It’s so important to understand each Facebook Ad Campaign Objective, and in this training we’ll cover all 11 including the best 3 objectives you should be using in 2021. Learn what to avoid and where to put your advertising spending toward.
The best 3 objectives I use in 99% of my most successful campaigns in 2021 are
- Conversions>Purchase
- Conversions>Lead
- Traffic
Brand Awareness
This is an objective that focuses on showing these ads to as many people as possible, as cheaply as possible. Facebook’s algorithm does take into account the people that tend to remember brands the most, so it prioritizes them.
In my campaigns I don’t really use this objective, I think it is better suited to big brands that want to keep their brands in the consumers’ minds.
Reach
The reach objective is very similar to “Brand Awareness”. While brand awareness tries to prioritize people who tend to remember ads, reach just tries to reach as many people as possible as inexpensively as possible.
Since Facebook is and auction, you need to remember that it will most probably not show your ads to people who tend to buy your products online, because getting in front of them is more expensive.
This is also an objective I rarely use.
Traffic
The traffic objective will target your campaign at people that are more likely to click your link, without it being too expensive. Again people who tend to buy or subscribe after clicking a link will be more expensive to get in front of. So if you are using this objective you will generally not be showing your ads to likely buyers.
Optimizing for traffic is different than optimizing for page views (under the conversion objective). Clicking on a link and going to a page does not mean that people are actually looking at the content of the page. TIf you optimize for page views you are tracking the people that actually interact and read your content.
If your main focus is generating purchases, I don’t recommend using traffic, there are better objectives for my goals. But traffic is still my number 3 most useful objective because there are times when you just want to send people to a destination. You can send people to a Spotify song, an Amazon page, or a YouTube video. Getting cheap traffic, just to get more eyeballs can be beneficial. If it isn’t your own website with a pixel, you can’t use page view to drive trffic.
Also, over time, Facebook will get better at optimizing for your objective. So it will look for the people who are most likely to click on your link, and over time it will become more efficient at finding them. It’s easy for campaigins with the traffic objective to exit the learning phase and
Engagement
The engagement objective is great when you are trying to build your page likes, if you have an event you would like people to attend, or if you are just trying to get more comments and shares.
Many people use this objective to build up page likes on a new page. This can certainly work, but I now recommend a different strategy for getting people to like your page. I found that using this conversion the likes the page got were not from people who continued to like posts in the future.
It is really important that the people who like a Facebook page continue to engage with it, as this will affect the reach of the post. The more followers engage with a post, the more it gets shown to other people. But the opposite is also true, so if the followers of a page don’t interact with the post, then the posts will be shown to a smaller group.
When you’re running captivating ads, people will still like or comment the ads, and then you can invite them to like the page. In this way the page continues to grow with people who are engaged and are more likely to become customers (since we’re targeting people more likely to become potential customers with a purchase conversion objective).
One way to use this objective is to boost a video or post that you can then use as an ad. You can run the post with the engagement objective for a little while. Once you have a good amount of engagement you can use that post as an ad in other campaigns. If you do this, you will keep all the engagement and comments the post had.
App Installs
If your goal is to get more people to install an app, this is the right objective. The algorithm will look for people who are more likely to download the app. You can also track what they did in the app, how many people download it etc. (except for people on an iPhone or iPad who opted out.
However, if you are trying to drive sales within the app itself you will want to use the conversions goal (we will cover this more in-depth).
Video Views
Much like in the Reach objective, video views will try to show your video to the biggest audience it can. It will optimize for people who tend to watch videos. Choose this objective if you have a Facebook video that you would like many people to watch at an affordable rate.
This can be a good objective for coaches or consultants. Let’s say you have a training in video. You can then build up a group of people who watched your training 50,75, or 90% of the way through and target them with a unique offer.
Lead Generation
Finding high-quality leads can be hard. In my experience, you are better off finding leads with conversion>conversions. With “Lead generation” objective you are collecting the leads through Facebook. It’s different than sending them to your website to sign up via email. The leads that you get when using the lead generation objective tend to be cheap, but very low-quality. Most do not convert.
Messages
In special circumstances messages can work very well. In this objective you are trying to get as many Messenger or WhatsApp conversations going as possible.
I consulted for a school with young students. The administration saw that the students preferred to talk to someone before choosing to enroll. But their favorite conversation method was through Messenger. So for a young audience that likes to use Messenger this could be a good choice.
If a direct conversation leading to a sale is a key part of your sales process and your customers prefer messenger vs email or phone, this is the objective to choose.
Conversions
The conversions objective is a huge umbrella. Any event or custom conversion with your pixels falls within the scope of the conversion objective. So you will select conversions as your objective, and then you would select the specific conversion you want you campaign to optimize for.
After you choose the conversion objective you will have to select where the conversion will take place. It could be a website, an app, Messenger, or Whatsapp. Then you will need to select the right Pixel (the one that is linked to the conversion location), and finally, you need to choose the event you want to track.
It is extremely important that your pixel is installed correctly. I have a lot of tutorials on how to not only install the pixel but also how to set up events.
It is also important to choose the right conversion event.
My top two conversion events are leads and purchases. It is more expensive to get in front of people but it is a matter of quality over quantity. The people you do get in front of are more likely to purchase, and are a higher quality lead.
Here are a few other conversion events that you may want to use.
Page view: this can work well for a blog post that you want more people to see. It’s not ideal for driving a sale, but good for driving traffic to a website.
Schedule appointment: if your main objective is to have people schedule their first appointment, you can use this event instead of purchase.
Contact: If you want people to email you and do your sales cycle via email, this is the ideal choice.
Catalog Sales
Catalog sales can be useful if you have a lot of different products. The algorithm will go through your catalogue showing different people different products, based on their past behavior.
This is a valuable objective both for cold-traffic (people who have never visited your website or page) or for retargeting (of people who already visited your page). This takes some time to set up, but lets you pitch unique offers and products to people.
Store Traffic
You will only use this objective if you have a physical store you would like people to visit. In his objective, your ad will have a button for directions to your location. Once people tap on that button the objective is complete and it registers as store traffic.
Conclusion: You are now an expert on Facebook Ads objectives.
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