With the increasing use of Social Media, companies are now using these platforms for targeted Marketing or campaigns to boost their business. It not only gives them the opportunity to reach out to visitors with their products and services but also helps them convert these visitors into their customers. There are various Ad Platforms available in the market for businesses to go for but one of the best is Facebook Ads.
According to a survey conducted by Facebook for Business, over 200 million businesses use Facebook Ads to market their products and services. On average, Facebook Ads convert visitors into customers at a rate of 9-10%. This Conversion Rate highly depends on your Industry and Business Goals. Facebook Insights is one of the most popular features given by Facebook that helps you keep track of your audience and allows you to understand their behavior on your Ads Campaigns. But Facebook Insights is limited to the actions taken directly through Facebook or captured through Facebook Pixel. It does not track anything outside it. This is where Google Analytics can help you better.
Setting Up Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration helps you keep track of your audience once they click on your Facebook Ads. It provides you a full range of metrics like Cost-Per-Click (CPC), Click-Through Rate (CTR), Quality Score, etc., to understand what your visitors are after and accordingly, helps you optimize your approach.
This article will introduce you to Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration and the advantages of doing so. It will also provide you with the 2 methods that can be used to integrate Google Analytics and Facebook Ads.
Table of Contents
Prerequisites
Following are the prerequisites for Setting Up Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration:
- A Google Analytics account.
- A Facebook Ads Manager account.
- A Facebook Ad idea.
What are Facebook Ads?
Image Source
Facebook Ads are paid advertisements for businesses to reach out to people who matter the most. Facebook Ads can turn Social Media users into your customers because they can reach the right people. When a person creates an account on Facebook and engages with its platform, it gives Facebook valuable data that Marketers can then tap into to create targeted Ads Campaigns.
According to a survey conducted by GreenBook, consumers are actually 50% more likely to buy from a company they follow on Facebook over a bunch of other Social Media platforms. With Facebook Ads, you can get pretty specific with your Ad Targeting. This is one of the biggest advantages of advertising on Facebook over other platforms. You can target people based on their demographics, location, interests, or even interaction with your business’s website. You can also create a custom audience based on a lot of different factors like people’s industries, relationships, life events, and more. Facebook also provides Facebook Pixel that you can add to your website. It helps you to target people who are interacting with your website and ads.
For more information on Facebook Ads, click here.
What is Google Analytics?
Image Source
Google Analytics is a free Web Analytical service that is used to track your website’s performance with basic Statistical and Analytical tools for Search Engine Optimization Optimization (SEO) and Marketing purposes.
Google Analytics works in stages. It first collects data in a number of different ways such as HTML pages, directly through Mobile Applications, etc., but the most common is using the Google Analytics Tracking Code. The Tracking Code is deployed on the website using Google Tag Manager. The next stage is Data Processing where the configuration you have made inside Google Analytics is applied to the data as it is processed. Finally, the processed data is reported. This is where you can access the processed data through a Web Interface or using Google Analytics API.
For more information on Google Analytics, click here.
How to set up Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration?
Image Source
As you have already read how Facebook Ads can help you formulate optimum solutions to your Marketing sector, it becomes important to understand how to analyze the data that you will collect. This is where Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration comes into the picture. Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration helps you understand the performance of your Ad Campaigns.
At this stage, you might think that Facebook Insights can provide you such information and can give you an overview of your Ads Performance. Well, you are not entirely wrong. Facebook Insights does something similar but it is very limited. It is limited to the actions taken directly through Facebook or captured through Facebook Pixel.
Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration not just gives you a much richer and deeper view into how the Facebook audience is interacting with your ads but also provides you an Analysis Report to track their behavior after clicking on your Facebook Ads such as what Web Pages did they checked, how much time did they spend on different Web Pages, etc. This is something Facebook Insights lacks and as a Marketer becomes important for you to understand.
To read about Google & Facebook Ads Integration, click here.
Methods to Integrate Google Analytics Facebook Ads
There are majorly 2 methods to integrate Google Analytics and Facebook Ads:
Method 1: Setting Up Manual Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration
This method includes manually integrating Google Analytics and Facebook Ads to track the performance of your Ad Campaigns. Follow the steps below to set up manual Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration:
Step 1: Create a Trackable URL using Google Campaign URL Builder
The first step is to create a Trackable URL by generating URL Parameters. This could be done using Google Campaign URL Builder. If you already have URL Parameters then you can skip this step. There are 5 Parameters that you need to consider viz. Source, Medium, Campaign, Term, and Content as shown in the image below.
Image Source
For more information on these URL Parameters, click here.
Step 2: Create your Facebook Ad
Once you are done with building a Trackable URL and generating URL Parameters, create your Facebook Ad. Follow the steps below to create your Facebook Ad:
- Create an account on Facebook Ads Manager.
- Login to your account and choose an objective or goal for your Ad as shown in the image below.
Image Source
- Choose your target audience.
- Set a budget and create your Ad.
Step 3: Add the Traceable URL to your Facebook Ad
Add the Traceable URL link that you created in step 1 to your Facebook Ad. There are 2 ways to do this:
- Copy and paste your whole Trackable URL in the “Website URL” field as shown in the image below.
