When choosing a Facebook Ad objective, it’s critical to first align it with your end goal. There are many different objectives to choose from, but not all of them will be a suitable able fit for your needs, or even as profitable. In fact, some may actually cause more waste than others, if you haven’t done the initial research.
Don’t worry, though – in this blog, we’re going to dish up all of that information you need to know to choose the best possible campaign objective and help you maximise the profitability of your Facebook Ads.
So how do you know which one is right for you?
Firstly, what are Facebook Ad objectives?
When you choose an objective, Facebook analyses its user data and serves your ads to people in your target audience. These people are most likely to take the action you want out of your campaign.
By telling Facebook what your desired audience action is, you can better position your campaign and ensure it reaches users who are likely to complete that conversion. But in order to help you better understand your objectives and not just the audience you want to target, the platform breaks these down into three categories: awareness, consideration and conversion Facebook Ad objectives.
Why do you need Facebook ad objectives?
Knowing what you want to achieve with your Facebook Ads is key. Without a specific goal, it can be difficult to measure success. or know where to shift your targeting. By choosing an objective before creating your ad, you can better set your campaign up for success, ensuring it’s tailored towards achieving that particular outcome.
When it comes to finding the right option, however, there are many different paths you can take. And that’s the trickiest bit.
While we will dive into all of this on a deeper level in the following sections, here are those the three categories you’ll need to know, at a glance:
Awareness: This campaign objective aims to increase general awareness of your brand or product. When using the Brand Awareness objective, Facebook will serve your ads to people who are most likely to be interested in learning more about what you have to offer.
Consideration: The consideration objectives seek to get people thinking about your product or service as an option for their needs. Ads targeted through these campaign objectives will reach users who are more likely than the average Facebook user to consider buying what you’re selling.
Conversion: The Conversion objective is designed specifically for campaigns aimed at getting people to take the desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. Ads served through this option reach users who are statistically more likely than others on Facebook to complete the action you desire.
Initial research to keep in mind for your campaign objectives
Like anything in marketing, you need to put in the hard yards first to get the best possible result. Skipping out on this may mean you end up pouring money down the drawing or seeing lack-lustre returns.
So, to make sure you set yourself up for success, consider these key points when choosing a Facebook campaign objective for your brand.
1. Define your campaign goal
Before you can determine the most appropriate Facebook Ad objective, you first need to define your overall campaign goal. Ask yourself:
- What are you trying to achieve with this particular advertising effort?
- Are you looking to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic or generate leads or sales?
- Is there something else entirely that you want out of your campaign?
Once you have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish, it’ll be much easier to find the right Facebook campaign objective for your intentions. And trust us, this is the most important step of all.
2. Choose a campaign objective that aligns with your goal
Not all Facebook ad objectives are created equal – some are better suited for certain goals than others.
For example, if your primary goal is to increase brand awareness, the Brand Awareness objectives are obviously the best fit. Conversely, if generating leads is your main priority then the Lead Generation objective would be more appropriate.
3. Consider other factors such as budget and timeline
Your chosen Facebook Ad objective should also take into account things like budget and timeline constraints. If you only have a limited budget to work with, Traffic objective or Engagement alternatives may not be feasible. This is because they typically require more spending in order to be successful.
The same is true for campaigns with shorter timeframes. Choosing an objective like Conversions may not be ideal if you don’t have enough time to see results from the ads themselves.
The Brand Awareness campaign objective
Objectives in this category are designed to increase brand awareness and introduce new people to your product or service. This bucket also includes the sub-objective of Reach.
When using the Awareness objective, Facebook will serve your ads to people who are most likely to be interested in learning more about what you have to offer. This is a very attractive option for businesses that are new to Facebook Ads or those who are looking to increase general awareness of their product or service.
Keep in mind that because this objective is designed for a broader reach, your ads may not be as targeted as they would be in other categories.
Consequently, if you’re trying to measure the overall effectiveness of these awareness objectives, things get even more difficult. Because Brand Awareness isn’t a hard-and-defined figure (like conversions), you’ll need to take other factors into consideration – i.e. have you had an increase in overall engagement or are you seeing more traffic to your site?
Understanding the Reach objective
Knowing you’re reaching the biggest possible audience while keeping their interest is key to a successful Facebook Ads campaign. The nifty thing about the platform is that you can specify if this is your intention, by opting to focus on reach overall.
Keep in mind though, just because you’ve reached a bigger audience, it doesn’t necessarily mean they will convert. Following that, you have to put in the work to turn your newfound traffic into cold-hard sales.
Additionally, the Reach option allows you to shift the frequency of your ad so you can maximise the amount of value you get out of your campaign. This is super helpful when you’re trying to stay within your budget or reach audiences at a certain point.
It’s also ideal for companies of various sizes that may not need certain amounts of ads blasted out there – i.e. a larger company with an established brand may need fewer ads rolled out (resulting in less money spent) than a completely new brand.
Consideration Facebook Ad objectives
Objectives in this category help you move potential customers further down the funnel, from discovery to decision. Basically, when a user hits this category, they’re not entirely ready to make a purchase, but they are further down the buyer’s journey than someone in the awareness stage. They already know your products and brand exist, but they don’t necessarily know how you can help them or what the benefit is of converting.
So, to pinpoint users in this bucket and to hopefully encourage them to take action down the line, Facebook Ad objectives let you target the following sub-categories.
Traffic
The Traffic objective directs Facebook users to your website or app. When people click on your ad, they go to a landing page that you’ve specified in the ad set. This landing page is designed to convert those visitors into leads or customers, and you should have a CTA (call to action) that tells the visitor what you want them to do.
By going after these audiences through the Traffic objective, you’re effectively pushing them closer to your conversion than if they were to be hit with an awareness-based ad.
