Don't get frustrated by trying to measure how successful your online advertising is impacting your offline sales. 

 

Businesses who "close their sale" primarily offline have always been faced with a challenge when using Facebook Ads. If there is no cart or online sale, and instead a customer makes their primary transaction at a physical location, how can a business know if their ads are working?

 

According to Facebook:

 

 

 

And, maybe even more importantly, how can businesses appeal again to those successful transactions that take place offline to customers online?

 

 

For example, a customer sees your Facebook Ad or interacts with your website. They then in person arrive at your brick and mortar store to make a purchase. If you don't have any direct inquiry to ask them how they learned about your business, how can you know that your ad or website was successful? 

 

Facebook's offline conversion measurement tool is the feature that makes all of this possible. 

 

"Facebook's offline conversion measurement solution helps you understand which offline events, such as purchases in your store or orders over the phone, happened as a result of your Facebook ads. By attributing offline event data from your customer system to people who saw and clicked on your Facebook ads, you can better understand the effectiveness of your ad campaigns and return on your ad spend. You can then make optimization decisions to drive more offline events," Facebook describes.

 

 

Or let's say a customer is new to your brick and mortar store and makes a purchase there. How can you then attract them online if they are not an existing follower? 

 

And even further, how can you attract new customers who have never been to your physical store  who are likely to interact with your store as successful ones?

 

Offline event sets are the powerful tool that drives these interactions and conversions.

 

With offline event sets, businesses can create data sets to record offline engagements and then upload these sets into Facebook. The sets can also be assigned values to correspond with online interactions in order to measure your ROI.

 

Sounds complicated? 

 

It's not as challenging as it may appear. And according to Facebook, some best practices can ensure that your campaign delivers even better results. For example, these are some of the recommendations from Facebook:

 

 

• Upload your offline event data with precise timestamps and use actual transaction values: Precise timestamps, including minutes and seconds, ensure that each unique event is included, such as multiple purchases made by the same person in one day. Actual transaction values allow you to see the most accurate event values in your reporting. You can see aggregated monetary value of your uploaded events, matched events and attributed events to better understand the return on your ad spend.
• Include an Order ID field and enter a unique identifier for each transaction: Order IDs help deduplicate your offline events and improve attribution. Remember that Each Order ID should have a unique Event Time and customer associated with it. If you want to split a transaction into multiple events, you can also use the Item Number field to provide unique item numbers for each event associated with the same Order ID.
• Upload offline event data regularly and in the order that the events occurred (sequentially by date): Regular uploads help minimize gaps in your reporting. We recommend you upload daily so that offline data can be effectively matched against the performance of any ads you're running. The data you upload is processed in real time so you can view results as soon as you add it.
• Only upload new data from the time of your last upload, rather than cumulative data, to avoid duplicate results: Data is matched against tracked impressions within the last 90 days for conversions that occurred within 1, 7 or 28 days of an impression. Events that you previously uploaded can't be deleted and our system can only deduplicate events uploaded within a set period of time.
• Assign an event set to an ad account before you begin a campaign: An event set will track an account from the time it's assigned. Remember to enable auto-tracking so that any future campaigns in the account will automatically be associated with the offline event set as well. For a more automated process, you can also upload offline event data directly with the offline conversions API or partner integration.

It may seem like a massive amount of data to account for and manage. But with the right tools and guidance, the process can be streamlined and simplified. Plus, if you are already using a point-of-sale or CRM system, Facebook may have already set up an integration system.

Don't be overwhelmed by Facebook's Offline Conversion Tracking. We can help! Reach out to us today for some guidance on implementing this feature. 

 

Shop Now