The One Facebook Ads Metric That Matters

Most of the Facebook Ads metrics are there to tell the story of an Ad.

They're not the be all and end all and they're not the deciding factor of whether an Ad is good or bad.

The most important metric of your Facebook Ads, that 99% of your decisions should be made from is:

Cost Per Purchase (also known as Cost Per Acquisition).

This number tells you how much it's costing you to generate a single purchase from your Facebook Ads.

It's calculated by simply dividing your Ad spend by the number of purchases.

For example: spent $100 on Ads and generated 10 orders from them? Your Cost Per Purchase is $10.

Metrics such as:

– CPC (Cost Per Purchase)

– CTR (Click-Through Rate)

– CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions)...

...are all useful metrics, without a doubt. But they are only there to help tell the story of an Ad, and identify any Ads that are out of place.

As an example, if your Average CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions) for your Campaign is $7.96, but one of your Ads has a CPM of $23.63, that's way above the average, and there's potentially something off with that Ad.

However, if the Cost Per Purchase of that Ad with the high CPM is what you're aiming for, then the high CPM is nothing to worry about. Let the Ad roll.

Everything with Ads ultimately comes down to what it's costing you to generate a single purchase.

If it's too high for the number of books you have, and your customer lifetime value, you won't sustain a high Cost Per Purchase for long.

To reduce your Cost Per Purchase:

– Create better Ads that speak to your ideal reader and their desires

– Improve your book product page whether that's on a retailer or on your own store

One final note on Cost Per Purchase:

If you sell direct, and you're using the Sales objective with your Facebook Ads, you'll see the Cost Per Purchase in your Facebook Ads dashboard.

If you're selling on Amazon, and using the Traffic objective, you'll need to use Amazon Attribution links to track how many orders (and page reads if applicable) your Ads are generating, then calculate your Cost Per Purchase manually.

N.B. There's a tool I've created inside Jumpstart Facebook Ads For Authors that will do this Cost Per Purchase calculation for you, as well as a bunch of other tools to help you run Facebook Ads.

Too many metrics can be overwhelming.

Focus on Cost Per Purchase as your leading metric, and let a handful of the other metrics tell the story of an Ad.

Hope this helps.

To Your Success
– Matt