Over the last several months social media platforms have begun to show their biggest fear... revenue attribution and conversion tracking. Today let's take a dive into the murky waters of measuring social ROI strictly from an order/lead conversion perspective and how you implement and report from Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook Setup
Facebook is no stranger to the social space and their advertising platform improves weekly. The first thing to do if you advertise on Facebook with offsite links is to implement Facebook Conversion Tracking (https://www.facebook.com/help/435189689870514/). Utilizing Facebook's conversion pixel you simply need to log into your Facebook Ads Manager and click on Conversion Tracking then click on "Create Conversion Pixel." Name the pixel something memorable and choose the appropriate category. Try to limit the number of pixels within each category to 1 (I'll explain in the next section).
Once you click Create Pixel you'll be prompted with a wall of code. Place this code on the appropriate section of the website (or within your tag manager) and test. One thing to pay attention to is the yellow highlighted section. If you are tracking checkouts I highly encourage you to pass the order value into the script so that your reporting has it available... pretty hard to calculate ROI without the Return part!
Facebook Reporting
Now that we've implemented our conversion pixel(s) it's time to report on the success, or failure, of our campaign. Begin by visiting your new Facebook reports (yes, I know they've changed it, fear not, it's actually pretty good once you get used to it). Next click the Edit Columns button and Actions under metrics. Scroll down a little and you'll see a section for "External URL"... those options should look very similar to the categories you created in the conversion pixel setup. This is why we want to try to limit it to 1 pixel per category, the more you add the harder it is to narrow down the actual action. You'll do the same for the Revenue section of the report (if you passed in order total like I suggested).
One thing to keep in mind is Facebook allows you to customize the attribution window for reporting, this will allow you to see value by attribution windows. Let's be fair though, despite your want to have Social earn attribution on everything, be realistic, 1-7 days post view is fair.
If you've done everything right, both in reporting and in your advertising plans, you'll see a report with your conversions and revenue attached.
Twitter Setup
Begin by logging into your Twitter Ads account by visiting Ads.Twitter.com and click on Conversion Tracking. Once you're there you can create a new conversion tag by clicking the blue button.
You can name it as you please and select the category that best matches the action, the category is not as important as it is in Facebook
On this same page you're able to set the attribution window for the conversion; Twitter allows a further look back than Facebook... but again, be fair!
Grab the pixel and put it on your website in the appropriate place to fire.
Twitter Reporting
As you'll notice in the code above, there is no place to pass in the conversion value *fail trombone sound* so you'll just have to settle for knowing how MANY conversions occur. Unlike Facebook you can't see the different conversions so you'll be left with a report that just shows your conversions by day.
There you have it folks! If you've followed this step by step you should have reporting up and running. If you run into any snags or need a hand, just let me know!