Nothing is worse than feeling like you’ve spent (or wasted) your time and money on paid ads because you didn’t understand what your return was! What’s the point of creating ads if you aren’t confident in exactly what the outcome is?? Here’s a common scenario among business owners who are DIY’ing their own ads – They boosted or promoted a post and the results show that they got a bunch of clicks, impressions, and traffic to their website, but then what? How did these impressions actually impact their business?

Sure, it got more eyes on their content, but what was the tangible outcome? How many people joined their email list, booked a session with them, or purchased their product after seeing their ad? Can you relate?

You might be thinking, “Ok, great! Now how do I calculate my ROI in the first place and what am I supposed to measure??”. Let’s dive into how exactly you can determine your return on ad spend and understand what came of your Instagram and Facebook Ads!

How to determine your dollar-for-dollar return on your ads:

1. Determine what you’re measuring

Before spending a dime on paid paids, you must determine what you’d like out of your ads. Do you want people to download a freebie? Fill out a HoneyBook inquiry form that’s embedded on your website? Sign-up for your webinar? Are you looking for people to purchase your course or product?

There are many additional reasons you might want to create an ad and I can guarantee that you can accomplish it within Facebook Ads Manager! Determining the goal of your ad campaign is the first step in creating a winning strategy with a high ROI. Knowing exactly what you are measuring makes it much easier to see if your ads are actually working or not!

2. Get your pixel installed on your website ASAP

Have you ever wondered how your computer or phone knows you were on a website looking at an item and then all of a sudden your feed includes ads for that product you looked at? Hello, Facebook Pixel! 👋🏽

Set aside 15-30 minutes and get your Facebook Pixel installed this week on your website! I’ll say it again for the small business owners in the back. Get your Pixel installed THIS week! Here’s a free video tutorial to walk you through getting this done!

This little piece of code is POWERFUL, friends! Your Facebook Pixel gives you the power to create ads that retarget to website visitors, those who have visited specific pages on your website, and you can even select a time frame of when they have visited your website.

If you read the word “code” above and it made you a little queasy – don’t worry, I promise you don’t need coding skills to get this installed on your website!!! Facebook actually makes it pretty darn easy.

If you don’t have your Pixel installed yet, or aren’t confident you did it correctly, I have a free video tutorial walking you step-by-step through the entire process  here.

3. Set up your campaign within Ads Manager properly

When you create your ad in Facebook Ads Manager, you want to make sure your campaign is set up properly so that it will measure your end goal (email sign ups, sales, etc). You’ve already spent this much time goal setting, determining what you’re measuring, and setting up your pixel that you don’t want to set up your ad incorrectly and end your campaign in frustration! Ensure that when you’re at the Campaign level you select the campaign type that most accurately describes what you’re looking to achieve. Hover over the Campaign Objectives and you’ll see a short description of why you’d want to select that Objective.

Not sure where to begin with this? Make sure to finish up this blog post, then check out my blog post on How to Navigate Facebook Ads Manager.

4. Set up those reporting columns

Okay, here’s the BIG piece of the puzzle we need to chat about! It’s time to look at setting up reporting columns so we understand exactly what our return is on our investment! Take a look at the video below to see how I set up custom reporting columns for my ad clients. 

After you’ve set up these columns, you’ll want to check in on your ads a few times a week.  No, not every 2 hours – you have to give your ads time to work their magic! This is one of those things you have to leave alone for it to gain traction and optimize because Facebook learns what your audience responds to and adjusts its delivery. If you’re changing things around daily, it can slow this process down. (I know it’s scary to avoid looking daily – but take a deep breath and trust the process). To all my HoneyBook lovers out there, you can even set up a reminder within HoneyBook that syncs up with your Google Calendar to remind you to check in on your ads a few times a week! No need to worry about forgetting about checking in anymore!

Once you have everything in place and know how to read your reporting columns, you can finally determine the return you’re getting from your ads! After you see exactly what the outcome of your ads is, you have the ability to turn off ads that aren’t performing well so that your ad spend starts going to the ads that are working!

As you can see, calculating your return on investment isn’t insanely difficult, but it does take intentionality in setting up your campaign and custom reporting columns properly. For more free resources, check out our full blog here and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @AdsUncorked!