ad. They click on the ad. They go to the landing page, they sign up on the landing page. They go to the thank you page. And then at the same time as that's happening, the email send, do they open the email? Download the freebie. And how do they engage through the welcome sequence? So that's actually even too many steps, more steps than you want. I'm gonna break it down even like smaller steps.
Then if something goes wrong in these, in these steps, Now I'm not going to break it down into smaller steps. That's not even, I'm just going to break it down into the more the essential. Aspects. And then my reasoning for that is, again, you don't want to get bogged down by the numbers. You really want to be able to say, okay, like which piece isn't working, what part of the process isn't working.
And if you find something that's not working, then you can dig deeper into the other numbers and data that are available. At that step, but that you're not confused, overwhelmed, and just ignoring the numbers and data.
So again with that customer journey, the first thing that someone needs to do is engage with the ad. And for that I look at CTR link, click through rate. Specifically the link through the link, click through rate. Because that's telling you the percentage of people who are clicking on the link to go to the landing page.
My overall ad, like looking at the ad, is it working? I want to see if we are getting enough people clicking on it to the landing page. So that's the first metric is the CTR link clicks. The second one is on the landing page are people actually signing up? And so I would be looking at the landing page conversion rate. And then, we want to see with the emails and actually this isn't even on my list, but it is a very important one. The open rate and click rate of your emails. If it had to pick one. I think for that very first email, I'd be looking at click rate and then for the rest of them. I would look at the open rate because you really want to see. For that first email are people actually clicking on the link to download the freebie. But you could always just look at open rate for all of them.
And honestly, if there's other metrics that you're like, no Jenzaia, this is my metric. This is my golden standard for that step along the way. Go. Great. Amazing. I love that for you. I'm just talking about like the five metrics that really worked for me. And I guess six, cause I added in the email open rate. I hadn't planned on talking about that. So again, the first step. How they're engaging with the ad. That's click through rate. And then how do they engage with the landing page? Landing page conversion. And then I actually also look at the cost per result.
So the cost per lead, how much it is costing per person signing up.
And that is like the number one most important piece of information that you're going to get because it tells you if everything else is working, if, for reasons. Your click-through rate is abysmally low. And the landing page conversion rate is terrible. But your cost per lead is still good and in the range that you want, then you don't really need to worry about those other things.
Yes. You can make tweaks and changes and that will help drive the cost per lead down even further. But you don't have to right, like if your cost per lead is within a range that you're happy with, then you don't have to tinker with anything. I just need to continue to monitor it.
So your cost per result is absolutely going to 100% depend on the type of campaign that you're running. It might be a lead. It might be a page view. It might be a sale. I am talking about a lead generation campaign. So of course the cost per result is the cost per lead. Again, this is the most important metric because even if everything else is off base, if you're hitting your target, your goal for the cost per result, then yeah, that's all that matters.
You can determine your ideal or your goal cost per result, based on previous campaigns that you've ran or industry standards. It really depends on your niche, who your audience is. If you have if your audience is consumers. So teachers who are still in the classroom. Mom's fitness enthusiast, then your costs are going to be lower than if you're targeting businesses. Many of my clients who are targeting teachers who are still in the classroom have cost per leads below $2, getting people onto their email list for less than $2. And then business owners, I would say it's closer to like that two to $5 range, depending again, on your audience. And it also depends on the freebie that you are putting out there I've seen cost per lead as high as $30. And we were like very excited and happy about that.
So it really just depends on so many things. Taking in consideration your audience, your niche, and then past performance. That will really help give you an idea of what an ideal target should be. For the click-through rate, if you're not getting the cost per result, that you're wanting. Then I would look at these other metrics that we've already talked about.
Click-through rate. Again, that's the percentage of people who are clicking on your landing page, clicking on the link specifically to go to the landing page. So they click on the link, go to the landing page. I want to see it, at least 1%. I love it when it's higher, obviously the more people who are clicking on your ad, the better. Your ad is doing.
The next one, like I said, is the landing page conversion rate. How well that landing page is converting people into leads. This is typically going to be a higher, your conversion rate is going to be higher for organic and warm traffic. And it's probably going to decrease after ads are turned on. I like to see it at at least 30% before ads start being run because of this decrease. Often, successful landing pages that have amazing messaging and are clear and concise are going to be converting at 50 to 80%.
