3 Tools to Use With Facebook Ads in 2019

The continued growth and expansion of digital marketing in 2018 has only tee’d up the industry for further growth in 2019. Healthy growth and increased opportunity has brought new players as well as advertisers into the picture – something that one should expect and prepare for in the new year as competition stiffens. With more businesses allocating budgets towards digital marketing and more people with skin in the game, it is critical that advertisers stay on the cutting edge in order to be successful.

This is important Facebook advertisers in particular as CPMs rise and more people enter the space. While innovative strategy is key, leveraging the appropriate tools to gain better insights will position your business to make better informed decisions and build more effective strategies. There are a few very powerful tools that advertisers should be using as we head into 2019. The best part? They are all free.

Facebook Attribution Tool

While still in its early stages of being available to advertisers, the Facebook Attribution tool is generating quite a bit of buzz in the digital sphere. The attribution tool will give advertisers increased clarity and a better understanding of the consumer journey as well as a look at how their overall advertising efforts are playing a roll in driving sales and/or leads. Setting up the tool requires a bit of work and technical know how but is well worth it. Advertisers are able to look at where their purchases and/or leads are coming from with a number of different attribution windows such as standard and weighted. Using the Attribution tool will give advertisers a leg up when it comes to funnel performance and understanding the impact of each touchpoint along the consumer journey in the marketing mix.

Another benefit to leveraging the Attribution tool is the ability to see not only cross-channel performance, but cross-device. Facebook developed this tool with cross-device attribution in mind as this has been a pain point for quite some time as users continue to be increasingly mobile-centric. Advertisers will be able to see when a consumer first interacts with an ad whether it be mobile or desktop and follow that same consumer to purchase regardless of the device. This will be a huge asset for advertisers in 2019 and will help to accurately assess the return that businesses are getting on their strategy as a whole.

Facebook Analytics

This tool packs a punch when it comes to its capabilities. Easily accessible from the menu in Business Manager, Facebook Analytics is a bit of a dark horse when it comes to analyzing data and holds its own when compared to Google Analytics. All you need to set this tool up is to have the Facebook Pixel implemented on your website – something that you most likely already have done if you are running paid ads. Users are not limited to traffic coming from Facebook and will have a clear look at sitewide performance coming from all channels. Upon opening the tool, you will be greeted with a simple dashboard that displays automated insights as well as a variety of KPIs and metrics with regards to usership, demographics, and site performance.

While there are a lot of available ways to cut and view your data on the left side of the dashboard, perhaps one of the most insightful tools is the Funnels tab. The funnels tab allows advertisers to take a cold hard look at the consumer journey in a number of different lights. Simply add steps to your funnel and select a date range to view the conversion rates and time in between each step. Users can refine each of the selected funnel steps by selecting any of the following parameters to look at:

• Demographics
• Device Info
• User Properties
• Web Parameters

These can then be further refined with secondary parameters to take a very granular look at how your audience is moving through each step in the consumer journey. Having this information will help advertisers better understand where users are dropping off prior to making a purchase. Additionally, advertisers can leverage this valuable insight to strategically build retargeting audiences based on events and specific windows of time. Leveraging the Analytics tool provided by Facebook will be a key advantage for Facebook advertisers including it in their strategy in 2019.

Excel

This one is an absolute must when it comes to advertising on Facebook. While it may be a no-brainer, Excel opens the door to a world of endless time-saving tricks as well as increased accuracy when doing a QA of your work. On the efficiency side of things, leveraging bulk exports as well as bulk imports allows for advertisers to not only build large campaigns in a very timely manner but to also quickly check elements campaign wide for accuracy.

Looking at your campaigns in Excel will give you a very linear look at each ad from the campaign level down to the ad level. You can quickly change copy, headlines, and naming conventions and quickly import changes back into the engine. On the increased accuracy side of things, exporting your campaigns will allow you to thoroughly look at all of your UTMs, naming conventions, copy, and more to ensure that everything is in line. This can cut down your time by over half just by pulling information into this common platform.

Wrapping Up

In summary, all of these tools are low hanging fruit that you and your team should consider leveraging in your toolkit. The best part, they are not hard to access and can offer high reward when used properly. As the digital landscape continues to become more and more competitive, it will be increasingly important to stay on the cutting edge. That means getting things done quicker and more efficiently while also being able to develop your strategy with better insights. Making better informed decisions backed by data will reign supreme over other businesses who may be making strategic decisions based off of arbitrary factors. If you want to stay ahead of the crowd and find success in your Facebook advertising efforts in 2019, be sure to have these tools in your back pocket.