Over the past 5 years, I audited more than 1000 Meta Ad Accounts for eCommerce brands.
A common misconception that I oftentimes see is that the more traffic your eCommerce store gets, the more sales you’re going to make. But here’s a piece of hard truth – Traffic doesn’t always translate into sales.
You may have the most meticulously planned ad campaign, brilliantly categorized for cold, warm, and hot audiences, even showing positive Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). But, if you’re not seeing a significant rise in your sales, it might be time to re-evaluate your campaign objectives.
Let’s delve a bit deeper into this.
The campaign objective in Facebook Ads (Meta) is a clear statement of what you aim to achieve. This objective effectively tells Meta’s algorithm what to optimize your campaign for. Is it to get more eyes on your ads (Traffic) or to encourage people to buy from your eCommerce store (Sales)?
Now, take a look at this situation:
You’ve got an account with a decent structure and campaigns targeting all stages of the audience funnel, and there’s even a positive ROAS. It seems like everything is going smoothly, right?
Well, not quite. Because even with this positive outlook, you could still be leaving a lot of money on the table.
Let’s consider the ‘light metrics’ – Cost per Click (CPC) and Click-Through Rate (CTR Link). These metrics seem to suggest that your traffic campaigns are performing decently well.
But when we switch our attention to the ‘conversion metrics’ such as Conversion Rate (CV Rate), ROAS, and Cost Per Action (CPA), there’s a sudden dip in performance.
You might notice that these metrics tend to be subpar for the Traffic campaigns compared to the Sales campaigns. But why?
The reason isn’t something supernatural but quite the opposite – it’s the way the Meta algorithm optimizes the ad delivery. The algorithm seeks to reach as many people as possible who are likely to perform the action you’ve asked for.
In other words, if you ask for clicks, you’re going to get clicks. But if you ask for sales, you’re (most likely) going to get more sales.
That’s why it’s crucial not to be swayed by the more easily achievable light conversion metrics. Instead, stay focused on your “north star” metric, which in this case, should be the CPA.
In the graphs below, you can observe the clear differences between each metric in the Sales and Traffic campaigns:
ROAS, TRAFFIC VS SALE
COST PER PURCHASE,TRAFFIC VS SALES
CONVERSION RATE, TRAFFIC VS SALES
The takeaway from this is not to get lost in the illusion of high traffic and instead, set clear, focused campaign objectives that aim for sales. This way, you’ll be able to turn that traffic into tangible profits for your eCommerce store.
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