So you don't have to stop at 30%, you can continue to make tweaks and changes and improve the messaging and the quality of the landing page. But ideally it's going to be at at least 30% before the ads are turned on.
So I track these daily. I track. Cost per result. I track CTR link, click through rate. I track the landing page conversion rate daily. I also look at the CPM and the frequency every single week. The CPM is the cost per 1000 impressions. That's actually how Facebook is charging you. The lower it is, the lower your cost to run ads is. The higher it is, the higher cost to run ads is it is all over the place. This, again, really, really, really depends on your audience, your niche, who you're serving. I've seen it anywhere from like $4 to $40. So you really need to run some ads, try it out with your audience. I like to see it below $20, but I don't even know if that's realistic in some niches.
You again, you want to see it as low as possible and it will fluctuate naturally day today. What you're really looking for is if it is consistently increasing over time. So I track this. I actually inputted into the spreadsheet every day, but I look at it more at an weekly basis and compare it week to week to see how it's trending. Is it trending equal? Is a trending down? Is it trending up?
How significantly is it trending up? How steep of an upward climb is it on? Because again, natural fluctuations are normal. But the CPM is going to be the first. Indicator often of an ad becoming fatigued. It's one of the ways that the algorithm tells you like, Hey, you need to, you need to change the images.
The ad copy. You need to change out. This ad is that the CPM will start to creep up and continue to creep up. And will it cause your ads to become significantly more expensive. That's why you need to keep an eye on it and also comparing it week over week to see how it's trending. And then the last one, similarly frequency, I check on a weekly basis. Until it gets a bit higher and then once it's higher, I check it more regularly.
But what we're looking at frequency is how, what the average number of times one person has seen the ad. It takes the impressions, which is the total number of times the ad has been shown and it divides it by the reach, which is the number of people who've seen the ad. To find what the frequency is that average number of impressions each person has had.
If it's below three, then that's great. And I do look at this typically in a 30 day window. If it's below three. That's great. If it's creeping up above three towards four that's when another sign of fatigue that the people are seeing the ad too much, you really don't want your ad to be shown to people so often that they are annoyed by it.
They're rolling their eyes. They're scrolling by because that is actually going to decrease your click-through rate. So CPM will increase. Frequency will increase CTR link, click through rate will decrease. Those are your key signs of fatigue. Similar to the CPM with frequency. We're looking at it week to week.
How's it trending? Is it going up really, really quickly? And then that gives us an idea. Do we want to switch out the images? Do you want to switch out the audiences? Like what are we going to do to refreshing this ad up?
So just as a bit of a recap, the five metrics that I track consistently are cost per result. CTR link, click through rate. Landing page conversion rate the CPM.
I track all of those daily CPM. I look at and compare trends weekly, and then frequency. I look at weekly in a 30 day window.
Each of these metrics ties to one step on the customer journey. If you have a longer customer journey with additional steps, you're going to want to identify specific metrics for each of those steps as well, so that you can very quickly identify if like the tripwire is working successfully or your sales pages is on fire.
Or if it's on fire the other way, like burning down. I wasn't expecting to say that, and it kind of fell apart into my mouth, but it's okay. That's fine. So each step. Of the customer journey needs to have that one metric tied to it. I hope that this has given you a bit of clarity and also giving you the permission that you might've needed to let a lot of the numbers and information and data go.
If there's a problem. Go back in, grab it, dig through it, look and see what you can find. But You really don't need to be tracking all of it, looking at all of it constantly because those are there's way too many numbers, to process to understand, and to tease out what it all means.
And that's why picking that one metric per step is going to be really, really helpful and make decisions a lot easier.
So, I'll be back next Saturday with another Saturday strategy session. And thank you. So, so, So, much for being here.
So the biggest thing, whether you use the same metrics that I'm talking about or not. The biggest thing is that you want to pick one key metric for each step of the customer journey. That way, you're not going to get bogged down by numbers and data. And I hear a lot of people who talk about that. Like feeling overwhelmed, feeling like there's too many numbers, too much information, too much data.
