The ultimate Facebook ads audit checklist

Facebook ad campaigns let you target your audience strategically and create engaging content. But how can you tell if your campaigns are really working?

Accessing your Facebook ads audit can help. It’s a thorough review to ensure your campaigns are set up for success.

The next question is, where should you get started with your Facebook ad account audit?

In this guide, we’ll explain everything you need to have on your Facebook ads audit checklist so you can perform your own audit, along with some important pointers about the right tools and strategies that will help you along the process, such as:

What is a Facebook ads audit?

A Facebook ads audit is a detailed review of your ad campaigns to see where you can improve. Auditing is basically a check-up on your Ads Manager account to see if you’re following Meta ads best practices and if there are ways to improve your campaign performance.

The goal is to find what’s working well and what needs to go, and how you can make your ads even better.

Before talking about the Facebook ads audit checklist, you should consider different elements like your ad account structure, targeting, ad creatives, and performance metrics.

Key things to look for in Facebook ads audit

1. Audit checklist for your account setup and tracking

Start by reviewing the basics of your account. Use Meta Business Manager to organize everything. This includes:

• Your Facebook Pages
• Ad accounts
• Meta Pixels
• Website domains

Make sure all user roles and permissions are set correctly so the right people have access. Then, check your tracking setup.

Also, ensure the Meta Pixel is installed and working properly to measure conversions and collect audience data. You can find this in Meta’s Events Manager. Also, confirm that your attribution settings match the updated standards.

2. Audit checklist related to your audiences and ad placements

Next, take a closer look at your audiences. Organize them with clear, consistent names to make managing them easier. Make sure your audience size isn’t too small. Your audience should be broad enough to find new customers but targeted enough to stay relevant.

Don’t forget to exclude groups like existing customers or app users if your goal is prospecting. For ad placements, use Advantage+ placements for optimized distributions. If you choose “Manual Placements,” double-check that your creatives fit each format, like using vertical images for Stories.

3. Audit checklist for your ad creatives and performance metrics

Additionally, you should evaluate all the elements that go into the anatomy of your Facebook ads. For instance, check that:

• Your messaging is clear and up to date
• The call-to-action (CTA) matches the landing page
• Your landing pages are functional and aligned with your ad.

Among the key things to look for in Facebook ads audit is performance analysis, which requires you to customize your dashboard in order to track key metrics like clicks, impressions, cost per click (CPC), and return on ad spend (ROAS). Regularly reviewing these numbers will help you see what’s working and what needs improvement.

Why conducting a Facebook ads audit is important

You can’t just set up a campaign and leave it alone. You need to check on it regularly to see how it’s doing and to find areas for improvement.

That’s why conducting a Facebook ads audit becomes essential, especially for:

• Optimizing your ad performance by identifying what’s working and what’s not. Then, making data-driven decisions to improve the shortcomings.
• Maximizing the campaign’s ROI by making sure you are spending your advertising budget effectively and that there is minimal wasted ad spend.
• Staying competitive by keeping your campaigns fresh and aligned with the latest best practices.

Where to start with your Facebook ads audit?

How you audit depends on what’s most important to you. Most audits examine factors like audience targeting, ad creative, campaign structure, account overview, and landing pages.

While audits can be different for each person, there are some common grounds as well to audit Facebook ads. Let’s take a look.

1. Facebook ad account audit

The very first step in your Facebook ads audit is to review your account setup in Meta Ads Manager. This includes checking the structure of your campaigns, ad sets, and creatives. This is the same as Meta’s ad structure logic.

Campaign structure

Your campaigns should be organized in a rational manner. What does this mean? For starters each campaign should have a clear objective, such as brand awareness, lead generation, or conversions.

You should group similar ad sets under relevant campaigns to keep things manageable.

Ad Set settings

Always review your targeting options within each ad set. Are you reaching the right audience?

Check your demographics, interests, and behavior settings to ensure they align with your target market. Also, review your budget and bid strategy to see whether your ads are optimized for your goals.

Ad creatives

Are your ad creatives good enough in terms of relevance and quality? Do they make your ads engaging and visually appealing enough?

Ensure your ad meets these standards while having a clear, concise copy and a strong call to action (CTA).

Try testing different variations of your ads to see which ones perform best.

2. Monitoring analytics and results

Once your ad account is in order, your next stop should be the performance metrics. Monitoring your analytics helps you understand your ads’ performance and where you can improve.

