What is your main goal in Facebook marketing?

CPA (cost per action)
ROI (return on investment) - ROAS (return on ad spend; same concept but a different number than ROI, read more below)
Post engagement and reach
Level of traffic to your website
Other?

Difference between ROI and ROAS

ROI and ROAS are two very similar KPIs and sometimes used interchangeably. In the most common definitions, there's a crucial difference: ROI = ROAS – 100%.

ROI, Return on Investment, tells you how much more money did you get from an investment, so it considers the spend an investment for future gains. If your ROI is 0%, that means you broke even. If ROI is 100%, you doubled your money! ROI is thus (usually) defined as:

ROAS, Return on Ad Spend, tells you how much revenue you got from your ad spend. It considers advertising costs as a cost, and as traditionally returns on that cost have been hard to track, all revenue is a bonus. If your ROAS is 0%, that means you got nothing in return and lost all of your money. If your ROAS is 100%, that means you got back what you spent, breaking even. ROAS is thus (usually) defined as:

When you combine the equations, we can see that ROI = ROAS – 1 = ROAS -– 100%.

More precisely, what does your goal mean in practice?

I’m happy and will increase budgets if CPA is under _____ €.
I’m ok with the performance if the CPA stays under _____ €.
I will start reducing budgets if CPA is over _____ €.
I will stop my ads if CPA is over _____ €.

CPA tradeoff

I will rather…

settle for a little bit higher CPA to get wider reach and more total conversions.
settle for a little bit smaller reach and less total conversions to keep the CPA down.

How do you define a conversion/CPA/ROI?

Meta Pixel
- The default is 28 days click-through and 1-day view-through.
- What is your attribution window?
  - Determine a good attribution window to use.
- Google analytics
  - Last click attribution
- I have my own custom attribution model - Those can be defined using your in-house data with a server-to-server integration (S2S), or a Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP)

How do you define your budget for Facebook?

I have a certain amount of (lifetime) budget that I want to spend as well as possible.
I have periodic budgets (e.g., quarterly), after which the results and new budget levels are evaluated.
I have fully flexible budgets as long as the results are good enough.

Decision-making and reporting?

Who makes the decisions to change the budgets?
- I check the results and make decisions based on that.
- I report the performance to someone and get the budget limits I’m allowed to work with.
On what level is the reporting done?
- Per channel, per country, per account?
I have an ongoing and flexible reporting cycle.
- Performance has to stay within the limits continuously.
I’m reporting the results weekly/monthly.
- Performance can vary day to day as long as we meet goals on a weekly/monthly level.