Ads on social media sites can play a big part in expanding the sales funnel — and many social media marketers see Facebook as the pinnacle of the digital advertising pyramid. And why wouldn’t they? It’s the leading social media site, with more than 2.9 billion active users worldwide. But if your Facebook marketing campaigns are driving customers to call your business, how can you track calls from ads and the conversions generated? More importantly, how do you know whether those conversations are driving revenue?
In order to track calls and conversions from Facebook ads, you need to be able to collect offline conversion tracking and conversation data and get it back in the Facebook platform, preferably in real time. This is the only way that you can optimize your Facebook ads that are working well and make sure you’re not wasting money on those that are not performing.
Here’s how you can precisely target the right audiences and track calls and conversations from Facebook ads.
With Facebook’s Custom Audiences ad targeting capability, you can:
There’s also the option to create Lookalike Audiences in Facebook’s Custom Audiences. If you have a good idea of which prospects to target with your campaign, based on what you know about your existing customers’ demographics, then you can use Lookalike Audiences to direct your ads to potential new customers with common interests and traits.
And don’t forget about Core Audience ad targeting options on Facebook like location, behaviors and interests. You can get as broad or well-defined as you like with this type of targeting.
You can learn more about how to drive sales and revenue with your Facebook ads in this post.
There are two ways you can drive calls from ads on Facebook:
You can use call-to-action buttons in your Facebook ads for various objectives, including “Call Now.” You can set up the call-to-action button to generate a phone number that serves as a unique identifier for your campaign. This phone number simply routes the call to your desired business phone number.
If you use a “Call Now” button, and the prospect clicks to call from their mobile device, then the phone app on their device will open, allowing them to dial the number immediately. You can also set click-to-call ads to activate for users in a specific area, such as a location close to your business or one of your stores. That allows you to be even more targeted with your Facebook ad campaigns and spend.
You can also use call extensions to encourage people to call your business to place an order, ask detailed questions, or schedule an appointment. When someone taps your ad, your website loads and your call extension appears at the bottom of the screen with a "call" button. After someone taps the "call" button, the call dialer opens on their device, prefilled with the number you set as the destination. They are then prompted to call, but can still exit out of the screen.
Once your ad begins to run, you can review your ad metrics, including the number of call confirmation clicks. This metric measures the approximate number of people who tap to call on the call dialer. Note that call confirmation clicks is an estimated metric and may be different from the actual number of people who call your business. To get more granular detail about how many people called from your Facebook ads, if they were leads, what they said in the conversation, and if they converted to revenue, you can integrate Facebook with conversation intelligence (more on this below).
Another tip for tracking calls from Facebook ads is to use a call tracking or conversation intelligence platform to get conversion data from the calls. Facebook Ads Manager reporting alone can only tell you how many people clicked the CTA button. Just knowing that the button was clicked does not tell you if the call was even connected, let alone what the nature and outcome of the call was. Without that information, you cannot properly optimize your ads.
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Facebook can be integrated with conversation intelligence platforms like Invoca to automatically detect the disposition of an inbound call. This gives you the data you need to see which ads and audiences are driving sales on the phone, so you can optimize them appropriately. Invoca also enables you to use conversion data from phone calls to build and expand lookalike audiences on Facebook. This is also done automatically with Invoca’s Facebook integration, so you don’t have to export data manually between the platforms.
With conversion data from Invoca, you can accurately attribute revenue to calls from Facebook ads and calculate the true CPA and ROI of your campaign. Without this data, you are likely overestimating your CPA since you’re not counting phone conversions, and underestimating your ROI because phone sales are not attributable to revenue. Invoca can be used to track and attribute calls from Instagram in the same way.
Recent research shows that 98% of active Facebook users access the social network using some type of smartphone. And since the pandemic began, consumers are calling businesses more than ever. Our data shows that many industries are experiencing increased sales call volumes, even as in-person business restrictions have been lifted.
In the digital marketing age, it’s easy to forget how powerful a tool the phone can be for connecting customers directly with businesses. But once you learn how to track calls from Facebook ads, it will become clear just how important inbound calls can be for driving sales and revenue for your business.
Learn more about Invoca’s Facebook integration in the Ultimate Guide to Conversation Intelligence or request your personalized demo of the platform.
