How to Optimize Your Paid Meta Ads

Need help with paid ads? Get in touch with Colm at wedoyourpaidmarketing.com.

Go to https://adsmanager.facebook.com/adsmanager and select the date range to the preset “Last 30 Days”. Ad performance will fluctuate throughout a month so this date range gives you the most accurate insight.

Select the Columns button (three vertical bars) → Discover more column presets → Performance → Performance & Clicks

Scroll to the right so until you see the headings: Link clicks; CPC (cost per link click); CTR (link click-through rate; Click (all)
- CPC is an indication of how good your ad is at getting people to stop scrolling and click into the ad. A good CPC is below $2, and under $3 is acceptable. If this is above $4, it’s a sign you need to change your creative (images, copy, headline) This is the most important metric of these four.
- CTR is an indication of how competitive your market is for the same audience. A score of 1% or above is a good return on fitness advertising. Remember you’re not just competing with other gyms, but any other advertisers targeting your demographic. E.g if you’re advertising to women 25-55 cosmetics, travel, entertainment, and medical companies will also be targeting them.
- Clicks (all) represents all clicks on your ad. This can be people clicking to read the caption, clicking through your Facebook Page/Instagram Profile etc. and include people who start to open your ad and don’t follow through or wait for the ad to load.
- Link click is the number of people who took the desired action of the campaign (in our case, opened the instant form.)

Scroll back to the left to see Results; Reach. Frequency & Cost per result.
- Results: Total number of leads received. This should match your GLM dashboard numbers. In general, the results should be 10% of the Link clicks seen earlier. In general, 1 in 10 people who open a form will fill it out. If this number is lower (approx 5%) you may need to increase buying temperature on your form by including a greeting that either highlights your benefits or further explains your understanding of the client’s problem.
- Cost per result is the average price per lead you paid. $15-20 is standard for fitness leads, under $10 is very good. Over $30 could either mean a very competitive marketplace or an ad that doesn’t resonate (see CPC and link click:results ratio above)
- Frequency is the number of times on average your market sees the same ad. Above 3 and your market may begin to tune the ad out and your costs may rise. You can influence the frequency by either expanding your market size (age range/distance) or reducing your budget to help reduce over saturation of your message.

For qualitative data, select the campaign you wish to view by clicking on the tickbox next to the on/off switch and click on the “Ads for 1 campaign” tab.
Click on the breakdown button(three horizontal lines) → Dynamic Creative element → Image, video and slideshow

Click anywhere on the page to make the menu disappear again.
The higher the results and reach will show you which images are generating the most leads. In this case the “40+ PT” image generated 3 of the 11 leads and reached 3017 people.

Repeat this process: Click on the breakdown button(three horizontal lines) → Dynamic Creative element → Text (& Headline) to review your ad creative. Note you may need to scroll down to review all options.

Follow the steps in the ad creation section to edit your ad, removing elements that are not performing, keeping the ones that are, and adding in new images, text and headline to test.
It is suggested that you review your ad campaign every 14 days and adjust accordingly.
Please note that these metrics only concern the efficiency of lead generation. Lead nurture will act as a bigger determining factor of your marketing campaign. The more you reach out to leads using a combination of human and automated contact points, the higher your likelihood of conversion.