Accurate Facebook Ad Tracking Post iOS14.5 (For Online Courses, Coaching and Consulting Funnels)

Key Takeaways

in april 2021 apple released ios 14.5 and with it came a series of privacy changes that dramatically impacted every single person and company running facebook ads across the globe the change allows ios users to opt out of tracking for advertising purposes which means that if the user opts out facebook and instagram can no longer track them for advertising or attribution purposes and to no surprise the majority of users are opting out which means there is far less data going back to facebook and instagram for optimization and for attribution what this means in a real world environment is that many of the leads and purchases that are coming from our facebook ads are not showing up inside the ad manager and for advertisers that's a huge problem because it means you can't get an accurate picture of the results you're getting from your facebook ads and if you don't have accurate data or if the data that you have is incomplete then it means that you are unable to rely on it to make intelligent decisions and so of course everybody is scrambling to find solutions to fill that gap in order to get the data they need to make the right decisions around their facebook and instagram advertising campaigns which naturally leads to a lot of solutions promising to fix the ios 14.5 problem however there is no fix for this problem this isn't something that can be fixed with an expensive piece of software or a tool the fact is if somebody has opted out of tracking facebook will not accept any data relating to that user no matter whether it comes from the facebook pixel the conversions api or anywhere else facebook will simply reject any data relating to a user who has opted out so we know we can't get that data back into facebook but the good news is we can still see that data and access that information outside of facebook and while this is not a perfect solution because facebook uses data to optimize and so ideally we would like to get that data into facebook so with the algorithm can use it to optimize and improve the performance of your campaigns we can't do that but this external solution does allow us to still see important metrics like our cost per lead like how many sales we've got and our return on ad spend in an accurate way and so if you're a coach a consultant or if you're selling digital products and you've been looking for a way to get that accurate data again that's exactly what i'm going to show you how to do in this video we're going to talk about how you can still track your results outside of facebook and get accurate data even though the ios 14.5 privacy changes have made the data inside the ad manager unreliable and i'm going to show you how to do it without purchasing expensive third-party software solutions because the truth is you don't actually need those solutions in order to get an accurate picture of the data this is a very low cost way to do it and we will talk more about those software solutions at the end of the video as well and where i think they are a good option and a good fit now if you enjoyed this video all i ask is that you tap that like button and if for some reason you decide you want to hear more from me make sure you hit subscribe hit that little bell and you'll get notified whenever i release a new video on digital marketing and facebook advertising for course creators coaches and consultants alright so let's jump into step one now and that is to clone your existing sales funnel so if you're selling coaching consulting or an online course chances are you're using a sales funnel and that might be a webinar it might be a core booking funnel where you're getting people to book a call talk to a salesperson and buy your coaching service it might be something like a challenge or a quiz funnel whatever it is chances are if you're running facebook ads you will have a sales funnel the first step here is to actually make a copy of the front end of that sales funnel so let's say it's a webinar if you're running to a webinar you would clone that webinar itself inside your evergreen webinar platform so i use easywebinar so i would go into easy webinar and clone my existing evergreen webinar now this new webinar is going to be for facebook ad traffic only that's what we're trying to do here we're creating a funnel that is dedicated to facebook advertising traffic and when i say facebook i mean facebook and instagram now if we were running to a lead magnet then we would clone that particular opt-in form and have that be our dedicated opt-in form just for facebook ad traffic so it would have its own url same as the cloned webinar it would have its own separate url and the only traffic you will ever send to it is going to be traffic from facebook and instagram ads okay that way what we can do is when somebody opts in to the top of our funnel we can then tag them in our email service provider with a tag that specifically says they were from a facebook ad because we know that if they came in through this particular entry point then the only way they could have got there is through an ad because we are not sending traffic there any other way once you do this you're going to have an ultimate source of proof so once you set this up and you start running traffic to it you can go into your email service provider whether that's activecampaign which is the one i use convertkit whatever it is and you can filter by tags and dates and you'll be able to see an isolated view of just the people that came in through your specific funnel for facebook and instagram ads and whether or not they purchased so you can see how many leads you got how many sales you got and everything else based on that this is a fantastic single source of truth and the data is always going to be accurate now while this is going to give you really accurate data and it's going to be a great source of truth the problem is it's not easy to get a quick snapshot and it's not easily accessible in the facebook ad manager we're used to being able to go in and seeing okay so today i've spent this much my cost per lead is this much and my cost per purchase is x and my row as is y now we can't do that with a system like this where we have to go into our email provider and filter by tags and dates and all that kind of thing it's just not convenient and it's not practical that's why this next step is so important