Editor’s note: Evan Levy is Paid Media Manager handling all paid media operations and strategy for Raleigh-based Three Ships Media, a social media marketing firm.

RALEIGH, N.C. – For many of our clients, the Facebook advertising question has shifted from “should I?” to “how much?” Facebook has grown by leaps and bounds over the past year offering advertisers better inventory, more control over audience targeting, and improved reporting with tools like conversion tracking and a more robust reporting interface.

But as more data is made available, many advertisers are running into information overload. It’s critical not to let the fire hose of data sweep you off your feet. At the same time, advertisers need to be willing to use additional information where appropriate. Anytime we run an ad campaign we clearly define what success looks like, and how we intend to get there before we spend the first dollar. Here are some of the key things you should be considering when setting up your campaigns:

Audience and Budget
This goes for any ad campaign you may choose to run, but is especially important on Facebook because of the array of targeting options available. Spend the time in the interface to get actual audience size estimates based on demographic, geographic, interest, or first party data (like an email list). Estimate CPCs, CPMs, and CTRs to determine the appropriate budget amount for your goals and make sure you’re not spending above your efficiency thresholds.

Engagement vs. Conversion
If you’re running Facebook campaigns it means you will (hopefully) be getting real-time feedback on the quality of your content in the form of likes, comments and shares. These metrics are useful directionally, especially if your organization has defined value for engagement, but are often not correlated with immediate revenue generation. Be sure to tag any links in content with the appropriate parameters for your analytics platform to track user behavior on your site. Using a link shortening tool like bit.ly is a great way to keep URLs short and clean in content, while still containing any necessary tracking parameters. This will facilitate a better understanding of how Facebook traffic benefits your bottom line, making it easier to justify increasing or decreasing spend on the platform.

Impression vs. Click Conversions
What your analytics platform may not be able to tell you, is the number of people that saw your ad on Facebook and then Googled your company to buy your products (or sign up for your newsletter, or download the latest eBook, etc). This is where the post-impression conversion metrics come in to play. Facebook reports on impression conversions as many as 28 days after the initial impression. However, when the window expands to that long of a time period, it becomes much more difficult to say one particular Facebook ad uniquely influenced the user to convert. Choosing your attribution window is an important internal discussion to have, and will have significant impact on CPA and perceived performance. Choose too short of a window, and you may be under-reporting conversions. Choose too long of a window, and you run the risk of over-stating channel influence. Finding the right balance can be challenging, but is an important part of Facebook conversion tracking.

(c) Three Ships Media