What is the Average Conversion Rate for Facebook Ads?

Getting to grips with Facebook ad metrics can be daunting, and your conversion rate for Facebook ads can be one of those confusing numbers. 

Yet, it’s an important metric to take note of.

In this article, we cover everything you need to know about your Facebook ad conversion rate: what it is and how it’s calculated, industry benchmarks, the factors that affect it, how to monitor it, and what you can do to improve yours.

Read on, dear advertisers.

What is conversion rate in Facebook ads?

In Facebook ads, the conversion rate is the number of times someone converts, i.e., performs the desired action on your ads, packaged as a percentage. 

It’s essentially the ratio of your target audience who completed the desired conversion action in Engagement, Leads, or Sales campaigns. 

When you create your campaign, you can choose from 6 different campaign objectives, and the conversion event is defined by the campaign objective you choose when setting up your ads.

Examples of conversions can include clicking on your ad, clicking your website link, submitting a lead form, subscribing to your list, installing your app, making a purchase, completing registration, adding payment details, and adding an item to a cart.

The Facebook ads conversion rate formula

Meta calculates this by taking the total number of conversions, such as adding an item to the cart, a successful registration, messaging conversations started, adding payment details, checkouts initiated, or purchases, divided by the total ad engagement or website visits. 

You must multiply this number by 100 to determine the percentage, which is your conversion rate.

What is the average conversion rate for Facebook ads?

The average conversion rate for Facebook ads is 9.21% across all industries. However, you’ll notice it varies significantly by sector.

So, as you can see in this image, your conversion rate can fluctuate drastically depending on your industry. 

Let’s take a look. 

Facebook ads conversion rate by industry

​​Before you start advertising on Facebook, you should do your research to determine the results you can expect for your business. 

Checking industry benchmarks gives you an idea of the conversion rate you can expect from your Facebook ads.

Fitness, education, medical, real estate, and B2B services are industries with good conversion rates. The average conversion rate for Facebook ads in these industries is between 10.68% and 14.29%. Anything above 10% is considered very good.

If you’re in the fitness industry, you can expect a high conversion rate of around 14.29% on your Facebook ads. However, your average Facebook conversion rate in the industrial services industry is 0.71%, offering little return. 

If you’re in the technology, travel, or retail space, you can expect a low conversion rate of 2.31% to 3.26%.

It’s best to know all of this before you start advertising so you don’t waste ad spend or have to change tactics when you’re already far down the road.

If you read between the lines of these industry benchmarks, it highlights an opportunity for small businesses to get great results by advertising on Facebook.

The conversion rate for Facebook ads compared to other platforms

We looked at the average Facebook conversion rate across industries, so let’s check out the average conversion rate on other advertising platforms.

The average Instagram conversion rate is between 1% and 3%, with consumer goods on the high end of the scale and B2B at the lower end.

Store Growers says that Google ads have an average conversion rate of 3.75% for Search ads and 0.59% for Display ads across all industries. As with the Facebook conversion rate, the Google one - and any other ad or social media platform - fluctuates too.

Databox says the average Google conversion rate for Search ads is 4.2% and 0.55% for Display ads across all industries. 

It’s a stark comparison if we look at the average TikTok conversion rate of an optimized ad campaign, which is a low 0.46%. 

I’d say that Facebook ads are sounding better and better with this data.

Factors affecting the average Facebook ad conversion rate

As with other Facebook metrics like your average Facebook CPM or click-through rate, several factors impact your average Facebook ad conversion rate.

Ad quality and relevance

Relevance is the holy grail of Facebook advertising. 

Creating ads relevant to your specific target audience significantly affects the quality ranking of your ad, which also impacts the average cost per action (CPA). See what Facebook ads cost at the moment.

It means factoring in what audience type you are targeting and speaking to them where they are in your sales funnel. This context is key to improving relevance. 

Bidding strategy

How competitive your industry or market is can impact your conversion rate. If other advertisers outbid you, Meta will show your ad less, which may not affect your conversion rate but could affect the number of conversions you get over the time period. It’s essential to know how competitive the market is for what you’re advertising. 

Your bidding strategy impacts how you handle this competition when it comes to how Meta chooses the winning ad during the ad auction.