i'm going to show you how to create a google analytics setup that allows you to simply go in and see exactly how many leads you've had in a particular day or a particular date range exactly how many sales you've had and whatever other conversion events you want to track so by combining your facebook ad manager in this google analytics setup it's going to allow you to see accurate data at a glance really quickly and also to run filters on that and break it down however you want including by country and many other different breakdown options as well and then if you really want to get advanced and this isn't covered in this particular video you can then use this to create google data studio dashboards and things that can give you a really advanced but really helpful snapshot of the performance of your campaign and that's why i think this is something that is essential to do right now if you're running any kind of evergreen course coaching consulting funnel okay so the first step we need to take is to head over to google analytics and set up a new google analytics account if you don't have one already to do that open a web browser and go to analytics.google.com hit enter and it will ask you to sign in with your google account once you've signed in you should see something like this then you need to click start measuring from here give your account a name i just generally leave all three boxes ticked and click next from here give the property a name so the property is usually your website so type in the website name select your time zone and your currency and hit next from here just select the options that are most suited to your business and then hit create accept the terms hit i accept and away we go from here i generally just select uncheck all and save okay from here we want to choose web because we're tracking a website pop in your website address give the stream a name enhance measurement on and click create stream once you've done that the next step is to install the google analytics tracking code on your website to do that we go to datastudio.google.com and again if you're not signed in already it's going to ask you to sign in with your google account once you sign in you should see a screen like this and we're going to click create account again give your account a name doesn't matter what you call this one select your country and give the container a name which is usually just your website choose web and hit create accept the terms okay so the next step is to grab the google tag manager code from here and add it to the head of your website now if you're not sure how to do that it does vary depending on the platform that you use whether it's wordpress squarespace wix or whatever it may be so i'm not going to show you how to do that here a quick google search will show you how to do it and i'll also include a couple of links below in the description to tutorials that show you how to add code to the head of different platforms so it's important that you go ahead and do that now and then come back and we can continue with this tutorial so once you've done that click ok and then we're going to set up our google analytics tag here inside google tag manager to do that we're going to click tags on the left then you're going to need to create a new tag so we click new then we're going to give it a name so we're going to click here and we're going to call it ga4 tag then we're going to click tag configuration from this list we're going to choose google analytics ga4 configuration and you need your measurement id so to get your measurement id you go back over to google analytics and then you can see here you've got your measurement id so grab the measurement id by hitting that little button to copy it and go back to google data studio now paste your measurement id in here you can leave everything else the same and we just want to go down here click triggering and choose all pages so what you've told it to do is install your google analytics tracking code and put it on all pages where the google tag manager code exists click save and then we need to click submit publish and continue to set this live okay at this point you have google tag manager installed on your website and you've got google analytics set up as well so that is going to track visitors to your website the next step is to set up events and conversions inside google analytics now these are similar to the conversions that you would track inside of facebook actually what you want to do is mirror those conversions that you track in facebook so to do that we're going to go back to workspace here in google tag manager we're going to create a couple of new tags so click tags we're going to click new again we're going to give it a name so i'm going to call this ga for lead conversion and this tag is going to track our leads meaning whenever somebody signs up for our webinar downloads the lead magnet opts in to our sales funnel that is a lead and that is what we're tracking on facebook and we also want to track that here as a lead inside google analytics so the way to do that is we click tag configuration click ga4 event so google analytics ga4 event select your configuration tag so select the ga4 tag that you created a moment ago and then you want to choose an event name now you can see we've got this little question mark here for event name that we can click learn more and that gives us some recommended events now we do want to use these recommended events i'm actually going to click events travel hotel air and then i'm going to look at the list here and you can see we've got one here called generate lead and this is for when a user submits a form or a request for information so i'm going to grab this generate lead code and i'm going to go back over to google tag manager now i'm just going to click back here on my configuration tag and then i can paste in the event name generate lead now i can put some parameters in if i want so if your leads have a particular value you can add that in i recommend just leaving it blank for the majority of course and coaching funnels out there so next thing we want to do is go to triggering now this is important we're going to determine when this lead event gets triggered and we want to trigger this on the thank you page that people see after they opt in so if they opt in for a webinar is going to be the webinar thank you page if they opt in for a lead magnet it's going to be the thank