Your pocket guide to Facebook Analytics

Social MediaCategory
7 min read
Sandeep Babu

In India, Facebook users are growing exponentially. Many people with Facebook Business accounts turn to Facebook Analytics to measure their success on the platform.

For reference, the number of Facebook users in India is expected to reach 444.2 million by 2023.

That said, business owners have tons of opportunities to promote their products and services on this ever-popular social media platform. However, if you want to use Facebook to its maximum potential, you have to get familiar with Facebook Analytics.

What is Facebook Analytics?

Screenshot of Facebook Analytics setup page

As a small business owner, you want to know how your prospects and customers interact with your website, mobile app, or Facebook page in order to improve your marketing campaigns. Facebook Analytics is a tool that empowers you to do that. (Note: Facebook Analytics will be replaced in some countries with Facebook Business Suite as of 30 June 2021.)

With Facebook Analytics, you can:

  • Measure your website activity: Facebook Analytics will help you better understand the actions people take on your FB page. You can also research your demographics and segments to understand the particular types of customers who visit.
  • Know how many people open your app: You can also look at how often people buy and other interactions within the app.
  • Understand your overall Facebook performance: You can measure your conversational commerce effort within Facebook messenger and more.

What's more, Facebook Analytics enables your business to use additional resources to get the most out of your data.

14 Facebook Analytics features made to meet business goals

Facebook Analytics is a powerful tool with a host of valuable features your business can use to grow and succeed.

Below, we’ll explain the key features of Facebook Analytics:

1. Demographics

To serve your prospects and customers well, you need to know who they are. The Demographics feature enables you to understand who your customers are through aggregated data like gender, age, town/city, and more.

This is valuable because you can tailor your post topics, imagery and language to suit the age group you’re attracting (or change them to attract a different crowd).

2. Journey Reports 

People interact with businesses in many ways. Some prefer to visit a company's website, while many others like to open a brand's app to make a purchase.

Journey Reports show how people interact with your business across your app, website, Facebook page, and bots in one report.

Journey Reports will also provide you with a complete picture of your customer's buying journey. By studying these reports, you can have an idea about the channels you need to invest in.

3. Segments

The Segments feature helps you see Facebook Analytics data the way you want. You can easily group your audience based on:

  • Traffic sources (where they come from)
  • Behaviors
  • Demographics
  • Channels

It’s also easy to track how these segments interact with your business. This will empower you to create customized strategies for each segment to increase your success with each segment.

4. Events

Events allow you to measure and understand your prospects' and customers' actions across your website app, Facebook page and other channels. Facebook supports over 1,000 different custom event types. You can use up to 25 parameters to track each event. Learn more about Events and Parameters here.

5. Overlap 

Business owners like to know how many people are opening their apps, visiting their websites or commenting on their Facebook page. Overlap reports help you know that.

The Overlap report is a simple yet powerful tool that will provide you with a proper understanding of cross-platform and cross-device customer behavior. You can use these insights to either narrow or broaden your targeting.

6. Funnels

Funnels in Facebook Analytics help you measure how many people are completing a sequence of actions and how long it takes for them to move from one stage to another.

You can experiment with the effectiveness of your customer journey with Funnels.

And with Funnels, you can know how comfortable people are in taking actions you want them to take. Learn more about Funnels here. 

Woman checking social media on her phone

7. Retention 

As a small business owner, you will make many changes in your products and marketing strategies to serve your customers well. The Retention feature of Facebook Analytics will help you track how the changes are affecting customer retention over time.

In short, the User Retention report helps you see the percentage of people who remain interested in your brand over time. You want this number to rise rather than fall, as it costs your business less to keep a current customer than it does to gain a new customer.

8. Cohort

Businesses often expect their audiences to take more than one action. Cohort reports help you know about the people who complete two specific activities, such as ‘page view’ and ‘add to cart.’ Businesses can also use Cohort reports to understand consumer behavior. Learn more about Cohort here.

9. Revenue 

The Revenue section of Facebook Analytics helps you track purchase activity. You will have reports that can assist you in measuring purchase behavior and revenue earned over time.

These reports can help you figure out how adjustments to your funnel and customer experience affect revenue. Learn more about Revenue reports here.

10. Lifetime Value

As the name suggests, Lifetime Value helps you measure the total revenue your customers generate over time. This is an important figure for businesses of all sizes, as it estimates the amount you are likely to gain by keeping a particular customer happy.

Understanding Lifetime Value will help you know who the most valuable customers are.

After learning about your most valuable customers, you can design campaigns that reward them with discounts, coupons or loyalty points. Learn more information about Lifetime Value in Facebook Analytics here.

11. Breakdowns 

With the Breakdowns feature of Facebook Analytics, you can create a pivot table of your data with up to three parameters. Doing so will help you know the types of people interacting with your analytics entities and how they're interacting. You can gather more information about Breakdowns here.

12. Automated Insights

This is a beneficial feature for small business owners, and it will save them a lot of time. Facebook employs advanced machine learning to analyze and monitor your data. So you will automatically get valuable insights to make informed decisions. Learn more here about Automated Insights.

13. Custom Dashboards

Facebook Analytics is a rich tool and can offer you tons of data. With the Custom Dashboards feature, you and your team can see the critical reports in one place. Learn more about Custom Dashboards here.

What's more, Facebook Analytics enables you to find answers to questions. For example, you can discover the top 30% of people who completed the most actions with the Percentiles report feature. This list is like gold, as you will be able to present these people with discounts, new releases and seasonal offers.

14. Custom Audiences

With the Custom Audiences feature, you can create a custom audience with filters and show ads to this specific audience. Note that it may take up to one hour for new custom audiences to become available. Learn more about Custom Audiences here.

Also, Facebook Analytics enables you to create Lookalike Audiences, similar to your custom audiences. This feature can help you reach new people who are likely to buy from you because they are similar to your existing customers.

How to set up Facebook Analytics

Close-up of someone’s Facebook Analytics dashboard

Setting up Facebook Analytics is easy. Here are steps you need to follow to start using Facebook Analytics:

  • Integrate you channels
  • Review the events and parameters
  • Log additional events and parameters, as required
  • Confirm that logging is correct

Then, you're ready to start using Facebook Analytics.

Grow your Facebook knowledge to reap the benefits

Facebook Analytics is enormous. With its wealth of data, you can track how your prospects and customers interact with your business across different channels like your website, app, Facebook Page, etc.

Using Facebook Analytics in the beginning takes some effort, but the rewards are worth your efforts. The good thing about Facebook is that it has valuable resources to help guide you along the process.