Are your Meta ads really working? 5 Metrics That Actually Matter

Aug 22

What's this episode of the lionhearted ceo podcast about?

Are you pouring money into Facebook ads and wondering if they're actually doing anything for your business? In this episode, we're diving deep into the world of ad metrics and the difference between what you see on the dashboard, an the actual business impact!

Here's what we're unpacking:

The 5 key metrics in your Facebook ads dashboard you should be watching like a hawk
Why a low cost per lead isn't always cause for celebration (and when it might be a red flag!)
How to tell if your ads are attracting your dream clients or just tyre-kickers
The often-overlooked business metrics that reveal your ads' true impact

You'll learn how to look beyond the flashy numbers in your ads dashboard and gauge whether your ads are genuinely moving the needle in your business.

Whether you're a total newbie to Facebook ads or looking to fine-tune your strategy, this episode will give you the confidence to assess your ad performance like a pro.

Ready to stop second-guessing your ad spend and start measuring what really matters?

Grab your favourite biscuits, and let's dive in!

Hi! I’m your host Sophie Griffiths, a Meta ads expert and business growth strategist.

The LionHearted CEO podcast is designed for impatiently ambitious women who are ready to scale and often juggling motherhood alongside their thriving online businesses in coaching, course creation, or service-based business.

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Love Instagram? Click here to watch a video I made on the Warm audience trap (hint, it's something almost every client struggles with!)More of a LinkedIn fan? I'm there too! Come and follow me here: Sophie Griffiths

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Ready to build an audience of superfans who are excited and ready to buy from you?
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Read the transcript:

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.

