What is a Facebook Ads Accounts Audit?
A Facebook Ads Account audit is an in-depth review of what’s happening with your Facebook Ads. Audits help you understand the metrics involved in your campaign and examine:
- What results your ads are getting
- How much are your ads costing you
- What strategies you’re using
- What audiences you’re targeting
- Which ad tools you are using
If you don’t perform audits, it’s challenging to understand how your ads are performing and which factors are driving results. Additionally, audits allow you to spot the trends and patterns that can help optimize your campaigns.
Audits also help you keep your campaigns up to date. Facebook frequently updates the platform, and audits ensure you know about new ad types, updates, and changes in how ad pixels work.
5 Steps to Audit Your Facebook Ads Account
#1. Look at Your Account Structure
How you structure your ads has a significant bearing on who gets to see your ads.
So, first, make sure to set up Facebook Business Manager to ensure your website, Instagram, pixels, pages, and ad accounts are all linked.
Then, go into Facebook Ads Manager. Here you can review your:
- Facebook campaigns
- Ads sets
- Ads
Make sure that your campaigns are set up to achieve a clearly defined goal. These aims could be brand awareness, lead generation, sales goals, etc. Tailor each ad campaign to a business goal or KPI.
Then, review your ad sets. You can organize them by audience by targeting and excluding particular types of customers.
Finally, populate your ad sets with a maximum of six ads. Make sure you label your ad conventions and keep things tidy. It will allow you to evaluate the performance of each element.
#2. Evaluate Your Tracking Setup
Next up, you need to set up how you track your ads. This step is crucial if you want to know which ads and channels are generating results.
There are two main actions to take. First, select the Attribution Window. Ensure that all your ads are set to the same setting. This setting change will allow you to collect accurate data.
Next, open the Ads Manager dashboard and select View Setup. Make sure there is a green dot next to each pixel. Without it, Facebook can’t measure what happens when a user clicks through to your site.
Then, review UTM tracking to ensure it’s consistent across all tagged ads.
Finally, go to Facebook Events Manager and review the data. Does it match the activity you can see on Google Analytics? If so, the pixel is working fine.
#3. Check Facebook Audience, Targeting, and Ad Placement
While ad content is important, targeting is how you reach the right audience. Review your Audience Types. These could be a custom or saved list, or they might be drawn from the lookalike function. It’s recommended that you review and update your Audience Type every 1 to 3 months.
Then, look at Audience Size. Narrow targeting limits your audience size, which makes it more difficult for Facebook to optimize your ads. So keep an eye on the Audience Definition metric and ensure it’s sufficiently broad so your ads can be tested and optimized.
Then, look at Audience Exclusions. When set up correctly, this stops your ads from being served to, for example, specific existing customers, which will save on ad spend.
Finally, look at Ad Placements. Depending on your goals, you might want to run ads across all or only some of Facebook’s properties. By default, this is set to automatic; however, switch to manual if you want to get more granular.
#4. Inspect Your Ad Creatives
Content is one of the big factors that determine whether your audience will engage with your ads. So look at your copy and creatives and ensure they are current and on-point.
There are four main sections you need to keep an eye on:
Messaging
Look at your headlines and ad copy. Ensure they are engaging, clear, and feature a strong call to action (CTA).
CTA Button
If your ads feature a CTA button that instructs users to buy, click, or download something, ensure that the button aligns with the desired action.
Landing Pages
Perform a quick review of your landing pages and test whether your creatives are aligned with each page. For example, if your ad prompts users to sign up for a newsletter, make sure anyone clicking through is sent to a signup landing page.
Ad Quality
Facebook Ads provides users with a report on ad quality. This diagnostic tool assigns values to your ad’s Quality, Engagement Rate, and Conversion Rate. Keep an eye on these values, and if they drop, it’s an indication that you need to do some work on the copy or other creatives.
#5. Customize Your Facebook Ads Reporting
Facebook Ads Manager lets you customize your reporting setup. By tailoring these reports, you can identify the metrics that are essential for your business.
So select each campaign and ad set and ensure that reporting takes in metrics like ROAS, CPC, Reach, Impression, CPM, Results, and Cost Per Result.
As we said at the top, before you set up any campaign, you should first define your KPIs. What do you want the ads to achieve? Understanding the end goals should influence how you structure your campaign.
Conclusion:
Performing regular Facebook Ads account audits takes time and dedication. But it gets results. Unfortunately, other core business tasks can sometimes take priority, leading to underperforming campaigns. If that sounds familiar, then maybe you can do with some assistance?
At Amanda AI, we perform a health check on every account before we get started. This process helps us ensure that we can help each client with their advertising and that their tracking is set up correctly.
It’s crucial that advertising goals are set up correctly so we can optimize our machine to get the best results, whether that’s ROAS, CPA, or whatever other metric is essential to your business.
So get in touch today to see how we can lighten your load but increase your advertisement effectiveness.
