How to Get the Most Benefits from Facebook’s Analytics Update

A successful marketing team relies on data, and Facebook provides a wealth of information to companies about their audiences. Facebook Analytics allows marketers to see people’s interactions with their company, which teaches them ways to optimize the customer journey. This metrics-rich tool within Facebook is divided into two sections: people and activity. With the people section, you can create segments, which help you learn about the groups of people using your product, and then create custom audiences based on those segments. Activity can be used to see and evaluate funnels, cohorts, and active users.

All of the data extracted from Facebook Analytics can then be organized and used in your customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Combine it with other data from your sales and customer service teams to get a clearer picture of who your customers are. The data, once organized and analyzed, will help your marketing team reach leads even more effectively.

For more insight into marketing to your customers, read our ebook, “The Marketer’s Field Guide.”

Facebook Analytics Helps You Understand Your Audience

• With it, you can see people’s interactions with your company on:
  • iOS
  • Android
  • Web
  • Bots
  • Offline
  • Facebook Pages
• For example:
  • An ecommerce business can measure if people who comment on an item featured in their Facebook Page post go on to view the item
    • On their website
    • In their app
  • By viewing customer behaviour across different channels, businesses can learn about and optimize their full customer journey to drive growth
• Businesses can also see how people's online interactions translate to in-store purchases with support for offline conversions

Key Facebook Analytics Features You Should be Using

• There are two key sections:
  • People
    • Understand the people using your product
      • (“Product” is your mobile app or website, for example) 
      • See aggregated demographics and audience insights, including:
        • Age
        • Gender
        • Location
        • Education
        • Interests
    • Use Custom Audiences to focus on specific audiences you want to learn more about.
  • Activity
    • Understand the actions people take when they use your app, website, or other product
• With People, you can create Segments and Custom Audiences
  • Segments help you learn about the groups of people using your product.
    • You define these groups by:
      • Events
      • Demographics
      • Device information
      • Install source
    • Use segments as:
      • Filters in the Overview, Activity, and People sections
      • Audiences when creating a push notification or in-app notification campaign.
    • When you create a segment, you first select a subsection:
      • Highlights
      • Demographics
      • Page Likes
      • Technology
      • Revenue
      • Household/Purchase
    • And then you choose a condition:
      • Event: Actions people take in your app or website that you define and log.
      • Demographics: Data such as age, gender, country, or language.
      • Device Info: The device a person is using.
      • User Properties: Custom user data, such as membership number.
      • Install Source: The way a person found and installed your app.
      • Web Parameters: Data related to web events, such as referrer domain.
  • Once you have a Segment, you can create Custom Audiences — people in your segments who are Facebook users and can be targeted with Facebook ads.
    • Use Custom Audiences to:
      • Target a segment of people using your app or website
      • Target lookalike audiences who resemble your existing customers
      • Target ads
    • With Custom Audiences, you can specify:
      • The Ad Account. This is the account associated with your Custom Audience
      • Your Segment. Select which segment you want to use to create your Custom Audience.
      • In the: The time period for your Custom Audience.
• With Activity, you can create Funnels and Cohorts, as well as view Active Users.
  • The Funnels subsection allows you to create and view funnels
    • Funnels are series of events that help you measure conversion rate.
    • With them you can find opportunities to optimize your mobile app or website (or another such product).
    • For example, find out if your app's checkout flow is too long with a funnel.
  • You can also create and view Cohorts.
    • Groups of people who performed the same 2 events (aka actions) during a time period
      • For example: adding items to a cart and then completing the purchase
    • Use cohorts to understand people's behaviour, including: 
      • Customer retention
      • Lifetime value
      • Repeat purchase rate
    • You can view daily, weekly, or monthly:
      • User Retention: The percentage of people who completed the second event of a cohort at the given time.
        • Use this information to determine the retention before and after releasing a new update for your product (your mobile app or website, for example).
      • Value Retention: The value percentage of people who completed two consecutive purchases.
      • Cumulative Events: The number of events per user in the cohort.
      • Cumulative Values: The value per user in the cohort.
• Additionally, you can see Active Users: the number of unique people that open your mobile app or website (or another product) in a given time period.
  • View your active users grouped by:
    • Age
    • Gender
    • Completed Sessions
  • You’ll also see 3 important metrics.
    • Unique Users: The total number of unique people opening your products per day.
    • Stickiness: The ratio of daily active users to monthly active users.
      • Stickiness measures how engaged your users are.
    • Monthly/Weekly/Daily Users: Compares the number of unique people opening your products per day, per week, and per month.

Once you have customer data, here’s what you need to do with it.

• Understand your ideal customer
  • Learn more about that ideal customer’s:
    • Tastes
    • Preferences
    • Potential issues with a product or service
  • This allows you to improve and create marketing opportunities that target the customer you want.
• Lower marketing costs
  • Instead of large, blanket marketing strategies that cast wide nets for a few fish, cast your marketing in a smaller, more effective pond
• Identify new opportunities
  • Identify gaps in your marketing strategy
  • Your key demographic may be asking for products and features based on their lifestyles, which would mean a no-brainer addition to a product or service line.
• Create unique selling points
  • Shape your marketing story.
  • Instead of just throwing a product or service out there and hoping it’s popular, create and define scenarios your customers can relate to.
• Increase sales
  • By understanding consumers, you can increase marketing efforts to target those most likely to buy.
  • You may have to change up your marketing strategy or offer current customers more products and services

Once the data is in your customer relationship management (CRM) platform, keep it organized effectively.

• Keep it accurate and complete.
• Ensure there are no duplicates.
• Verify phone numbers, emails, and mailing addresses are valid.
• Understand relationships between contacts, including:
  • Relationships within households, businesses, or networks
  • Relationships with your employees, agents/brokers and channel partners
  • Their relationship with your company: which products they own, assets they have, their locations, or the channels they prefer
• Use your CRM to collate all your data.
  • Store information from:
    • Facebook
    • Your sales, marketing, and customer service platforms
    • Google Analytics
    • Your website
    • Other third-party sources
  • Use it to better understand and serve your customers.

Conclusion:

Data from Facebook and its analytics tools is invaluable to companies. When it’s used together with information from your sales, marketing, and customer service platforms, you can get a well-rounded view of your customers and market to them more effectively.