However, it’s critical to note that you will need to install a Facebook Pixel on your app or landing page. This will enable you to keep track of how people are engaging with your site, or to retarget them in future Facebook Ad campaigns.
Engagement
The Engagement objective is designed to get people to interact with your ad. When someone clicks on the ad, they see a full-screen experience that either takes them to your website or app or keeps them engaged with the ad for a longer period of time. And that’s a win. Doing this allows you to:
- Encourage better post engagement
- Entice more likes on your Facebook Page
- Collet more event responses
- Prompt users to attend physical or online events
The benefit of using Engagement in your ad campaign is that you get the bonus of even more reach on top. Naturally, you organically get your message across to News Feeds that weren’t originally in your audience targeting that you paid for, so it’s just an extra win on top.
By choosing Engagement, you are also able to build up your audience database, which allows you to retarget more effectively in your future campaigns, just like the Traffic objective does. This then gives you more control over who you are targeting, eliminating wastage and enabling you to laser-target your biggest prospects.
App Installs
This App Installs objective is designed to get people to install your app. This can be a really effective marketing strategy if you have a new app that you’re trying to promote. It’s also handy if you want to increase the number of people who are using it overall.
One thing to keep in mind is that this objective can only be used for apps that are listed on the Google Play Store or App Store. Additionally choosing this option means you can pinpoint customers who are potentially higher value than those that you’d attract from other buckets.
When other methods in your marketing strategy aren’t giving you enough installations, this neat Facebook campaign objective is the perfect way to bridge the gap, and may even allow you to do it on a much smaller budget.
Video Views
When you’re trying to drive more people through to your visual content, this is the most effective Facebook Ad objective to master. Why? Because video itself is a powerful form of content and allows you to dish up content to your target audience that also ticks a number of boxes, such as:
- Demonstrating your tone of voice
- Getting your main USP across
- Getting more engagement through a sticky ad format
- Keeping audiences on your ad longer. (This is important for the Facey algorithm).
All in all, this objective is extremely handy for building up an audience that you want to use for retargeting down the line. It can also be used for getting conversions that are directly related to video content.
Lead Generation
When you’re trying to collect more data on your customers, but not necessarily drive content to your website, this should be your first port of call.
This campaign objective allows you to place a form on your Facebook Ad that, when filled out by an interested party, will send their information (with their permission) over to you so that you can follow up with them later.
It’s important to note, however, that the negative side of this is that it isn’t designed to drive traffic to your website. So, you may want to create an additional campaign to run parallel to your lead generation one.
Messages
This objective is all about driving people to start a conversation with your business. It could be through Messenger, WhatsApp or even Instagram Direct Messages. The idea is that you create a sense of urgency or interest in your ad that encourages people to reach out and ask for more information.
It’s a great way to get engagement from those who may prefer a more personalised, on-demand approach to interacting with your business. Consumers are very in tune with wanting instant support and answers to their questions, so messages drive that activity further.
The best part is, these messages are fully automated (at least after you set them up), so you barely have to lift a finger once your campaign is up and running. Talk about the benefits of A.I.
Conversion Facebook Ad objectives
There’s no doubt that most businesses just want to drive hard-hitting conversions – whether that’s in the form of making a sale, getting contact information or having more users sift through to your ecommerce store. At the end of the day, you need to define your conversion yourself, but Facebook Ads can help you power it up from there.
Within this category, you’ll find Catalogue Sales and Store Traffic as the two sub-categories to choose from – each carrying different intentions.
No matter which one you choose, though, you’ll need to install the Facebook Pixel or SDK to ensure your conversion tracking is in place.
But there is a catch.
In order for this Ad Objective to work properly, you do need a few dozen conversions weekly for the algorithm to kick in. If you’re unable to get that, you may need to switch over to another Ad Objective instead.
Let’s look at those two sub-categories closer.
Catalogue Sales objective
This option is best for businesses that want to increase traffic and sales to their online catalogue. It’s perfect for product showcases, as users can click through from the ad to your website and make a purchase directly.
This campaign objective also works well if you’re running a promotion or sale as it encourages users to take action on your offer.
Store Traffic objective
This one is ideal if you’re looking to boost foot traffic in your brick-and-mortar store by targeting customers nearby your location. This Ad Objective will show your ad to those in the vicinity of your specific store and then push to drive foot traffic through your physical door. This objective is suitable for restaurants, retail stores and other businesses with a physical storefront.
Optimising your ad delivery
Facebook Ads is nifty in the sense that it will automatically adjust your ads for delivery. But there are some extra things you can do to maximise their impact.
Firstly, using the default option is actually recommended, but you may want to further adjust things manually to up the optimisation level even more.
For example, choosing the Traffic objective means your ads are optimised to glean as many link clicks as possible. However, optimising your campaigns for views on your website or landing page could mean your users stick around for a longer duration, prompting the Facebook Pixel to take action.
What does that mean?
Well, the more information you get on your target audiences’ activities, the more data you have to power up your retargeting campaigns. All in all, you’ll need to experiment with your frequency and delivery targeting, allowing you to maximise the visibility and performance f your campaign.
Final takeaways
When it comes to Facebook Ads, choosing the right objective is key to success. By understanding how each objective works and what it optimises for, you can fine-tune your campaigns for better performance.
Traffic is helpful for getting more clicks on your ads. However, if you want to increase content views or sales, you should opt for more specific targeting options like Video Views or Conversions.
Remember to consider your business goals when choosing an objective, and always test different options to see what works best for you. With a bit of trial and error, you’ll be well on your way to driving higher results through highly strategic Facebook objective targeting.
As always, if you need help setting up your Facebook Ads campaign, we encourage you to get in touch with our friendly team at Edge. We can help you get your social media strategy sorted, and ensure all of your settings are on the right track for pure ROI.
