Leverage Facebook's advertising platform to elevate your business. With an average 8% conversion rate, it's a top-choice for marketers.
Facebook's online advertising platforms are a key place to promote your business and that’s no surprise. The average Facebook conversion rate is around 8 percent across industries, which is high compared to other ad networks like Google Ads.
The social media platform also has many daily active users, ad targeting options, and a robust collection of other marketing tools. So if you’re thinking of Facebook advertising or have already decided to start, this resource is for you.
It covers everything you need to know about Facebook conversion rates, how to improve yours, and more so you can confidently run your campaigns.
Also, while we know Facebook rebranded to Meta, in this article we'll use the company’s original brand name to keep things familiar.
In digital marketing, conversion rate (CVR) is a key metric for measuring the success of ad campaigns. It provides the percentage of visitors (or link clicks related to Facebook) that convert.
For example, enrolling in an online course, joining the email list, downloading a document, etc., are all potential conversion objectives. Typically, big and small businesses will have multiple conversion objectives and create separate ads for each.
To calculate your Facebook conversion rate, add the total number of conversions and divide it by all link clicks. So, for example, the educator creates an online course. They used Facebook to market their course, and the ad led to 22 sales and approximately 1000 link clicks.
The calculation would look like 22 / 1000 x 100 = 2.2 percent.
Your Facebook conversion rate is essential because it helps you manage ad spending and gauge profitability. For example, an ad could lead to 10,000 product sales, but you still lose money because ad spending runs amok. The better your conversion rate, the better the profit.
Like any digital marketing ad network, the prime benefit of Facebook advertising is obvious. Solopreneurs and small business owners want new customers, and Facebook has many users and data they can leverage.
The number of advertisers on the social media network is 3 million. And it has over 2.95 billion monthly active users (MAU), according to Statista
Now that’s a lot of monthly active users, but how many log-in daily - are active users? More than 1.91 billion daily active users. But there are many more reasons to hop on the Facebook bandwagon, so to speak, including the following.
Facebook is data-rich, practically a treasure trove of information that allows businesses to hone in on their target audience. The precise level of detail makes it possible to narrow down the demographic for every ad.
Facebook allows advertisers to create creatives that leverage various multi-media elements, such as video, photo, text, etc. And you can pick from multiple ad formats or ad types. Some options aren’t even available in other ad networks.
Every available option also emphasizes branding, which has become more critical in the past year as some economists worry about a potential economic slowdown. Companies that do well with branding tend to fare better in economic downturns, and Facebook, being a highly visual platform, is helpful.
The current ad formats available on Facebook are as follows.
41 percent of surveyed marketers say Facebook provided the best ROAS compared to other social platforms. Facebook users are also highly engaged, making them more likely to click on ads.
You can run ads on almost any Facebook ad budget. You can't say that for other networks like Google Ads or LinkedIn.
With Facebook, expect to pay anywhere from 0.40 cents to a few dollars per click. Or $2.50 and above for CPM (cost per 1000 impressions). The average CPM across industries is $14.18, according to Revealbot.
Further, due to Facebook Ads cost, the social network is ideal for promoting brand awareness content like blog posts, infographics, and impressive cornerstone content. Advertising brand awareness content at a lower cost is often a good idea since the ads likely won't generate income immediately.
A/B testing is when a business tests two ad variants based on a hypothesis to see which performs best. And Facebook advertising lets you use this kind of split testing with ease.
Facebook Ad features a block list you can use to prevent your ads from appearing in certain places. Essentially, you can avoid any place you don’t consider safe for your brand or Facebook ad campaign.
Places to consider applying a block list include Facebook In-Stream Video, apps in Audience Network, Facebook Reels, and Facebook Instant Articles.
The sponsored messages feature lets businesses send offers or updates to people who communicate with them on Facebook Messenger, which has 1.3 billion users monthly. Plus, the open rate is 70% better than email marketing, and the engagement is 10 to 80 times better than organic posts.
The company has one of the best analytics tracking systems. There are tons of Facebook metrics to help you understand your ad performance and tweak things for better results.
Key Facebook metrics include:
As far as the numbers to expect for your Facebook conversion rate, it depends on the industry. And the best way to gauge how your Facebook ad campaigns perform is to use benchmarks. These are average conversion rates or results for specific industries that serve as a standard or point of reference to compare or assess other outcomes.