Here are the key metrics you should focus on:

Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

You should know all about your Facebook ads conversion rates. A low CTR may show that your ads are not resonating with your audience. The solution? Test different headlines, images, and CTAs to boost engagement.

Keep in mind that CTRs can vary based on the industry. A weak clickthrough rate for a business could be a great clickthrough rate for you. So it’s important to stay objective.

Conversion rate

There’s over $9B in ad spend. How many of your campaigns are turning to conversions? Track how many users are taking the action you want them to take (filling out a form or making a purchase).

If your conversion rate is low, you should optimize your Facebook ads (again), the landing page the ad’s link is taking them to, or even refigure your offer.

Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

How much should you spend on your Facebook ads?

You should know all about your Facebook ads’ conversion rates. A low CTR may show that your ads are not resonating with your audience. The solution? Test different headlines, images, and CTAs to boost engagement.

3. Reviewing your ad targeting and audience segmentation

The precision of your ad targeting is key to the success of your Facebook ads. During your audit, consider reviewing your campaign’s:

Audience Insights

Use Facebook Audience Insights to understand your audience better. This tool offers tons of valuable information on demographics, interests, and behaviors that can help you improve your targeting down the line.

Custom audiences

Custom audiences can be made based on your existing customer data in your CRM, website visitors, or engagement with your Facebook page. This can help you reach people who are already familiar with your brand.

However, you’ll need to connect this data to Facebook to create convert audiences. Creating an integration is the most recommended way of creating this connection. That is, if you want to build highly targeted audience segments.

Lookalike audiences

Create lookalike audiences to find new customers (or leads) who share similarities with your existing audience segments. This can extend your reach and ultimately improve your campaign performance.

4. Implementing automation

Facebook ads automation involves streamlining your data management workflows to and from Facebook. Integrating your Facebook ads with the other marketing tools you use helps you automate repetitive tasks and get the most out of the data you collect.

Here’s what you can do:

Leverage automated rules

Use Meta’s automated rules to manage your ad campaigns more efficiently. This essentially lets you set rules to adjust budgets, bids, or pause underperforming ads. All this takes place automatically based on specified conditions.

Here’s an example, considering a total budget of £60 allocated across the three ad sets:

Source

Run retargeting campaigns

Setting up retargeting campaigns lets you re-engage users who have interacted with your ads or visited your website. Things get even better when you mix this function with automation. Automated retargeting helps keep your brand top of mind and even encourages conversions.

Here are the best strategies for Facebook retargeting ads in 2024.

Use Meta Business Partner integrations

LeadsBridge offers a variety of integrations to connect your Facebook ads with your CRM, email marketing software, and other tools. This seamless data transfer can improve your response time and help you have robust lead management.

Top integrations include:

1. Lead ads: Automatically syncs new leads with your CRM for quick follow-up.

2. Custom audience: Ensures having precise targeting by syncing your customer data with Facebook.

3. Conversions API: Tracks offline conversions and improves attribution accuracy.

4. Conversion leads performance goal: Helps optimize your campaigns to meet specific performance targets.

A must-have on your Facebook ads audit checklist: Facebook lead ads dashboard

With access to important metrics such as number of leads, CPA, lead generation rate, CTR, spend, frequency, reach, and impressions, you can thoroughly weigh every aspect of your campaign.

LeadsBridge has introduced a new feature to help you do just that. The Facebook lead ads dashboard can immensely improve your ad monitoring process.

This tool lets you customize your reports for any selected time period. This allows you to track performance over time while granularly filtering through these metrics.

This characteristic also helps you notice trends, your campaign’s seasonal impacts, or changes in performance after making adjustments.

You can learn more about LeadsBridge’s Facebook lead ads dashboard here.

What to take away from this

Running a Facebook ads audit is not a “marketing mandate”. However, it’s needed if you are looking for ways to boost your advertising strategy or stay competitive within a highly saturated industry, such as automotive marketing.

All you need is campaigns that are well-structured, effectively targeted, and optimized for the best results. It’s obvious that without enough data, you cannot quite hit any of these targets.

Automation gives you more time and efficiency to grow your business. With LeadsBridge, you can automate lead syncing, audience targeting, and more.

Discover how LeadsBridge can help you optimize your Facebook ads today.