Solved: Choosing the Right Facebook Ads Event for Sales

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It's completely normal to feel a bit lost with Facebook's event setup when you're just starting out, it can be a real headache. It’s one of the most common things people get wrong. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and walk you through how I'd approach this to get your campaign tracking properly.

We'll need to look at why automatic events are a trap...

Right, let's get straight into it. That 'SubscribedButtonClick' you're seeing in the test events tool is what Facebook calls an 'automatic event'. In theory, it sounds helpful – Facebook tries to guess what's happening on your site without you doing anything. In practice, it's a trap, and you should ignore it completely.

These automatic events are basically Facebook’s algorithm making an educated guess based on the code of your website, like the text on a button. The problem is, it's just a guess. It's not a reliable signal of a true conversion. More importantly, you can't select these automatic events as your optimisation goal when you set up a Sales campaign. The platform knows they aren't reliable enough to spend your money on. That's why you can see it in testing but can't find it in the campaign setup menu. It's a bit of a red herring that confuses a lot of new advertisers.

Relying on these is a surefire way to feed the algorithm messy, inconsistent data. And when it comes to paid advertising, the quality of the data you feed the algorithm determines the quality of the results you get back. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say. We need to give Facebook a crystal-clear, undeniable signal that a valuable action has taken place. A button click just isn't that signal.

I'd say you need to track the Destination, not the Click...

This brings me to the single most important principle of conversion tracking: track the result, not the action. In your case, the action is someone clicking the 'submit' button. The *result* is that their details are successfully sent to you and they become a lead.

How can you be 100% certain that result has occurred? A button click doesn't guarantee it. A user might click by accident. Your form might have a validation error that prevents submission. The page could hang. The only real proof that a form has been submitted correctly is what happens *afterwards*.

The solution is to create a dedicated 'Thank You' page. This is a seperate page on your website with a unique URL (e.g., yourwebsite.com/thank-you) that users are redirected to *only* after they have successfully submitted the form. This page view is your proof of conversion. It's an unambiguous signal. Nobody lands on that page by accident. By placing your conversion tracking code on this 'Thank You' page, you tell Facebook to count a conversion only when someone has completed the entire process. This is far more accurate and gives the algorithm a much higher quality signal to optimise for.

This approach also neatly solves your last question. If you have multiple buttons on your site that all lead to the same form, it doesn't matter which one they click. The conversion event fires on the 'Thank You' page, so Facebook will optimise towards getting people to that page, regardless of the path they took to get there. It focuses the algorithm on the outcome you actually care about: getting a new lead.

You probably should use Standard Events...

Okay, so we've established we're going to track the 'Thank You' page view. The next question is *what* do we track it as? This is where your question about 'Complete Registration' comes in. 'Complete Registration' is one of Facebook's 'Standard Events'. These are predefined actions that Facebook's system understands perfectly. Using a Standard Event is always the prefered option because the algorithm is specifically built to optimise for them.

You have a few that would be appropriate for your situation: 'Lead', 'SubmitApplication', or 'CompleteRegistration'.

• Lead: This is the most common and semantically correct event for what you're doing. A user fills out a form expressing interest in your service, making them a lead. I'd recommend using this one.
• SubmitApplication: This is also very suitable, especially if your form is more detailed, like a job or loan application.
• CompleteRegistration: This is typically used for when someone creates an account or signs up for a newsletter. It would still work for your purpose, but 'Lead' is a more accurate description of the action.

Honestly, the specific one you choose between these three doesn't matter quite as much as being consistent. Pick one, set it up correctly, and stick with it. My recomendation would be to use the 'Lead' event. It’s what we use for nearly all our lead generation clients and it's what the system understands best in this context. It's the industry standard for a reason.

You'll need to deal with iOS14 and Aggregated Event Measurement...

Now for a bit of technical housekeeping that you absolutely cannot skip. A few years ago, Apple's iOS14 update changed everything for advertisers. It introduced new privacy features that limit how platforms like Facebook can track user activity. To adapt, Facebook created a system called 'Aggregated Event Measurement' (AEM).

For a new advertiser, this is what you need to know: without setting this up, your ads will not be properly delivered to users on iPhones and iPads, and your reporting will be incomplete and inaccurate. This is not an optional step.

There are two things you MUST do:

1. Verify Your Domain: First, you need to go into your Facebook Business Settings and prove that you own your website's domain. Facebook provides a few ways to do this, usually by uploading a small file to your server or adding a bit of code to your website's header. It's a one-time process and is essential.
2. Configure Your Web Events: Once your domain is verified, you need to go to your Events Manager, find the Aggregated Event Measurement tool, and explicitly tell Facebook which conversion events are most important to you. You can choose up to 8 events and rank them by priority. For you, you will add your chosen 'Lead' event and drag it to the very top of the list as your highest priority event.

This tells Facebook, "Out of all the things a user could do on my site, a 'Lead' is the most valuable. If you can only show me one action due to privacy restrictions, show me that one." Completing this step ensures your campaigns can optimise effectively and that you get the most accurate data possible in this new privacy-focused landscape. So many businesses we audit have either missed this step or done it incorrectly, and it cripples their campaigns before they've even started.

What results can you expect? Let's talk numbers...

Once you've got your tracking set up perfectly, the next question is always, "What should I expect to pay for a lead?" The honest answer is: it varies massively. It depends on your industry, your target audience, your ad creative, and the country you're targeting. For a service-based business, you're not just getting an email address; you're starting a conversation that could lead to a valuable client.

From my experience running campaigns for B2B and service-based clients, costs can be anywhere from a few pounds to over £50 per lead. For example, one campaign I remember for a B2B software client brought in registrations for as low as $2.38 on Meta, while more niche campaigns on LinkedIn for senior decision-makers have seen costs around the $22 mark. Another campaign we managed for a company in environmental controls saw us reduce their cost per lead by 84% through careful optimisation.

The key isn't to aim for the absolute cheapest lead possible. The goal is to acquire a lead at a cost that makes business sense for you. If one lead turns into a £2,000 project, paying £50 to get that lead is an incredible return on investment. To help you get a feel for the numbers and how different metrics affect your costs, I've built a small interactive calculator below. Play around with the sliders to see how changes in ad click costs and website conversion rates can impact your final cost per lead.

You'll need a solid foundation before you spend a penny...

As you can see, getting the technical foundation right is the most important first step. Without accurate tracking, everything else is just guesswork. You won't know which ads are working, which audiences are converting, and you'll have no real way to improve your performance over time. It’s like trying to navigate a ship in the fog without a compass. You’re spending money on fuel but have no idea if you're heading in the right direction.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below in a simple table. This is the exact process we follow for new clients to ensure their campaigns are built on solid ground from day one.

Following these steps will put you in a much stronger position than most advertisers who are just starting out. It gets the fundamentals right, which is something many people overlook in their rush to get ads live.

This might all seem like a lot to take in, and honestly, this is just the setup phase. The real work begins afterwards with testing audiences, writing compelling ad copy, creating engaging visuals, and continually optimising based on the data you're collecting. This is often where working with an expert can make a huge difference, saving you a lot of time, frustration, and wasted ad spend by navigating these complexities for you.

If you'd like to have a more in-depth chat about your specific situation or have us take a look at your account, we offer a completely free, no-obligation consultation call. It's a great chance to get some expert eyes on your project and get answers to any other questions you might have.

Hope this helps clear things up!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh