# Campaigning During COVID Part 2: How to Combine Online and Offline Tracking on Facebook Ads

- Link: https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/campaigning-during-covid-part-2-how-to-combine-online-and-offline-tracking-on-facebook-ads/
- Published: 2021-02-17T10:14:14+01:00
- Author: Ekaterina Petrakova

⌊campaigning during covid-min⌉⌊campaigning during covid-min⌉

_Editor’s note: This is a guest post from _[_Ekaterina Petrakova_](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ekaterina-petrakova/)_,
customer growth lead at _[_Ace & Tate_](https://www.aceandtate.com/gb/stores/germany/berlin/alte-schoenhauser-strasse-42)_,
and former marketing lead at _[_Rocket Internet_](https://www.rocket-internet.com/)_.
In her free time, she supports the _[_AHEAD program of Fraunhofer Ventures_](https://www.ahead.fraunhofer.de/en.html)_
in their marketing activities._

_This part is part two of a two-part series about running marketing campaigns during
COVID-19. Look back to February 9th, for the first installment from Ekaterina ‘[Campaigning During COVID Part 1: Addressing the Core Challenges](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/campaigning-during-covid-part-1-addressing-the-core-challenges/).’_

In the wake of COVID-19, we’ve seen a surge in tech-adoption. Audiences that were
once reticent to use digital tools, like seniors or local audiences, are now logging
on and participating. This is an exciting development, but it’s too simple to say
that everything is now digital. As we discussed in part one of this series, mobile
marketers shouldn’t ignore the offline conversions still available. In fact, for
many businesses, offline conversions are just as or more important. 

Still, data gathering can be challenging even with only one channel. So when it 
comes to the combination of online and offline channels, the process becomes trickier
and the methods needed a bit more sophisticated. For this reason, it may be valuable
to explore some ideas and hacks you may have overlooked. At this point, most of 
us are using Facebook Ads, so let’s explore this channel using a hypothetical example
of an orchestra, let’s call it the ‘_Growth Philharmonic_.’ 

In our case, the _Growth Philharmonic_ has a combination of online and offline efforts
including a website, app, and physical location. 

Table of Contents

 * [Key Online & Offline Conversion Events for the Growth Philharmonic](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/campaigning-during-covid-part-2-how-to-combine-online-and-offline-tracking-on-facebook-ads/#key_online_offline_conversion_events_for_the_growth_philharmonic)
 * [Look at the example of Facebook ads for Growth Philharmonic](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/campaigning-during-covid-part-2-how-to-combine-online-and-offline-tracking-on-facebook-ads/#look_at_the_example_of_facebook_ads_for_growth_philharmonic)
 * [Closing Thoughts](https://phiture.com/mobilegrowthstack/campaigning-during-covid-part-2-how-to-combine-online-and-offline-tracking-on-facebook-ads/#closing_thoughts)

## **Key Online & Offline Conversion Events for the ****_Growth Philharmonic_**

The** app and website **offer the same product/service, in this case, an ‘online
concert hall’ and key conversion events include registering, log-in, views, category
views, booking, purchasing, and attendance, 

The** physical location **is where in-person concerts take place and key conversion
rates could include attendance and gift store purchases.

## **Look at the example of Facebook ads for ****_Growth Philharmonic_**

Sure, you _could_ use Facebook ads with very little technical knowledge. However,
the results may be unsatisfactory especially considering our larger context where
COVID-19 restrictions like lockdowns cause frequent changes in consumer behavior.
Now more than ever, novel approaches in creating a clean and efficient data flow
can make a big difference.

Below you can find some of the most important categories in order to get the most
out of the Facebook campaigns which combine online and offline conversion events.

**1. The Essentials of Offline to Online Data**

First of all,** GDPR** should be top of mind for anyone working with data, especially
offline and that’s true of our made-up company: _Growth Philharmonic_. Here are 
some security steps their marketing team will take

 * Meeting with their legal department to ensure proper procedure including any 
   necessary supporting documents or consent steps. They know it’s better for the
   company and the consumer to do this foundational data security work. 
 * After the topic of user-consent is cleared out, they make sure that the data 
   which the company passes to tools has all the PII (personally identifiable information)
   hashed. 