And so if you think about the customer journey, every single step that they need to take. What is one metric that you can look at and consider as the, the metric, if you will. So if we're taking a lead generation ad, for example, they see the Facebook ad and then click on the ad or taken to a landing page, put in their email address and their name. And then are taken to a thank you page. The freebie is emailed to them. And then they drop into a welcome sequence where if we're talking about something like that, the steps that someone takes are they see the ad. They click on the ad. They go to the landing page, they sign up on the landing page. They go to the thank you page. And then at the same time as that's happening, the email send, do they open the email? Download the freebie. And how do they engage through the welcome sequence? So that's actually even too many steps, more steps than you want. I'm gonna break it down even like smaller steps.
Then if something goes wrong in these, in these steps, Now I'm not going to break it down into smaller steps. That's not even, I'm just going to break it down into the more the essential. Aspects. And then my reasoning for that is, again, you don't want to get bogged down by the numbers. You really want to be able to say, okay, like which piece isn't working, what part of the process isn't working.
And if you find something that's not working, then you can dig deeper into the other numbers and data that are available. At that step, but that you're not confused, overwhelmed, and just ignoring the numbers and data.
So again with that customer journey, the first thing that someone needs to do is engage with the ad. And for that I look at CTR link, click through rate. Specifically the link through the link, click through rate. Because that's telling you the percentage of people who are clicking on the link to go to the landing page.
My overall ad, like looking at the ad, is it working? I want to see if we are getting enough people clicking on it to the landing page. So that's the first metric is the CTR link clicks. The second one is on the landing page are people actually signing up? And so I would be looking at the landing page conversion rate. And then, we want to see with the emails and actually this isn't even on my list, but it is a very important one. The open rate and click rate of your emails. If it had to pick one. I think for that very first email, I'd be looking at click rate and then for the rest of them. I would look at the open rate because you really want to see. For that first email are people actually clicking on the link to download the freebie. But you could always just look at open rate for all of them.
And honestly, if there's other metrics that you're like, no Jenzaia, this is my metric. This is my golden standard for that step along the way. Go. Great. Amazing. I love that for you. I'm just talking about like the five metrics that really worked for me. And I guess six, cause I added in the email open rate. I hadn't planned on talking about that. So again, the first step. How they're engaging with the ad. That's click through rate. And then how do they engage with the landing page? Landing page conversion. And then I actually also look at the cost per result.
So the cost per lead, how much it is costing per person signing up.
And that is like the number one most important piece of information that you're going to get because it tells you if everything else is working, if, for reasons. Your click-through rate is abysmally low. And the landing page conversion rate is terrible. But your cost per lead is still good and in the range that you want, then you don't really need to worry about those other things.
Yes. You can make tweaks and changes and that will help drive the cost per lead down even further. But you don't have to right, like if your cost per lead is within a range that you're happy with, then you don't have to tinker with anything. I just need to continue to monitor it.
So your cost per result is absolutely going to 100% depend on the type of campaign that you're running. It might be a lead. It might be a page view. It might be a sale. I am talking about a lead generation campaign. So of course the cost per result is the cost per lead. Again, this is the most important metric because even if everything else is off base, if you're hitting your target, your goal for the cost per result, then yeah, that's all that matters.
You can determine your ideal or your goal cost per result, based on previous campaigns that you've ran or industry standards. It really depends on your niche, who your audience is. If you have if your audience is consumers. So teachers who are still in the classroom. Mom's fitness enthusiast, then your costs are going to be lower than if you're targeting businesses. Many of my clients who are targeting teachers who are still in the classroom have cost per leads below $2, getting people onto their email list for less than $2. And then business owners, I would say it's closer to like that two to $5 range, depending again, on your audience. And it also depends on the freebie that you are putting out there I've seen cost per lead as high as $30. And we were like very excited and happy about that.
So it really just depends on so many things. Taking in consideration your audience, your niche, and then past performance. That will really help give you an idea of what an ideal target should be. For the click-through rate, if you're not getting the cost per result, that you're wanting. Then I would look at these other metrics that we've already talked about.
Click-through rate. Again, that's the percentage of people who are clicking on your landing page, clicking on the link specifically to go to the landing page. So they click on the link, go to the landing page. I want to see it, at least 1%. I love it when it's higher, obviously the more people who are clicking on your ad, the better. Your ad is doing.
