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How to Use Facebook Ads Benchmarks and Get the Best ROI

Facebook Ads have continuously helped eCommerce businesses increase brand awareness, drive sales, and ultimately grow their business

So, how can you put Facebook Ad benchmarks to work to further enhance the effectiveness of your ads? 

What Facebook Ads KPIs Should You Focus On?

Facebook Ads produce several different KPIs that can become overwhelming even for established eCommerce stores. Instead of trying to boost every available KPI, focus on the specific KPIs that translate directly to revenue and brand awareness

Facebook Ad industry benchmarks help you understand the effectiveness of your campaigns in relation to your peers. So don’t make the mistake of deciding if a campaign was a success or failure in a vacuum — use benchmarks to see how you compare. 

Industry benchmarks help you discover your competitor's results so you can adjust your efforts and maximize your ROI.

Let’s go over some of the essential KPIs affecting revenue and each industry's benchmarks.

Click Through Rate

The average Click Through Rate (CTR) across all industries is 0.9%. CTR describes the number of people who saw your ad and clicked through to your app or website.

Instead of using the average, see how you compare within your industry. Facebook Ad industry benchmarks for CTR are:

  • Retail - 1.59%
  • Apparel -  1.24%
  • Beauty  - 1.16%
  • Technology -  1.04%
  • Fitness -  1.01%
  • B2B -  0.78%
  • Education -  0.73%
  • Industrial Services -  0.71%
  • Home Improvement -  0.70%
  • Customer Services -  0.62%
  • Finance & Insurance -  0.56%
  • Employment & Job Training Services -  0.47%

This significant range demonstrates why comparing within your industry is essential. In addition, the Varos dashboard shows your results next to your competitors’ real-time results to help gauge how specific campaigns perform.

Cost Per Click

The average Cost Per Click (CPC) on Facebook Ads is $1.72. CPC describes how much you’re paying when someone clicks on your ad. This KPI is essential to ensure your ad spend converts into enough revenue to create a positive ROI.

Are you spending too much or not enough on your clicks? Let’s review industry benchmarks to help you find out:

  • Financial - $3.77
  • Employment & Job Training - $2.93
  • Industrial Services - $2.14
  • Real Estate - $1.81
  • Apparel - $0.45 
  • Travel and Hospitality - $0.63 
  • Retail - $0.70

Understanding how much your competition is spending is crucial in modifying your bid strategies. Additionally, you can refine ads and landing pages, so every click you pay for generates the most revenue possible.

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Conversion Rate

The average Facebook ads conversion rate (CVR) is 9.21%. CVR describes how many new visitors to your eCommerce site become customers. 

Understanding if you have a good conversion rate depends on having more specific benchmarks than the overall average. The average Facebook Ads CVR per industry is:

  • Fitness - 14.29%
  • Education - 13.58%
  • Employment & Job Training -  11.73% 
  • Retail -  3.26%
  • Travel & Hospitality - 2.82%
  • Technology -  2.31%

Tracking and analyzing your CVR sheds light on your overall marketing efforts, including landing pages and on-site design, so you understand what’s helping or hurting your ROI.

Below, you can see how the Varos dashboard shows you the average for your specific competitors alongside your real-time results. So you’ll always understand if you’re pulling ahead or falling behind.

Cost Per Action

The average Cost Per Action (CPA) for Facebook Ads across all industries is $18.68. This KPI describes how much you spent to create the specified action. For eCommerce sites, the action is typically a purchase.

Understanding industry benchmarks helps you better gauge how much your peers spend. The Facebook Ad CPA industry benchmarks are:

  • Technology - $55.21
  • Home Improvement -  $44.66
  • Auto -  $43.84
  • Finance & Insurance - $41.43
  • Apparel -  $10.98
  • Healthcare -  $12.31
  • Real Estate -  $16.92
  • Education - $7.85

CPA is an essential KPI that impacts your ROI as it directly reflects how much you spend to earn a sale. The Varos dashboard shows your CPA (Purchase) compared to the average for your peers — both of which are updated in real-time. How do you compare?

Use Facebook Ads Benchmarks To Drive Marketing Decisions

Facebook is one of the best social media platforms to help power your business. However, your campaigns should be driven by data to maximize your Facebook advertising costs and improve your ROI.

Industry benchmarks are a valuable tool to help guide your decisions. You’ll understand how your results compare and be aware of overall trends impacting your entire industry.

Let’s explore how you can use industry benchmarks to make data-driven marketing decisions to grow your business.

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Set Specific Goals 

You need to know the endpoint to understand how to get there. Next, create goals that reflect your overall business objectives, which might focus more on increasing brand awareness than driving sales.

Every business will have specific overarching objectives yearly — your specific marketing goals should reflect them. Define the specific KPIs that will work towards your objectives. Be aware of their current values and the moving pieces that affect them.

Then, you’re ready to set KPI goals for the specific campaign and the long term. Industry benchmarks help you stay realistic as you set these goals. Strive to reach the top 10% of your industry for each KPI — which you know is achievable because your peers are already there.

Put Common Ad Variations to Work

Facebook Ads have been around for years, and companies like yours have experimented with what works and what doesn’t. While innovation and creativity can make an impact, don’t be afraid to try ads that reliably produce impressive results.

Common ad variations to explore include:

  • X Reasons Why: This type of ad isn’t great for static images but can be excellent for videos. Put together a quick explainer video showcasing your product's benefits, value proposition, and specific features. Educate Facebook users about why they should become customers.
  • User-Generated Content: We can’t overstate the value of social proof to increase revenue for your business. User-generated content (UGC) is any type of content created by real customers and used in our ad campaigns. For example, video testimonials of your customer's experience with your product or company help convey what the user might also experience.
  • Us vs. Them: What makes your product or service unique? How do you compare to your competitors? Then, create an ad that tells potential customers why you’re the right choice, not your peers.