[00:00:00] Hello and a big welcome to Lionhearted CEO, the podcast for unapologetically, impatiently ambitious women who know they want to stop being the bottleneck in their business and become the Lionhearted CEO they know they are meant to be. I'm Sophie Griffiths, a tea enthusiast, marketing and Metis ad specialist and firm believer.
The chocolate should never be kept in the fridge. Join me every Tuesday and Thursday for bold, imperfect, fun approach to marketing and scaling your business without burning out every few months. We'll dive into practical strategies and have inspirational conversations that will support you to create a thriving, sustainable business that brings you joy as well as financial freedom.
Okay, let's jump in. 
Welcome to this week, the short, actionable episode. Today I'm going to talk about a question. I get asked quite a lot. How do I know if my ads. Working. So there's two ways to the cadets. . The first is , what stats, what [00:01:00] metrics do we need to be looking at in the ads dashboard to know if we're on the right track. 
So there's two ways of looking at this the first is looking at the ads dashboard. Do you understand the numbers that relate to your ads? All the results. You're getting good for the amount of budget you're spending for the type of ads you're running. And then the second way to look at it it's actually wider marketing measures, so the ads could be doing really well, but actually are you getting the impact you want in your business? 
And that's really the key so let's jump in at, to the ads dashboard that obviously there's a lot of different types of ad campaigns. So I'm not going to go through all of them and list a load of metrics. But what I want to do is talk through some of the key metrics. . But I always look at with my clients when they're learning ads. Just to start getting them used to what they should be looking for. 
What's normal. What's not. And I will say as well the benchmark for your business will be different to someone else's business. I use different benchmarks for B to C clients. So clients that work with consumers, non businesses, basically. People who work with parents, your [00:02:00] nutritionist, anyone read that works with someone who's not running a business. Whereas B2B businesses have quite different benchmarks. 
Like when you're selling to other businesses, ads tend to be a lot more expensive, so there's different benchmarks, but I'm going to talk you through that. What I will say to begin with, I'm going to talk through the kind of stats you would be looking at for lead ads. I guess that's mostly what I teach. 
And sales ads are slightly different. Although I think a lot of these are applicable as well. But before I move on to that, I just want to talk a little bit about engagement ads. Traffic, Instagram growth ads. I find that Facebook's measurement of this isn't ideal.
There are engagement stats that you can absolutely look at. You can look at how many people have liked the post commented on it, shared it. 
However, I find it doesn't track very well is how many people have followed you from the ad? 
I actually never picked it up in my dashboard. Even though I run these ads myself, I'm in Instagram, in my notifications. It literally says, you know, so-and-so has followed you from your ad. So I know that I am getting follows [00:03:00] from my ad, but it never tracks it in the dashboard, which is very annoying. For me as well. 
Although you can obviously see how many people are liking and watching and commenting generally you tend to just get likes. I don't get a huge amount of comments. Especially on B2B engagement ads. Especially the Instagram traffic ones, because we're actually not asking people to do that. We're asking them to go through onto Instagram profile. The key metric for me really, it's more of a gut feel of the kind of people that I'm seeing coming in. 
So if I start to see who's following me, who's engaging, who's commenting. Who's DM-ing me. Oh, they might kind of people my kind of ideal clients. Because what you might find is that some posts bring in your ideal clients and others don't, and it's not necessarily related to your audience, although that might be something you need to change. It can often be with a type of post as well. So let's say you're talking more about the struggle in business or how hard is to make money. You're going to bring in a different kind of client to whether you're talking about, businesses scaling and , how easy business gets to be. [00:04:00] 
So we really think about the types of posts you're using and who they're attracting. It's really much more amplified, on your feed. You might have that mix. But in your ads you might want to think about who is it that I really want to attract. 
So let's look at lead ads. There's a lot more concrete staff here. 
I'm going to talk you through five different metrics that I use when I'm looking at ads or you use a lot more than this, but I don't think all of them are strictly necessary if you're just doing it for yourself. Now, the first one that you're going to look at is your result. 
So with your lead ads, I simply going to be the amount of leads you're getting. The next column I tend to have is the cost per result. And that might sound really obvious, but I think it's really important to understand, how much is each lead costing me. And this is the bit when I talked about the benchmarks earlier, that really comes into play. Because a lot of my clients who sell to non businesses, so consumers. They can get leads for anywhere from like 30 P definitely under a pound. 
 However, my business audience, Some of them have a cost per result of under two pounds. Very, [00:05:00] very rarely. Will it be under one pound? If it is under one pound, I'm thinking, I'm not sure if we've got the right audience here, to be honest, because sometimes if it's too cheap, Actually, it's not the best thing for the app . It's not the right people. 
 That's actually more of a warning sign, to be honest. Generally speaking, if my B to B ads are under like three pounds 50, then I'm really happy. The goal is to get them under three pounds. If it's under two pounds, that's incredible. If it's under three pounds, then I'm happy. 
The next two is your click through rate and then in brackets it says link clicks. . So these are similar metric, but they measure it in a slightly different way. Click through rate measures, all clicks on links on the ad. So that includes the link to go through and sign up for your free beam, like the button. 
It also includes clicking any links in the caption. That includes the read more link . So, you know, when you see an ad. You'll see the first like sentence also. And then you'll need to click more to read the actual caption. So it includes [00:06:00] those clicks. Click through rate that includes all clicks it's a really good indicator of whether people are interested in your caption. 
Is the graphic catching their attention, and then they're starting to read the actual caption. Now click through rate link clicks. That is when people are clicking the button. 
I'm really the key. Hey, is the comparison. So if I click through rate is good, we're going to be getting a lot of people who have maybe seen the graphic and then the hook. The first couple of lines of the copy and then the headline and the button. 
And they're going to have been like, oh, this is interesting to me. So they've probably collect weed more and then they read in the caption. Now, ideally we then put people to sign up. So the comparison between the two, the click-through rate and the click through rate link clicks, it was the difference between how many people are reading the caption and how many people are being , oh yes, like I want back and I'm going to sign up. So ideally we want our click through rate link clicks to be overwhelmed percent. 
Now that does vary between different types of ads, but for lead [00:07:00] ads, if I'm getting over 1%, then I'm really happy. The click through rate. Ideally we want to be looking at about over 3%. There's always going to be a proportion of people that read it and think, no, that's not for me. 
And that's good. We don't want everybody signing up. We only want the right people. And what I tend to see is especially early on when you're running ads, that gap, that difference between the percentages can be quite high. Because Facebook is testing out, the audience is trying to find new people a lot of the people at fines and shows the ad to won't be relevant for you. 