If you aren’t getting the conversion amount you want, consider increasing your bid cap to up the chances of your ad being shown to more people likely to convert. It doesn’t mean that the max amount is what you’ll pay for every bid - this is not the case. 

It means that it gives Meta more budget allocation to aid your chances of winning the ad auction meaning your ad is shown more. Being flexible in your bid cap amounts is advisable if the competition is fierce. 

Targeting strategy

You should follow a strategy to target your audience according to the action you want the user to take. So, you must also consider where they are in your sales funnel.

Facebook conversion campaigns are not ideal for targeting broad audiences for the first time. Going from first touch to purchase is too giant a leap for the user to take, making it harder to convert. 

Conversion campaigns are best for driving purchases, adding payment details, adding an item to a cart, signing up for a free trial, or other conversion events.

A purchase conversion event will also work better for retargeting a warm audience.

Attractiveness of your offer

Is your ad clickworthy? Does it appeal to your target audience enough for them to take action? Nowadays, getting people to stop scrolling and take action is more challenging. Make sure your offer is appealing enough to stop that thumb! 

Use concise copy and clear calls to action, and avoid jargon and ambiguous wording. Ensure your creative tells the story as well as your ad copy does.

Ad type and placement

Some Facebook ad types are better suited to conversion campaigns than others. It depends on the goal and the action you want Facebook users to take. If you’re selling multiple products or want to highlight features, carousel ads or Advantage+ catalog ads may be the best option to drive conversions.

Creating multiple ad formats to advertise on different ad placements across Meta’s products will help you reach your target audience wherever they spend most of their time. Doing so will help you gather data on which Facebook ad placements get better conversion rates.

See all of Meta’s ad types here.

Ad creatives

Compelling visuals that inspire action and communicate the value of your offer go a long way to improving your Facebook ad conversion rate.

Ensure the ad copy and creatives are aligned and work together to get your message across to your target audience. In other words, work using a creative strategy when producing your ads.

You only know a winning ad once you launch it and have tested different versions. Pre-empting what will appeal to your audience is impossible, so creating multiple ad versions and formats will help you learn what works and get better results.

Using video, high-quality images, and user-generated content in your ad creatives can entice your audience to make them more likely to engage with your ad.

Why this is a good example of ad creatives:

1. They used a high-quality image that clearly shows the product.
2. The messaging is clear with only one ask of the target audience, and it matches the copy.

Landing page experience

Your ad may be a thumb-stopper, but if your landing page experience isn’t aligned, your Facebook ad conversion rate will suffer. 

Reducing the load time on your landing page can drastically increase your conversion rate. 

38.6% of marketers say that video is the #1 landing page element that positively impacts conversion rates. 

Ensure your landing page is optimized for mobile devices considering they account for 54% of website traffic. 

A disjointed user journey or mixed messaging impacts your conversion rate. Make sure the process is as easy as possible for the user with simple language and clear CTAs.

Your brand colors and fonts, visuals, and messaging should be consistent across all touch points from the ad to the landing page.

How to increase the conversion rate for Facebook ads

Knowing the factors contributing to your Facebook ad conversion rate helps narrow down what you can do to improve yours.

Enhance your conversion tracking

You should fully utilize the tracking tools available to ensure you track your conversions correctly. This means you must use the Meta Pixel to record user activity on your website and marketing campaigns. If you need help to set up your Facebook Pixel or even troubleshoot it, these articles walk you through the process.

However, the Meta Pixel isn’t enough. Since iOS14, Apple users can opt out of third-party tracking, making the data advertisers get from their Pixels inaccurate. You should use the Facebook Conversion API, or CAPI, to close this gap with server-to-server communication, bypassing your web browser and making it first-party data tracking. 

This is essential to see the true impact of your advertising with more accurate numbers. 

You can use Madgicx Cloud Tracking to supercharge your conversion tracking. Our team sets up the CAPI Gateway for you, saving you on expensive developer costs. A Madgicxian will set you up in 2 days, and you will see results within 2 weeks. Try Madgicx Cloud Tracking for free and see how it works.

Level up your ad creatives

Your creative is what gets people to stop and take notice of your ad. You should create different ad design variations, like dark versus light, still image and video, and swap colors and placement of graphic elements to discover what appeals most to your target audience. 