After the legal work has been done, the next steps for the marketing team will be…

 * To define all possible offline conversions: Including concert attendance and 
   gift store purchases. When applicable, they will input a variety of online and
   offline events. Either way, they do this by **creating events within Facebook
   ads** to better understand their data and hopefully increase conversions on the
   other end.

![FB offline event upload: manual via .csv file upload](https://phiture.com/wp-content/
uploads/2021/02/image2-min.png)

_FB offline event upload: manual via .csv file upload_

![FB offline event upload: mapping, Images source](https://phiture.com/wp-content/
uploads/2021/02/image3-min-1.png)

_FB offline event upload: mapping, _[_Images source _](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/155437961572700?id=565900110447546)

**2. Combining Several Conversion Under One Name**

Since there’s **more than one offline ****conversion** type they could combine all
these offline conversions under one name and assign different values to each type
in order to prioritize. If you already know your customer and have additional insights
you can assign a value in proportion to the conversion. 

![FB Store Traffic Campaign creation](https://phiture.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/
02/image4-min-1.png)

_Image 4: FB Store Traffic Campaign creation_

 * **Option 1, Proportional Values**: Since customers are more likely to go to a
   concert than make a purchase in the gift shop, the marketing team can assign 
   a double value to an attendance of a concert vs a purchase. 
 * **Option 2, Monetary Values**: Another option is to assign value by the ticket
   price versus the basket price of their gift store purchase. 
 * **Option 3, Separate Events**: In some cases, the _Growth Philharmonic_ marketing
   team may want to create a separate event for each conversion. Either way, their
   researcher can track these signals for more precise takeaways.

**3.** **Exclusions and Lookalikes**

Because an up-to-date and frequent update of the data is critical when it comes 
to offline events on Facebook, (especially [considering the tracking changes that just came with iOS14](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/331612538028890))
it makes sense to create a schedule of offline conversion upload—Ideally on a daily
basis. As with most projects, more data usually brings better results, therefore
for this project it makes sense to ensure that values like price and basket size
are attached to every event when possible.

 * **Exclusions**: Exclusions are key. They clean up the data flow, targeting and
   making sure that one does not annoy its audience with irrelevant messages. Like
   when the _Growth Philharmonic_ has a concert series. In this case, it makes sense
   to exclude last week’s attendees from the ad set as it’s unlikely people would
   attend the same concert twice in two weeks.
 * **A value-based audience is the goal**: Ensuring an efficient data flow from 
   the offline activities including the values attached to each of the events helps
   Facebook to identify the right customers. In the case of the Growth Philharmonic,**
   value-based custom audiences** will deliver much better results compared to regular
   ones, so it makes sense to use them as a basis for lookalike audiences as well.

**4.** **Optimizing Towards Online-Offline Synergy**

Of course, unlike our make-believe orchestra, your app may be optimizing towards
online events, like in-app purchases, rather than in-person events. Even in this
case, you can use the basis of the above suggestions to aid your efforts. 

 * Pay special attention to the **events at the end of your funnel** (ticket booking,
   ticket purchase, concert) for info gathering.
 * **Combine several events into a single KPI** to represent more than one event
   and allow optimization with respect to additional KPIs. Smartly and FB business
   manager are among the tools that can help you do this.

![FB Create Custom Metric](https://phiture.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/image1-
min-1.png)

_Image 5: FB Create Custom Metric_

## **Closing Thoughts**

We saw the _Growth Philharmonic_ through a hypothetical Facebook ad set up and now
you want to start thinking about how you can implement these learnings in your own
mobile growth activities. The goal to keep in mind is that you want to get to a 
place ‘online-offline synergy’ where what you learn from one informs the other.

Remember, that users are dynamic creatures, you could be missing out on important
conversions by excluding offline data/actions (even for an audience of digital natives).
Though most of us always have our phones on us, we still receive messages offline—
sometimes those can be the most powerful. Keep an open mind and if you don’t know—
experiment!