And that's a good thing. But over time, we want that gap to decrease and we want as many people as possible who are reading the caption to actually be converting. And if you're finding that, actually a lot of people are reading the caption, but hardly anyone is actually clicking through. And signing up for your freebie and that indicates that your copy is something that you really need to work on. If your click through rate is not great. 
 Maybe you're struggling to get 1% or maybe 2% that indicates that people aren't even weeding the caption. So they're not even trying to [00:08:00] read the caption. So something in your graphic, in that first few lines of the copy, isn't quite right. . And then the last metric I look at is the CPM. 
 So that stands for cost per million. And that is how much it costs you to reach a thousand people. Don't ask me why it's called cost per million, where it's a thousand people.
So you'll see, it says something like, four pound 25, let's say. And it's bypass ad. Basically what it's saying is you will have to spend four pound 25 of your ad spend to reach a thousand people. If you are. Spending 10 pounds a day and your CPM is five pounds. 
Let's say, cause that's easy for my maths to work out. Then you will be week. Roughly 2000 people every day. If you're spending 10 pounds a day and you'll CPM is 20 pounds. Especially for business audiences and at key times of year, like Christmas, black, Friday, there's real peak times. 
The cost to reach a thousand people can be a lot, lot higher because there's a lot more people trying to reach the people you're trying to reach., so if your cost to reach a thousand people is 20 pounds and [00:09:00] you are only spending 10 pounds. You're only going to be reaching 500 people a day. Immediately your ability to get people signed up. It's going to be much, much harder. Because you're just reaching less people. 
So we want our CPM to be low. Ideally we want to under 10 pounds generally, what I find is the B to C businesses have CPMs of somewhere between like four and eight pounds. And then the businesses is much more around the like 15 to 20 pound mark. 
And that's not the end of the world, but what it does mean is initially you might need to spend a little bit more to make sure Facebook knows who your people are.
Do you really get your leads coming in?
So those are the five. Metrics. I'd be looking at to know if your ads are working in ads manager, like your literal ads. If you're trying to work out, if they're working or not. That's where I'd be starting with however amazing ad results. Doesn't always mean amazing business results. You could do an ad to give away an iPad. 
And you could get incredible results. You could get loads of people clicking on it. You knew your click through rates could be great your cost purposes, or it would be incredible. The amount of [00:10:00] people signing up would be amazing. It would be incredible. However, you less, you are an iPod specialist. Those people are unlikely to be your ideal clients. 
And they're certainly not going to be a point where they're ready to buy from you and understand what you offer in a four. Into you and what you do,
so you're gonna have a lot of people on your email list that are either going to unsubscribe and impact your email deliverability, or they're just going to stay on that and not open your less. 
So you're going to get low open rates and low click through rates. And nobody wants that. Like, we don't want big email lists for the sake of having big email lists. I would much rather a client had a higher cost per result, but with getting dream clients on their email list, Then they would them having a much lower. Cost per result . And getting people that are never going to buy from them on their email list. 
 To how do we start to get a feel for whether the ad results reflect the kind of business results that we want. Now, this isn't as a media. And unfortunately isn't something that's super clear at a dashboard straight away, but here was four ways that you can start to [00:11:00] think about whether your ads are bringing in the right people. The first one again, it's a little bit like the engagement ads. 
Is it? A bit of a gut feel. Generally when you run lead ads, you will start to get more people following it on social media. They might see your ad and come through to your socials, or they might sign up for your lead magnet and come through to your socials . From your email welcome sequence, that sort of thing. Who are they? 
Like have a look at them. Are. Are they your ideal client? Are they businesses? If you will be to be, and everyone coming through seems to have private profiles seems to be not running a business. You're always going to get some, it's never going to be a hundred percent perfect. But if on balance , You know, 60 to 80% of people are your kind of ideal clients, then that's great. If 60 to 80% of people are random men spam accounts. People with personal profiles and you're like, yeah, these are not my people. 
Then I would say, you need to go back to your lead magnet and your ads to make sure you are super, super specific about who it's for and making sure that it's not too broad. The second thing I'd be looking at is your email open rates and click through rates. . Now equal, don't tell this immediately because you [00:12:00] need a volume of people to have gone through your welcome sequence. 
You can't just judge it on the first like 10 people and whether they open it or not, I would say you need a minimum of a hundred people who have gone through your welcome sequence to really start to see trends. But have a look at it, what are your open email rates for your current lists? 
So people who have a warm and joining your list, which will be a lot higher. Versus people that are coming in through ads are they clicking on your welcome sequence? Are they clicking to go through to your Instagram? Are they replying to the questions you put in your emails? There's lots of things you can start to look at to say all these people that are coming through engaged the next thing I'd be looking at is if you do a masterclass or
some kind of free event all the people that are coming in through your ads signing up to that, it's an opportunity to get to know you more, see your face. If offering additional value, especially if it's really linked to the lead magnet that they signed up for. Are they signing up? 
Are they attending in person or live. Are they actually engaging with it? Are they opening the emails? All they engage with more than just, following you on [00:13:00] Instagram. It now again. You're not going to get a hundred percent. 
You probably won't even get 50%. But what you want to see is a proportion of people that are coming through are genuinely interested and engaged. In what you're offering. And then the last one, and this might be really obvious. The last one is sales.
Is anyone booking a call? 
Is anyone buying your local stuffer? Is anybody signing up to your membership? Your course, if you're waiting for a launch, after the launch have a look of all the people that signed up, how many people came in through the ads? What I will say is you need to give the ads at least three months. 
Three months is the minimum. And that's not to say you're not going to get people signing up to work with you. . Opening your emails. To master classes before the three months. But you do need to give it time, time for people to get to know you time for them to consume your organic content . Just really make sure that they've got the opportunity. 
And it might be that they go through a whole launch with you and you don't get a huge amount from the ads. But in your next launch, those people have had a lot more time to consume everything. Get to know you. And they're ready and waiting. Super warm buyers. So there's [00:14:00] a lot. You need to do what someone is in your world. 
Just getting them on your email list. Isn't enough. When someone joins your email list from an ad. They are warmer than they were before, but I definitely wouldn't say that ready to buy often. You need still need to really engage in how can I warm these people up and get them really interested in why I'm offering.
So those are the four things. I would recommend looking at, beyond the ads dashboard to really work out whether your ads are working or not. I hope that was really helpful as always come on over to Instagram. And let me know that you listened and ask me any questions you've got. I'm always up for ads chat I will see you next week.
 Thank you so much for listening today. Before you go, if this episode struck record with you, I'd be over the moon. If you could take a moment to rate, subscribe, and leave a review, your words not only brighten up my day, but they are also the magic that helps others discover this lion hearted community.
Again, thank you so much and I will see you next [00:15:00] week.