Here are the Facebook ad performance benchmarks or industry averages as per WordStream.
The following is the average conversion rate across the board.
As you see, the average conversion rate varies with different industries.
The fitness industry has the highest conversion rate, reaching 14.29 percent. Second, on the list is the education sector (including coaches and YouTubers) at 13.58 percent. The third industry is Employment and Job Training, with an 11.73 percent Facebook conversion rate.
While some industries see well above the average Facebook conversion rates, others are much lower. However, that doesn't mean they are not profitable. A low conversion rate is sometimes acceptable when the potential customer lifetime value or the product price is significantly great.
Industries like real estate, consumer services, and fitness will generally have higher conversion rates due to the nature of the product or service. And industries like industrial services will have much lower conversion rates for the same reason.
For example, a Fitness ad about losing weight is likely to garner more clicks than something promoting electrical insulators. The main difference is the fitness product has a much bigger audience on Facebook. In contrast, only a few specific groups will be interested in electric insulators.
Adding up all the table numbers and calculating the average gives us an average conversion rate of 7.56 percent across industries. Therefore, businesses should generally expect a 1 to 8 percent Facebook conversion rate.
But use the average conversion rate benchmark for your respective industry as the target to reach or exceed. That’s how you’d know if your Facebook ad campaigns are performing poorly or if you have a good conversion rate.
Also, aside from the average Facebook ad conversion rate, you should be aware of other vital benchmarks, including the following.
Click-through rate is the number of users who saw your ad and made a link click. You can divide the number of clicks your ad receives by the times it's shown to calculate your click-through rate.
Clicks ÷ impressions x 100 = click-through rate.
So, for example, if you had 100 clicks and 1000 impressions, your click-through rate would be 10 percent.
As per the table, Apparel, Legal Services, and Retail have the highest CTRs or average click-through rates. The rest are either barely above 1 percent or well below.
There are many reasons why an ad will have a low click-through rate. However, the main ones are the competition, unappealing or sub-par visuals, and bad ad copy (spelling, grammar, and message). But you can address all these things with careful attention to detail.
Adding up and dividing the table numbers, the average click-through rate is 0.93 percent across industries.
While that seems low, it’s in line with what’s expected when reaching people who know nothing about your business. Most people won't be ready to buy, and many will hesitate to trust a brand they don't know.
Cost-per-click or CPC is an advertising model where advertisers only pay for link clicks instead of impressions or another key metric. For example, spending $1 for every person that clicks your ad.
So what’s a good Facebook cost per click?
For many, it’s whatever allows you to turn a profit.
The Finance & Insurance, Consumer Services, and Home Improvement sectors have the highest average click-through rates. Plus, no industry is paying more than $5 per click, illustrating the affordability of Facebook advertising.
When we calculate the numbers, the average cost per click for Facebook Ads is $1.72 across all industries.
Cost per action is a model where ad networks charge advertisers only for a specific action, such as providing contact information, newsletter sign-up, link click, sale, etc.
As per the table, the Technology sector has the highest cost per action on Facebook ($55.21), followed by Home Improvement ($44.66). The Auto industry comes third on the list at an average cost per action of $43.84.
Ideally, you should only use cost per action when you know how much a specific action is worth to your business and everything makes sense. For example, paying $50 per action makes sense when the new customer is worth $6,000 to the legal services firm.
The average cost per action across all industries is $27.11, based on the above table.
Whether you’re a business owner, executive, or social media marketer, there’s no denying that Facebook is one of the largest ad and social networks. The sheer number of active users means you have the potential to reach millions of people, rivaling Google AdWords. And a high Facebook conversion rate is key to profitability.
But achieving a high conversion rate involves knowing the correct benchmarks and learning about your target audience in intricate detail. It also involves knowing the factors likely to influence your ad, including the market, demographic targeting, and product price.
If you find yourself performing below the benchmark numbers, that means there's much room to improve. And one of the best ways to do that is to A/B test different hypotheses.
A successful ad gets people to buy your product or service. So if yours isn't converting, keep testing things until you get it right. Most businesses can afford to run A/B tests since Facebook Ad costs are the lowest among major ad networks.
Lastly, find a platform like Subkit that facilitates high conversions right off the bat. This will eliminate much work on your part, help ensure a smooth Facebook ad campaign that reaches the right people, and impact total revenue positively.
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