you page they see after they opt in and likewise depending on whatever your funnel is it's the page they see immediately after they opt in to your sales funnel so now we go up here press the little plus in the top right give this a name now we want to name this based on the opt-in so i'm going to say webinar registration thank you page next i'm going to configure this trigger so i click on that and i'll click on page view then i click some page views and you select page whoops page url contains and you put in the unique portion of your url so in this case mine is thank dash u dash think dash u so people see the thank you page after they opt into my email list now i'm going to click save save again and as per before we need to click submit and then publish those changes okay we've got our lead event done now let's set up our purchase event so we go back to the workspace click tags new give this one a name so this is going to be ga 4 purchase conversion click on our tag configuration select google analytics ga4 event select your configuration tag and give it a name in this case for a purchase the name is purchase you can always hover over that question mark and click learn more if you want to track different events okay i'm showing you how to set up the lead and the purchase events here if you have other events like a call booking or anything like that you can track them simply hover over the question mark click learn more find the appropriate event name to use and then come back here and use that if you're setting up additional events now a purchase has parameters so i'm going to just go back over to that screen now with the list and i'm going to look at purchase here you can see we've got some parameters we've got transaction id value currency tax shipping items and coupon so we can send information back to facebook around the value and the currency which we want to do so i'm going to send back a value and a currency now back to google tag manager we're going to click back here in our tag configuration we're going to add a parameter so click add row and we're going to enter a value and then i'm going to enter 497 i'm going to add another row and i'm going to add a currency and i'm going to add usd so let's just assume that the price of this program is 497 usd google will now track that inside google analytics and we can actually see our revenue for any given day or any given period of time we can see how many purchases we have had and google will also add up the value for us just to give us that glimpse and that screenshot without us having to do the calculations ourselves this is really handy if you have multiple products and you want to see how much revenue you've generated on any given day or for any given product or any given cohort so now let's set up our triggering for this one we're going to click triggering and this is going to be the thank you page that people see after they purchase your product so i'm going to give this a name i'm going to call let's say purchased amplified ads which is my course we're going to hit configuration page view again some page views and the page url contains and this is the url that people see immediately after purchasing your course so so enter that in and click save again once you've done that save it again hit submit publish those changes and at this point you have a system set up where google analytics is going to be tracking visitors to your site and to your sales funnel it's going to also track those key conversion events so in this case we've set up the lead event and we've set up purchases so it is going to track every single lead and every single purchase that comes through regardless of if they're opted out of tracking on ios and facebook and instagram the other thing i want to remind you at this point is that google analytics is going to track all leads and all purchases that hit those thank you pages it is not just going to track the traffic from your facebook and instagram ad campaigns so that is why it is important to clone your funnel as i mentioned in step one so that the urls that you enter here are for your unique facebook and instagram ad funnel that you've set up so that the only things that are going to be tracked by those particular setups that we just did in google analytics are going to be the leads and sales from your facebook and instagram ads so again we're tracking the values only from that funnel that you've set up just for facebook and instagram ads okay really important to remind you of that if you set this up on the same thank you pages and the same post purchase pages that you've got set up for all of your traffic then it's just going to track the cumulative totals of leads and sales from all of your traffic it's not going to be just your facebook and instagram traffic now the next thing that you want to make sure you're doing is whenever you're setting up facebook ads you need to be going in to the facebook ad manager and at the ad level you need to be adding utm parameters so always add in those custom utm parameters for your facebook ads because that passes that information back to google and at some level you will be able to see which leads at least came from facebook ads and instagram ads and you can even see what campaign ad set and ad those leads came from inside google analytics so it is going to give you information that you won't have inside the facebook ad manager and you can see an example of that on your screen now now you're probably thinking well if we can use utms and we can tell it which campaign an ad set and ad our traffic is coming from then why do we need a separate funnel because we could just do that and google analytics would split out facebook ads from non-facebook ads based on the utm data and if only that was the case unfortunately it doesn't work like that you will not get the same level of data and information inside google analytics for your purchases for example and the reason is because google analytics works more on a single session basis meaning that it is going to track your traffic source so it can tell if somebody came from a facebook ad and landed on your webinar registration page and it can record that when they become a lead inside google analytics however it can only do that for one session so one session is when somebody clicks an ad and they go to your website that begins a session they then might become a lead and then they close the browser that's the end of