Creating new ideas for every campaign isn’t always necessary, and you might harm the campaign’s results by reinventing the wheel. So instead, use the above ad variations and see how they work for your business. 

Build Specific Landing Pages

Every Facebook Ad campaign should drive traffic to a landing page built for that exact campaign. The landing page will then follow up on the ad’s messaging and culminate in a call to action (CTA) that encourages the visitor to purchase.

It's entirely too common to see eCommerce sites focus on the ads themselves but send traffic to a standard product description page. This strategy might produce some results, but you’ll undoubtedly have a lot of room to improve your ROI and catch up to the industry benchmarks.

Just like ads, there are a few standard formats for landing pages worth considering, including:

  • Long-form landing page: These pages are perfectly suited for high-value purchases or technical products. Both types of purchases require giving the visitors plenty of information and employing persuasion tactics.
  • Click-through landing page: Many eCommerce sites use this type of landing page to act as a transition between the Facebook Ad and the transaction page, where they’ll make the purchase. The relatively short page has minimal or no navigation, provides persuasive information and guides the user through to make their purchase. 
  • Video landing pages: As expected, these pages use videos rather than text and images to motivate the sale. Explainers, testimonials, or FAQs make excellent videos persuading the visitor to purchase. 

Ultimately, your landing page plays a significant role in your overall ROI. Decreasing your CPA, increasing your CTV, and maximizing your CPC rely on sending traffic to the right place.

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Always Track Results

It’s critical to track the results of any changes you make to your marketing campaigns, whether following the above tips or other tactics. First, be aware of the focus KPIs before the change has been implemented, then track changes over time.

Additionally, don’t consider a campaign a success or failure before enough time has passed. You won’t know within the first day if your landing page is really making a difference; give it two weeks to one month before evaluating results.

You’ll be ready to make further enhancements once you have enough data to gauge the effects of the new changes. In addition, industry benchmarks help you stay aware of overall industry trends and how your competitors — so you’re never making decisions in a vacuum.

Partner with Varos for Real-Time Benchmarks for Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads can be a powerful tool to generate revenue for your business consistently. However, understanding the right KPIs to track and comparing them to industry benchmarks give the added advantage of understanding the entire context behind your results.

Industry benchmarks allow you to make informed decisions about refining, updating, or stopping specific campaigns to maximize your ad budget. 

Varos is a unique platform that gives you the entire context before your marketing KPIs. So you won’t be making decisions in a vacuum but considering your entire industry. Below you can see how several Facebook Ads KPIs compare alongside your own results:

Ready to start making decisions on the entire story? Start your free trial with Varos or book a demo today to gain the advantage.

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Tweets

Chase Dimond | Email Marketing Nerd 📧
@ecomchasedimond

Bottom line: I’m recommending Varos to you all because it’s FREE (for now) and it’s already added a ton of value for myself and my clients.Check it out 👇

Social Savannah
@social_savannah

I would definitely recommend checking out Varos. With Varos you can easily see how your peers are performing, for free. You get insights into not only TikTok Ads benchmarks, but also similar data for Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and more. #VarosAmbassador

jason wong
@eggrolI

Varos allows thousands merchants to upload anonymize marketing data across meta and google and aggregating it to show what the average is across different categories and ad spend

Cody Plofker
@codyplof

With varos.com, I can see exactly how our performance across channels stacks up against our competitors in our space.

Barry Hott ☄️
@binghott

Compare your ad performance to benchmarks of companies just like yours, anonymously.
I would've killed for this tool years ago and now it's here and oh it's free. Amazing.

Ron Shah
@obviceo

I've been seeing some content about @Varos_com so we decided to check it out.

One underrated feature of theirs is the Shopify Benchmarking, which is FREE btw.

Literally impossible to access this data anywhere else. Check out what we're seeing at @my_obvi 👇

William Harris
@wmharris101

I'm loving what @Varos_com is doing with providing much more relevant benchmarks for #ecommerce... especially since it shows that we are absolutely DOMINATING @Elumynt on #facebookads!

This is in the Baby and Children vertical.#fbads #ppcchat #retail #dtc

Chase Dimond | Email Marketing Nerd 📧
@ecomchasedimond

Bottom line: I’m recommending Varos to you all because it’s FREE (for now) and it’s already added a ton of value for myself and my clients.Check it out 👇

Social Savannah
@social_savannah

I would definitely recommend checking out Varos. With Varos you can easily see how your peers are performing, for free. You get insights into not only TikTok Ads benchmarks, but also similar data for Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and more. #VarosAmbassador

jason wong
@eggrolI

Varos allows thousands merchants to upload anonymize marketing data across meta and google and aggregating it to show what the average is across different categories and ad spend

Cody Plofker
@codyplof

With varos.com, I can see exactly how our performance across channels stacks up against our competitors in our space.

Barry Hott ☄️
@binghott

Compare your ad performance to benchmarks of companies just like yours, anonymously.
I would've killed for this tool years ago and now it's here and oh it's free. Amazing.

Ron Shah
@obviceo

I've been seeing some content about @Varos_com so we decided to check it out.

One underrated feature of theirs is the Shopify Benchmarking, which is FREE btw.

Literally impossible to access this data anywhere else. Check out what we're seeing at @my_obvi 👇

William Harris
@wmharris101

I'm loving what @Varos_com is doing with providing much more relevant benchmarks for #ecommerce... especially since it shows that we are absolutely DOMINATING @Elumynt on #facebookads!

This is in the Baby and Children vertical.#fbads #ppcchat #retail #dtc