The next one, like I said, is the landing page conversion rate. How well that landing page is converting people into leads. This is typically going to be a higher, your conversion rate is going to be higher for organic and warm traffic. And it's probably going to decrease after ads are turned on. I like to see it at at least 30% before ads start being run because of this decrease. Often, successful landing pages that have amazing messaging and are clear and concise are going to be converting at 50 to 80%.
So you don't have to stop at 30%, you can continue to make tweaks and changes and improve the messaging and the quality of the landing page. But ideally it's going to be at at least 30% before the ads are turned on.
So I track these daily. I track. Cost per result. I track CTR link, click through rate. I track the landing page conversion rate daily. I also look at the CPM and the frequency every single week. The CPM is the cost per 1000 impressions. That's actually how Facebook is charging you. The lower it is, the lower your cost to run ads is. The higher it is, the higher cost to run ads is it is all over the place. This, again, really, really, really depends on your audience, your niche, who you're serving. I've seen it anywhere from like $4 to $40. So you really need to run some ads, try it out with your audience. I like to see it below $20, but I don't even know if that's realistic in some niches.
You again, you want to see it as low as possible and it will fluctuate naturally day today. What you're really looking for is if it is consistently increasing over time. So I track this. I actually inputted into the spreadsheet every day, but I look at it more at an weekly basis and compare it week to week to see how it's trending. Is it trending equal? Is a trending down? Is it trending up?
How significantly is it trending up? How steep of an upward climb is it on? Because again, natural fluctuations are normal. But the CPM is going to be the first. Indicator often of an ad becoming fatigued. It's one of the ways that the algorithm tells you like, Hey, you need to, you need to change the images.
The ad copy. You need to change out. This ad is that the CPM will start to creep up and continue to creep up. And will it cause your ads to become significantly more expensive. That's why you need to keep an eye on it and also comparing it week over week to see how it's trending. And then the last one, similarly frequency, I check on a weekly basis. Until it gets a bit higher and then once it's higher, I check it more regularly.
But what we're looking at frequency is how, what the average number of times one person has seen the ad. It takes the impressions, which is the total number of times the ad has been shown and it divides it by the reach, which is the number of people who've seen the ad. To find what the frequency is that average number of impressions each person has had.
If it's below three, then that's great. And I do look at this typically in a 30 day window. If it's below three. That's great. If it's creeping up above three towards four that's when another sign of fatigue that the people are seeing the ad too much, you really don't want your ad to be shown to people so often that they are annoyed by it.
They're rolling their eyes. They're scrolling by because that is actually going to decrease your click-through rate. So CPM will increase. Frequency will increase CTR link, click through rate will decrease. Those are your key signs of fatigue. Similar to the CPM with frequency. We're looking at it week to week.
How's it trending? Is it going up really, really quickly? And then that gives us an idea. Do we want to switch out the images? Do you want to switch out the audiences? Like what are we going to do to refreshing this ad up?
So just as a bit of a recap, the five metrics that I track consistently are cost per result. CTR link, click through rate. Landing page conversion rate the CPM.
I track all of those daily CPM. I look at and compare trends weekly, and then frequency. I look at weekly in a 30 day window.
Each of these metrics ties to one step on the customer journey. If you have a longer customer journey with additional steps, you're going to want to identify specific metrics for each of those steps as well, so that you can very quickly identify if like the tripwire is working successfully or your sales pages is on fire.
Or if it's on fire the other way, like burning down. I wasn't expecting to say that, and it kind of fell apart into my mouth, but it's okay. That's fine. So each step. Of the customer journey needs to have that one metric tied to it. I hope that this has given you a bit of clarity and also giving you the permission that you might've needed to let a lot of the numbers and information and data go.
If there's a problem. Go back in, grab it, dig through it, look and see what you can find. But You really don't need to be tracking all of it, looking at all of it constantly because those are there's way too many numbers, to process to understand, and to tease out what it all means.
And that's why picking that one metric per step is going to be really, really helpful and make decisions a lot easier.
So, I'll be back next Saturday with another Saturday strategy session. And thank you. So, so, So, much for being here.
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