You should also experiment with different ad formats and adjust your creatives accordingly. Story ads have differing requirements from news feed ads, so you must create alternative versions for your ad formats and their relevant placements across Meta’s platforms.

If you’re struggling with ads that don’t convert, you should read our article about what you can do to fix it.

Bonus creative tip: Try using UGC in your ads! User-generated content can increase conversion rates by up to 300%. Harvest your testimonials and ask your followers to share video reviews of your products or give feedback on your services.

Personalize your messaging

A whopping 89% of advertisers see positive results when using personalization in their ad campaigns. It’s because users enjoy personalized marketing experiences. In fact, they’ve come to expect it. 

Your marketing should be customized to your audience’s specific needs, interests, and pain points. Structuring your ad messaging according to your audience segments and where they are in your sales funnel is vital. 

For example, messaging to moms is very different from speaking to single professionals, and how you talk to people who don’t know your brand at all should be very different from how you talk to people who have bought from you before—the language should reflect these nuances.

Take a look at this ad. It’s a great example of 👌 messaging.

Why this is a good example of Facebook ad messaging:

1. The title “Advice for Men” speaks directly to the target audience segment they’re speaking to. 
2. The simple and clear image of a man reflects the audience segment they’re targeting. Personalizing the ad like this increases the chances of the user taking action.

Test, test, and test again

You’ve got to A/B test your ads to isolate which visual or copy elements and target audiences perform better than others. Unless you split test your ads, you will never learn this information which is vital to your success in optimizing conversions.

We have an article that covers how to test your Facebook ad creatives. Something as simple as changing the layout of your ad or the CTA text can make all the difference to your conversion rate, and you’d be none the wiser without testing multiple creative variations.

The same applies to audiences. You could be sitting on a targeting goldmine without realizing it, so you should test new audience segments, interests, behaviors, and demographics to ensure you advertise to them.

Optimize your ads and landing page

It’s time to embrace optimization as a way of life—the principle should apply to your ads and landing pages. If you’re split-testing your ads and audiences, you will discover many tweaks and changes to make to improve your next ad. 

Pro tip: It’s much easier to optimize your ads with Madgicx because the AI Marketer literally tells you what to do next. Plus, you can launch ad variations to test in just a few clicks and automate repetitive optimization tasks. Give it a spin today for free.

Similarly, your landing page requires the same level of care and attention. Elements to include in your landing pages include:

• Headlines and subtitles for users who scan versus read
• Bullet points and easily digestible information
• Images to help tell your story
• Clear CTAs 
• Social proof elements, like testimonials, up the trust factor and help users make the decision to buy from you

Distill your analytics into insights

And so the cycle continues… Analyzing your data lets you glean meaningful insights about your target audience and how they respond to your Facebook advertising. These insights are worth their weight in gold as long as you use your learnings in your next campaign to improve. 

You should ensure you’ve clarified your most meaningful KPIs to watch for your business, like your conversion rate on Facebook, and monitor your ad performance regularly to spot data trends.

How to monitor your Facebook ad conversion rate

You can keep an eye on your Facebook ad conversion rate from the Meta Ads Manager. 

In the Campaigns view, scroll to the right to see your metric columns. If your conversion event isn’t there, click on the button with three vertical columns to open a menu.

Click “Customize columns” at the bottom of the menu.

In the search, type “conversion” so the list of conversions shows. Choose the standard or custom events that you want to track from the list.

Here is the bottom of the standard conversion event list you can choose so you can see there are plenty of options.

A much easier way to monitor your Facebook ad metrics is to use Madgicx’s One-Click Report, a live cross-channel dashboard of all your advertising data. You can drag and drop the metrics you want to watch on your dashboard and customize them to suit your needs.

Choose a template from our library of prebuilt ones, or create one from scratch. You can blend your metrics, like in the graph at the top, and group your most important conversion events and metrics however you want.

Connect Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, TikTok, and Google Analytics to see all your marketing metrics in one place in real time. Try One-Click Report for free and see what the fuss is about.

Conclusion

Knowing what to expect from your ad performance in your specific industry makes all the difference in assessing your average Facebook conversion rate. Luckily, there is a lot you can do to improve yours should it be below par. The answer lies in your analytics. 

Use Madgicx’s One-Click Report for a consolidated view of all your important metrics so you can make data-led decisions. Try One-Click Report today for seamless reporting.