Set up Facebook Ads

Planful for Marketing - Facebook (Meta) Ads Integration

Marketing organizations require insights into the performance of their marketing campaigns, measured by cost-per-outcome (CPO) or, ideally, return on investment (ROI). With Planful for Marketing's integration with Facebook Ads, this tracking process is automated, providing visibility within Planful for Marketing.

Planful for Marketing establishes a read-only integration with the Facebook Ads API, pulling summary data. This integration automatically generates Planful for Marketing campaigns based on your configured campaigns in your Facebook Ads account. Additionally, Planful for Marketing maps Facebook metrics such as impressions, clicks, and conversions to corresponding Planful for Marketing metrics, which are associated with each newly created campaign. Note that while Reach is also synchronized, it is not automatically mapped to a Planful for Marketing metric.

Once the connection is established, Planful for Marketing automatically updates current metrics and cost data from Facebook Ads Manager daily.

Integration Process 

To integrate your Facebook ads with Planful for Marketing, there are two main steps, with an optional third step. 

1. Connect Planful for Marketing to Facebook Ads.
2. Assign segments to synchronized campaigns.
3. Optionally, organize campaigns in a hierarchy.

Once the setup is completed, metric and cost data will be automatically synced into Planful for Marketing, providing insights into campaign performance and projected ROI.

Step 1: Connect Planful for Marketing to Facebook

1. Log into your Planful for Marketing account as an admin.
2. Click the Settings icon and select Integrations > Enable Facebook Ads.
   
3. Give your integration a name and select the amount of historical data you want to sync (you can go back to the beginning of your fiscal year).
4. Optionally, set the time of day for automatic updates of cost and metric data from Facebook (the timezone will default to your local timezone).
   
   Note:

   You can access the Facebook Ads integration later also by navigating to Settings > Integrations > Your Facebook Integration.
5. Click Save, you will be redirected to the Facebook page for authentication. If you are not already logged in, you will be prompted to do so, and Facebook will authenticate you using the standard process.
6. Once authenticated with Facebook, the process of creating synchronized campaigns between Planful for Marketing and Facebook Ads begins. Wait for the success message without refreshing or closing your browser.

Map Facebook metrics to Planful for Marketing Metrics (Optional) 

After successful integration, you will be directed to a screen where you can select which metrics from Facebook Ads you want to make available in Planful for Marketing and define their names. On the left side, you will see the available Facebook Ads metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, and reach. On the right side, you can specify whether to map each Facebook metric to Planful for Marketing and, if required, select the corresponding Planful for Marketing metric.

By default, these metrics are mapped to impressions, clicks, and conversions. However, you have the flexibility to modify this mapping on the screen. For example, if you prefer the Facebook conversions metric to be displayed as Opportunities in Planful for Marketing and want to exclude impressions and clicks, you can adjust the settings accordingly as shown in the example below:

You can revisit this screen later to modify your mapping of Facebook. Simply go to the admin menu and select Integrations > Facebook Ads Mapping.

Step 2 - Assigning a Segment

Once your Facebook Ads campaigns are synchronized with Planful for Marketing, they will be automatically assigned to a default segment. It is recommended that you reassign these new campaigns to the appropriate segment within your budget.

To make this update, you can access the homepage and locate the Assign segments to imported campaigns widget, where you can easily perform the reassignment:

• In this widget, you can choose a segment for each campaign individually from the dropdowns.
• Alternatively, you can select multiple campaigns at once and assign them all to the same segment.
• Once all your Facebook Ads campaigns are assigned to a segment, this widget will no longer appear on the home screen.

Facebook Campaigns in Planful for Marketing:

Once a campaign from Facebook is created, it operates differently from other Planful for Marketing campaigns in:

The campaign name, type, and source cannot be modified. If you want to change the campaign name, you can do so on Facebook, and the change will be reflected in Planful for Marketing when data is received and updated from the Facebook integration.

Expenses are automatically generated every month for your campaigns. Each expense is calculated based on your daily spending limit set on Facebook, multiplied by the number of days in the month. As your campaign progresses, the expense is updated daily to reflect the actual spending, known as the Committed amount. At the end of the month, the expense is closed with the total spend from Facebook becoming the Closed amount. This ensures accurate tracking of your campaign's costs. For the next month, a new expense is created to continue monitoring your expenditure.

Step 3 (Optional) - Assigning Campaigns to a Hierarchy:

In Planful for Marketing, you can establish a hierarchical structure for your goals and campaigns, allowing you to effectively track your team's progress. By assigning a parent campaign or goal to another campaign, you create a parent/child relationship. This relationship enables the roll-up of cost and metric data from child campaigns to their parents, providing aggregated insights.

This feature is particularly helpful when managing Facebook campaigns. For instance, you can create a campaign named Demand Generation or Facebook Ads and designate it as the parent campaign for all campaigns generated through the integration. By viewing the parent campaign, you can assess the allocation, spending, and metrics of all your Facebook Ad campaigns combined.

Alternatively, if you perceive your Facebook Ads as a channel within your broader campaigns targeting specific audiences with distinct messaging, you can assign the integrated campaigns as child campaigns to their relevant parent campaigns. This integration enhances campaign management visibility and enables a more accurate assessment of ROI effectiveness.

To establish a hierarchy and assign a campaign to a parent campaign or goal, you can either drag and drop a campaign in the budget hierarchy onto another campaign:

 Or utilize the Parent field on the campaign detail page:

For valuable insights on successful campaign management best practices, we recommend referring to our ebook titled How to Build Marketing Campaigns that Achieve Goals.