A real force of nature ever since it came into existence, with the rise of e-commerce, Facebook has become a mighty money-making tool for those willing to invest some time and money to jump-start selling.
Tracking your progress can be tricky, given the business's dynamic fashion and current marketing trend behavior.
What's more, without a complex combination of proper tools and tracking strategies, evaluating the success of your Facebook ads campaign would be next to impossible.
In this article, we will talk about analyzing your online marketing for your eCommerce business, especially regarding Facebook. There are several ways of doing this, and combining them is the best approach.
Read on to learn more.
What Is Facebook's ROI in the First Place?
The great thing about Facebook as a sales platform is its immense potential for earning money.
There are many different ways to do it, too.
Whether you aim to funnel your large Facebook following toward the same product or turn on paid ads that your friends can see whenever you post something, Facebook's money-making prowess is indisputable.
Setting up a successful Facebook marketing campaign is not a walk in the park, and even a small-scale endeavor requires time, effort, and investment.
The reason behind this is quite simple - to measure your progress at something, you first have to have a clear idea of your goal.
In case you feel overwhelmed with the intricacies of managing some of Facebook's revenue streams, you can outsource PPC management for your Facebook-based marketing campaign to a third-party company.
Nowadays, professional agencies can help you get the most out of your Facebook and other social media campaigns.
They can offer you quite a few services that you may find helpful while saving you a lot of time and resources on tasks that you would otherwise have to delegate to your team.
Ways of Investing in Facebook
According to a survey completed last year, Facebook boasts one of the highest ROI scores of all social media platforms currently active.
By the looks of things, everything will stay the same this year and the next.
There are several ways to invest in Facebook and get a hefty return.
For the most part, since Facebook is social media at its finest, this is achieved through friends and followers.
The broader your audience, the larger the pool of potential customers for your products or services.
As we said above, earning money on Facebook can be something other than a single-pronged approach.
While committing to just one strategy can be a good starting place, implementing more than one way of acquiring funds on this social network is advisable.
To achieve that, however, you will need to invest time, effort, and money.
There are three primary ways that you can earn money on Facebook.
These are direct and indirect revenue streams, including Facebook Ads, gaining traffic from referrals, and using Facebook Shares.
Some of these techniques represent direct ways of making money, while others are indirect methods that concentrate on increasing the number of leads and traffic.
Here’s a bit more detail on each.
Image via Statista
Facebook Ads
Representing one of the most common ways of spending money on Facebook advertising, Facebook Ads can help you get revenue from your fans, website visitors, or people who may stumble upon your Facebook Ad.
Facebook Ads are not a novel strategy to earn money on this social network.
However, what is entirely new about them is the sheer increase in the number of advertisers from just a couple of years back.
There are some 50 million businesses active on Facebook, and over 3 million are using Facebook Ads as one of their main ways of generating revenue.
This figure of 3 million represents a rather steep 50% increase from last year.
In terms of mounting a successful ad strategy on Facebook, knowing when to press on and when to take a break is essential. Also, understanding your target audience well enough is of utmost importance.
For many marketers, focusing on their audience instead of random users has been the best overall strategy.
At the same time, spreading your resources equally to cover a broader audience can be a better overall approach.
You might lose some money this way, but you will only know what works for your business and what doesn't if you try out each strategy first.
Referral Traffic
Sharing links on social media networks is nothing new.
Not so recently, intelligent people figured out a way to monetize this.
The biggest question is whether you plan to monetize links that lead back to your Facebook page or fancy venturing further into the World Wide Web for an even wider reach.
Typically, referral traffic was the most prominent with Google, as the most robust platform for sharing links this way.
Recently, and quite impressively, Facebook took over as the most prominent force in this respect. More money-earning links are shared this way than on any other platform or search engine.
Depending on your business model, there are two ways you can direct traffic to your online premises.
The first solution would be to pursue the strategy of disseminating links within your Facebook friend circle.
This way, you can quickly disseminate many valuable links, but your marketing sway will also be limited to Facebook-based audiences.
Alternatively, you can focus primarily on sharing links with your friends and followers, directing them to online commerce venues outside of Facebook.
Finally, you can try both strategies and see which works best.
Remember that a good, high-quality ROI analysis takes time, so arm yourself with patience for the best results.
Facebook Shares
Regarding how you can utilize Facebook to make money, some methods may be more straightforward than anticipated.
Take sharing a post, for example.
Sharing posts is one of the most popular features on this social network and one of the most valuable assets you can rely on to increase sales.
This may seem odd at first but bear with us.
When someone clicks on your link, they might buy the product or service that the page associated with that link contains.
But when someone shares your link, they can buy that item, and potentially, their friends can do so, too.
Having someone share your link and post it on their wall can be one of the most effective methods of free dissemination.
Ways to Track Facebook ROI
While tracking your ROI on Facebook is not exactly nuclear science, arriving at the correct figures demands some dedication.
This mostly comes down to using one of the tools put forth by Facebook and Google.
Here are these two complex tools described in more detail.
Facebook Insights
If you want to measure some simple metrics related to your Facebook presence, such as your reach, engagement, post clicks, and the number of shares and comments, Facebook Page Insights can be your best option.
Example of Facebook Insights Overview via megalytic
A clear idea of the posts with the highest click-through rate is essential to determining whether your Facebook sales campaign has performed well.
On the other hand, you can also evaluate the success of your ad campaign by observing the amount of money you've spent on each ad post.
Also, as simple as it sounds, seeing and recording how many clicks you receive per post can be a significant asset that can help you determine the state of your campaign.
Facebook Page Insights allows you to get this data quickly and effortlessly.
Business Impact With Google Analytics
Unlike Facebook's Insights, Google Analytics is a charm for tracking referral traffic.
This feature works automatically through social reports tools.
For this reason, this metric is novice-friendly and requires little to no expertise to use correctly.
Conclusion
A well-organized and run ad campaign on Facebook nowadays can bring in more leads and a higher return than if you were to splurge on a real-life ad campaign.
Arming yourself with patience and some excellent analytics tools is essential here.
It can be the difference between spending unnecessarily large amounts on failed-in-advance marketing campaigns and delivering 'high-precision' marketing tactics that propel your Facebook-based business straight to financial stardom.
The great thing about the state of modern-day Facebook and Google analytics is that you don't have to be an expert to use them.
All you have to do is click a few buttons, and you're pretty much set — even with just a basic knowledge of computers.
Author Bio
Sarah Watson is an economist and content writer currently employed with DigitalStrategyOne.
She’s a passionate blogger expressing herself through her creative and informative articles about online marketing strategies.