Image Source
- Copy and paste your URL Parameters in the “URL Parameters” field as shown in the image below.
Image Source
NOTE: Before proceeding to the next step, ensure that your Web Pages are not throwing any errors while loading.
Step 4: Track your Performance in Google Analytics
This is the final step for integrating Google Analytics Facebook Ads. Once you have successfully performed the 3rd step, log in to your Google Analytics account and follow the steps below:
- Click on Acquisition.
- Under All Traffic, select Source/Medium as shown in the image below.
Image Source
- If you have followed all the steps correctly then you would now see Google Analytics has successfully attributed Traffic and Conversion to your Facebook Medium that you used as your URL Parameter.
- Click on Other and select the Parameter that you want to analyze in the Acquisition Report as shown in the image below.
Image Source
That’s it. You have successfully set up Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration for your company using the manual process!
Limitations of Setting Up Manual Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration
Listed below are the limitations of using manual method to set up Google Analytics and Facebook Ads Integration:
- Setting up manual Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration requires technical expertise and experience in working with Google Analytics and Facebook Ads.
- As you will need to integrate data periodically, there is a high possibility of Data Redundancy.
- Manual Integration is only effective for Facebook Ads where your target audience is very limited and less in number. The complexity of integration increases with the increase in the number of target audiences.
To avoid these limitations, you can set up Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration using Hevo Data as it is a seamless and hassle-free integration method.
Method 2: Setting Up Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration using Hevo Data
Image Source
Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline helps to Load Data from any data source such as Databases, SaaS applications, Cloud Storage, SDKs, and Streaming Services and simplifies the ETL process. It supports 100+ data sources including Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, etc., for free and is a 3-step process by just selecting the data source, providing valid credentials, and choosing the destination. Hevo loads the data onto the desired Data Warehouse, enriches the data, and transforms it into an analysis-ready form without writing a single line of code.
Its completely automated pipeline offers data to be delivered in real-time without any loss from source to destination. Its fault-tolerant and scalable architecture ensure that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss and supports different forms of data. The solutions provided are consistent and work with different Business Intelligence (BI) tools as well.
Get Started with Hevo for free
Check out why Hevo is the Best:
- Secure: Hevo has a fault-tolerant architecture that ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.
- Schema Management: Hevo takes away the tedious task of schema management & automatically detects the schema of incoming data and maps it to the destination schema.
- Minimal Learning: Hevo, with its simple and interactive UI, is extremely simple for new customers to work on and perform operations.
- Hevo Is Built To Scale: As the number of sources and the volume of your data grows, Hevo scales horizontally, handling millions of records per minute with very little latency.
- Incremental Data Load: Hevo allows the transfer of data that has been modified in real-time. This ensures efficient utilization of bandwidth on both ends.
- Live Support: The Hevo team is available round the clock to extend exceptional support to its customers through chat, email, and support calls.
- Live Monitoring: Hevo allows you to monitor the data flow and check where your data is at a particular point in time.
Sign up here for a 14-day Free Trial!
Advantages of Integrating Google Analytics Facebook Ads
Following are the advantages of using Facebook Google Analytics Tracker over any other Web Analytical tools:
- Free Service: Integrating Google Analytics Facebook Ads is a free service provided by Google. So, you do not have to pay any monthly charges or fees to use this service for your Facebook Ads Campaigns.
- Allows Better Understanding of your Audience: Integrating Google Analytics Facebook Ads helps to better understand who your audience is such as their age, gender, location, etc. It also helps you understand what kind of audience your business appeals to. By knowing what kind of audience you attract, you will be able to craft better Ad Campaigns.
- User Friendly: The platform is very easy to use and quite user-friendly. You do not need to be tech-savvy to use it or a website developer to install Google Analytics either.
- Track Ads Performance: Integrating Google Analytics Facebook Ads allows you to see what actions your visitors are performing on your website (which tabs they click on, which pages they visit, etc.) after clicking through your Facebook Ads. This gives you a better understanding of what your visitors are after and what you should optimize.
- Track Website Traffic: With Facebook Google Analytics Tracker, you can track where your traffic is coming from. It allows you to see if your traffic is coming from a specific social network or other sources. This helps in making an informed decision on which traffic sources are best for you to invest time and money in.
Conclusion
This article introduced you to Google Analytics and Facebook Ads. It provided a step-by-step guide to integrate Google Analytics Facebook Ads manually and the perks of using Hevo Data for this task. It also briefed you on using Facebook Google Analytics Tracker over any other Web Analytical tools.
With the complexity involves in manual Integration, businesses are leaning more towards automated Integration. This is not only hassle-free but also easy to operate and does not require any technical proficiency. In such a case, Hevo Data is the right choice for you! It will help simplify the Web Analysis process by setting up Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration for free.
Visit our Website to Explore Hevo
Want to take Hevo for a spin? Sign Up for a 14-day free trial and experience the feature-rich Hevo suite first hand.
Share your experience of Setting Up Google Analytics Facebook Ads Integration in the comments section below!
Karan has experience in driving strategic planning, and implementing data-driven initiatives. His experience spans strategic transition planning, data analysis for optimization, product development. His passion to data drives him write in-depth articles on data integration.