If you read my previous article, How to Optimize Your Business Page & Create Kick-Ass Facebook Ads That Lead to Conversions, you’ll know Facebook offers several types of ads. However, each type of ad serves different campaign objectives. Today I’ll be going into each of these objectives, so when it comes to creating your Facebook ad campaign, you’ll know which one to select.
To begin, it’s important to know that each of these campaign objectives falls under one of 3 categories: Awareness, Consideration and Conversion. Each of these respective categories targets different marketing goals and have campaign objectives that work with different ad types.
Awareness
Reach
It’s no secret that Facebook collects its users’ data, which is also used when it comes to defining target audiences for Facebook business users to target their ads. This marketing objective includes everyone in your target audience, regardless of their previous engagement patterns. Therefore, it’s a good way to increase your post impressions and brand awareness, but not necessarily for conversions.
Works With: Image, Video, Slideshow and Carousel Ads
Ideal Budget: ANY
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is a way to increase the recognition of your brand/company name or logo.
This target objective works best if you already have an established audience and relatively well-known name, but you want to increase that awareness and audience. So unless you’ve had of songs or episodes published and have a decent following, its best to increase your brand awareness through one of the other marketing objectives.
Works With: Image, Video, Slideshow and Carousel Ads
Ideal Budget: Large
Consideration
Traffic
If you’re looking to have a given product link or Facebook post seen by more individuals in your target audience, this marketing objective is for you.
By creating ads with this marketing objective, Facebook will show your ads to those in your target audience that have a high click rate. However, this objective will not necessarily lead to more conversions on your website or engagement, as Facebook can’t control what actions users do or don’t perform after clicking the ad.
This objective should also be used to supplement organic traffic from search engines and word of mouth. So make sure you have a good SEO strategy in place and website design before investing in paid traffic ads.
Works With: Image, Video, Slideshow, Collection and Carousel Ads
Ideal Budget: ANY
Engagement
Engagement is a little different from the previously mentioned objectives, as it encompasses 3 marketing sub-objectives in one: Event Responses, Post Engagement and Page Engagement (More below). Each of these objectives has its own purpose, but in general, they all boost engagement within Facebook itself. Therefore, Facebook will targets users in your target audience with a history of a high level of engagement with ads.
Quick Tip: Boosting posts that already have a high engagement will increase your chances of getting more engagement through this marketing objective, as it plays into the “popularity” mentality.
Event Responses: This marketing objective will get you responses to an event invite, be that an author meet & greet or book signing. What it won’t give you is the actual commitment of the people who RVSP.
Works With: Image, Video & Slideshow Ads
Ideal Budget: ANY
Post Engagement: If you want your ad to gain “social credibility” through popularity (Likes, comments & shares), then this is the ad campaign objective for you. Furthermore, by receiving a lot of likes, comments & shares on your post, it will also be seen by more people thanks to Facebook’s algorithm (Barney).
Works With: Image, Video & Slideshow Ads
Ideal Budget: ANY
Page Engagement: If you’re looking to gain a couple of new followers and page likes in order to increase your online credibility through a large following and heightened post engagement, this sub-objective is for you.
Works With: Image, Video & Slideshow Ads
Ideal Budget: 150 CAD/month for ongoing campaigns for more optimal results for small businesses & brands
App Installs
The goal of this campaign objective is to increase the number of installations of your app. In order to do so, Facebook will target users with a past history of installing mobile apps seen through ads on the platform.
Works With: Slideshow, Single Video, Carousel & Single Image
Ideal Budget: ANY
Lead Generation
Works With: Slideshow, Single Video, Carousel & Single Image
Ideal Budget: ANY
Video Views
This campaign objective works well if you’d like to increase the number of views for one of your videos and increase your overall brand awareness. However, this campaign objective won’t guarantee anything more than that.
Works With: Carousel, Single Video & Slideshow
Ideal Budget: ANY
Message
Works With: Carousel, Slideshow, Image & Video
Ideal Budget: ANY
Conversion
Conversions
Works With: Collection, Carousel, Image, Video & Slideshow
Ideal Budget: MEDIUM
Store Traffic/Visits
Works With: Collection, Image, Video, Slideshow & Carousel
Ideal Budget: ANY
Catalogue Sales:
This campaign objective is great for promoting your products from your online store, such as several books in a series. For, ads with this campaign will show a rotation of several of your products for sale on your website. However, this campaign won’t work well if you’re trying to sell subscriptions or services. It’s also worth mentioning that you’ll need to have a Facebook Pixel installed on your website in order to successfully track the conversions and results of your ad campaign.
Works With: Collection, Image & Carousel
Ideal Budget: Works best for online stores with large budgets
Works Cited
Barney, Josh. “The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Campaign Objectives.” Einstein Marketer, Einstein Marketer, 27 Nov. 2018, http://www.einsteinmarketer.com/facebook-ad-campaign-objectives/. Accessed 8 Nov. 2019.
Facebook. “Facebook Ads Guide.” Facebook Business, Facebook, N.d. http://www.facebook.com/business/ads-guide?ref=fbb_search. Accessed 8 Nov. 2019.
Newberry, Christina. “How to Advertise on Facebook in 2020: The Definitive Facebook Ads Guide.” Hootsuite, Hootsuite Inc., 2 Oct. 2019, blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-advertise-on-facebook/#types. Accessed 8 Nov. 2019.
Thank you so much for reading this article! Which ad campaign objective do you plan on using? Let me know in the comments below!
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