Excel is a tool much used in business, and one of the most useful applications is in marketing. Whether you are a marketer at a company or agency, or if you’re an individual operating on your own, Excel can help you track the performance of your Facebook marketing campaigns and take action accordingly.
Facebook marketing is relatively new compared to other forms of marketing, and as a result, there aren’t many marketing metrics that can be tracked precisely. That being said, there are a few key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can use to get a general idea of how your Facebook marketing is performing.
One of the most useful applications of Excel in marketing is its ability to track key performance indicators (KPIs). These are metrics that can be tracked easily and provide a clear indicator of how well a marketing campaign is performing. The first step is to define which KPIs you will use to track the success of your campaign. Next, you’ll want to develop a formula to calculate these KPIs. Finally, you’ll need to set up automated alerts so you can monitor the progress of your campaign.
Define Your KPIs
The first step in creating an Excel formula to calculate your KPIs is to define which ones you will use. This is fairly straight-forward; you’ll simply list down the KPIs you will use to monitor the performance of your Facebook marketing campaigns. Once you’ve defined your KPIs, you can move on to the next step.
Set Up Your Formula
The second step is to set up your Excel formula to calculate your KPIs. You’ll want to create a separate sheet for this purpose and make sure that all your formulas are encapsulated in the sheet. This will make it much easier to maintain and update as needed. You can also add further columns to the sheet to track different facets of your Facebook marketing performance. For example, you might want to track the following columns:
- Engagement – The number of fans you have on your Facebook page
- Likes / Reactions – The number of times your content was liked or reacted to on the platform
- Video Views – The number of videos you posted and the total number of hours spent watching those videos
- Shares – The total number of times your content was shared on the platform
- Interactions – The total number of times somebody interacted with your content (shares + comments)
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) – The cost per acquisition (CPA) is the amount of money you spent on a given campaign divided by the number of leads / sales that you generated as a result of the campaign
- New Customers – The total number of individuals who have never engaged with you on Facebook but who have become a customer because of your campaign
- Revenue Per Customer – The average revenue generated by a given customer as a result of your campaign
It’s important to note here that you don’t need to track all of these metrics in order to pull useful information out of them. Simply focusing on a few key metrics will give you a clear idea of how well your campaign is performing. With that in mind, let’s get back to the formula for now.
Calculate Your KPIs
The final step is to actually calculate your KPIs. When you defined your goals for the year (and hopefully, this is at least quarterly), you’ll have access to a dashboard where you can see the results of your efforts anytime you log in. Your key performance indicators (KPIs) will be neatly presented in a graph, which makes it much easier to track the progress of your campaign.
As we mentioned earlier, not all of your key performance indicators (KPIs) can be tracked using Facebook, however, these are the key ones you can use to get an idea of how effective your campaign is. Once you’ve defined your top-level metrics, you can get very specific with your sub-metrics and dive into analysis mode. This is something that may take you a while to master, but it’s definitely worth the effort. Being in analytics mode, you’ll be presented with a multitude of reports and graphs that will shed light on how well your campaign is performing. You can also go back to review any metric at any time, which makes this step very useful. If you need further assistance, simply head over to the [Formula Helper website](https://formulahelper.com/) and get started. You’ll be able to access any formula you created within minutes via a simple click of a button.
At this point, you’ll want to test the formula you created to ensure that it functions properly and send it to your client for review. Once they sign off on it, you can roll it out to their organization. Keep in mind that you want to test the formula in a sandbox environment first so that you can ensure that it doesn’t interfere with existing data and in turn, create major headaches down the line. Once you’ve gotten everything set up and tested, you can remove the sandbox environment and move forward with the deployment process.
Monitoring Your Performance
One of the great things about the above spreadsheet is its ability to monitor your performance. As you may have guessed, this isn’t something that can be easily tracked using Facebook. That being said, you can use the key performance indicators (KPIs) you defined above to get a clear idea of how your campaign is coming along.
You’ll want to check your Engagement and Likes / Reactions columns frequently. These are two of the more straightforward ones, and as a result, it’s not difficult to keep an eye on their progress. If you notice that one or both of these numbers are increasing, but not in a consistent manner, then it may be a good idea to re-evaluate the campaign. In some instances, this could mean that your content is resonating with the audience but not in the manner you intended and needed. This is what led you to run the campaign in the first place, so it’s important that you understand this process. As you get more experience, this will become less of an issue but it’s still useful to know how best to avoid them in the first place.
Next, check your video views and shares columns. These are also straightforward and easily accessible metrics that should increase as your content gets more attention and is more frequently viewed or shared. If either of these numbers is decreasing, it may be a sign that your content isn’t pulling its weight.
Last, but certainly not least, check your cost per acquisition (CPA) and revenue per customer (RPC) numbers. These are the two most vital metrics for any business running a paid advertising campaign on Facebook. If these numbers are increasing but not in a consistent manner, then it could be a sign that you’re spending more money than you’re making (unprofitable ROI), or vice-versa (profitable ROI). The former is a major cause for concern as it indicates that you’re not maximizing your return on investment (ROI), while the latter is usually an indication that you’re doing something right.
Takeaway
Creating a Facebook marketing key performance indicator (KPI) formula and email campaign with Excel is fairly straightforward. You’ll simply need to define which metrics you’ll use to track the performance of your Facebook campaigns, set up a formula to calculate those metrics, and develop automated alerts so you can keep track of the performance of your campaign over time. One of the great things about this approach is that it provides you with flexibility. If you need to add a new KPI to the mix, you can do so easily enough using Excel formulas. This is a much different approach than setting up a complex accounting system or building out an entirely new application from scratch.