that session now if somebody receives a follow-up email sequence from you about your product after they go to your webinar and they click a link in the email and go back to your website look at the sales page and then complete a purchase well that's a new session that visit to the sales page as far as google analytics is concerned they came from the email they didn't come from a facebook ad so when you look at google analytics it's going to see a purchase and it's going to say oh this purchase came from an email or from an external link it's not going to say that that purchase came from a facebook ad even though that user originally signed up for your webinar or your lead magnet or your email list through a facebook ad and that's why this google analytics solution is great in one respect but only if you're using a separate funnel and why it doesn't just give us a full solution where we can just track based on utm parameters it's because of that single session problem and if somebody signs up and then they leave and then they come back through the link in your webinar or link in your emails or anything else and the traffic source doesn't get tracked as that very first initial source which is the facebook ad so once you've got all of this set up you will have a system that allows you to come in and on a daily basis see your data up to the minute so when these conversions happen google analytics will pick up and track that conversion event and show it pretty much immediately like within minutes of the purchase happening so what i will do is i will go in to facebook i will look at how much i've spent and i'll look at my metrics like my link click-through rate and my click-through rate and all of that good stuff but my lead count in facebook i know it's not accurate so i'll open a google analytics window next to that facebook ad manager window and i will look at how many leads google analytics shows for the day and i will look at how much i've spent i will divide the spend by the number of leads and that will tell me what my real cpl is or cost per lead is for the day likewise i will use google analytics to look at how many sales i've had for the day my sales value and then i can see my return on ad spend by looking at how much i've spent in the ad manager for the day how much i've generated for the day according to google analytics and that specific funnel that i know is only for my facebook and instagram ads and that allows me to get an accurate snapshot of my return on ad spend right away you can also go into google analytics and look at breakdowns so things like country things like age and gender and see where those purchases are coming from and the demographics of those people that are buying and the same for your leads and you can see how helpful this is if you aren't getting all of that information inside facebook but you can at least get a lot of that back by using this solution with google analytics now you're probably already thinking well this has some flaws and some holes and absolutely it does it's not a perfect solution you still for example can't look at your facebook ads and see exactly which ads and ad sets are leading to all of your purchases you will have some purchase data but not all and this google analytics solution doesn't plug that hole you can't go into the ad manager and see exactly how many purchases a given ad or ad set has led to it's definitely a downside now that's where there are some other options here and those are primarily third-party software tools you've probably seen a bunch of these out there the two most common ones are wicked reports and hirose now i want to talk to you briefly about these software solutions and talk about when i think they are appropriate because these often promise that they are the solution to tracking changes and as we discussed at the beginning of the video they actually solve one piece which is external data they can get you data in an external platform but they don't get the data back to facebook but the beauty of these tools is what they can do is track multiple channels and multiple traffic sources and give you a good breakdown of how each channel or traffic source is performing so if you're running ads on facebook youtube instagram tick tock and a bunch of other platforms maybe some organic platforms as well these software tools can actually give you a breakdown of which of those traffic sources are bringing in leads how many leads the cost per lead and how many sales and a lot of other metrics as well so if you're using lots of different channels to bring traffic to your sales funnel these can be a very helpful solution the issue with them is these platforms are quite expensive okay we're talking at least sort of five to 600 usd per month to get started as far as i'm aware and so that makes them impractical for people who aren't spending large amounts of money with their advertising campaigns if you're only spending five thousand ten thousand dollars a month on your ads then it's hard to justify an expense like five or six hundred dollars per month just for this bit of extra data i think where these platforms and tools come in really handy is when you're spending 100 000 a month on your ads and you have multiple traffic sources that you want to track or you have a lot of different products let's say like an e-commerce store and you can't just simply duplicate a funnel and set up this google analytics system to track that for you so e-commerce yes i think this is really helpful if you're in the course consulting or coaching industry which is what most of you are then the question is going to be are you spending enough to justify the cost of these tools and do you have multiple traffic channels or sources so if you're spending over a hundred thousand dollars on your ads every month then tools like these i think can come in really really handy now as you know i put out these videos for free every single week for you to help you grow your course coaching consulting business and all i ask in return is that you tap that like button and if you enjoy the videos hit subscribe and hit that little bell just to get notified every time i release a new video so you don't miss a single thing all right thank you again for watching i appreciate your time and i've just popped another couple of videos on screen now that i think are going to help you in your facebook and instagram advertising journey until next time bye [Music]