Facebook Ads Campaign Goals: Which is the right one for your strategy?

As a marketer, using Facebook Ads can be one of the most powerful ways to reach your target audience and achieve your business objectives. However, to make the most of the platform, it’s important to choose the right campaign goal for your specific strategy. Due to there being so many campaign goals to choose from, it can be challenging to know which one is right for your strategy. Here at Talking Stick Digital, we thought we’d explore some of the most common Facebook Ads campaign goals and how they can support your businesses marketing goals.

1. Brand Awareness

The goal of brand awareness campaign is to increase people’s familiarity with your brand. It is particularly useful for companies that have just started up, launching new products, entering new markets, or simply trying to establish a brand presence. With brand awareness, Facebook will optimise your ads to reach as many people as possible and make them aware of your brand – making them more likely to remember your brand name or logo after seeing your ad. To measure this goal – it is the number of people who recall seeing your ad within a specific time frame and tends to optimise towards impression and reach.

2. Traffic

Traffic campaigns are designed to drive traffic to a website or a specific page. If you’re a business looking to increase your website traffic, generate leads, or increase your social media following, then this goal is ideal for you. By optimising for traffic, Facebook will show your ads to people who are more likely to click on your ad and visit your website. Traffic campaigns are measured by the number of link clicks your ad receives.

3. Leads

If you’re looking to collect information from potential customers, then lead campaigns are right for you. There are a few different types of Facebook lead ads, lead generation, on-site leads and messages. By running a lead generation campaign, you are able to create forms for people to fill out without having to go to an external website – instead, they can stay on Facebook. You can also optimise lead campaigns towards driving users to Facebook Messenger and starting a dialogue there. Finally, on-site leads, are the newest form and arguably highest quality lead type. These optimise towards driving users to your website to complete an action classed as a lead such as a phone call, enquiry form or pop up chat. Lead generation campaigns are measured through the number of leads you generate, whether that’s on-site or within the Facebook interface.

4. App Installs

If you have recently created an app that you want to promote for people to download, app promotion campaigns are the way to go. Facebook’s app install campaigns are optimised to show your ads to people who are more likely to download your app. This campaign goal is measured by the number of people who download your app after clicking on your ad.

5. Engagement

If you’re main goal is to increase the number of people engaging with your business online, sending messages, or taking desired actions on your ad or page, then the engagement campaigns are ideal for you. Facebook will optimise your ads to get more interactions with your content, this is measured through the amount of engagement your post receives from your ad – top tip: for those looking to boost organic content via Meta Business Suite set up an engagement campaign on a small daily budget.

6. Conversions

If your primary goal is to drive specific actions, such as sales or sign-ups then choose the conversions campaign goal, this is particularly useful if you run an e-commerce site so you can use the sales objective. This goal will optimise your ads to get more people to take the desired action on your website or landing page. This is measured by the number of conversions accumulated through your ad. This tends to be a final phase strategy on Facebook, most business like to start with brand awareness, move up to traffic/engagement and then test conversion. These types of campaigns can be a tad bit tricker to set up due to needing a tracking pixel, however if you have Google Tag Manager installed you’re already half way there… perhaps more on that later!

So, which campaign is suitable for your strategy? That depends entirely on your unique business goals and needs. It is vital to note that Facebook Ads are most impactful when incorporated into a well-suited marketing strategy. Therefore, make sure you consider your overall marketing goals and how Facebook Ads can complement your strategy before selecting your campaign goal. Whether you aim to enhance brand recognition, boost website traffic, increase conversions, or promote products, Facebook provides objectives that can aid you in achieving your goals. However, something to keep in mind whilst using Facebook marketing is to manage your expectations. When using Facebook, the correct way, it is an incredibly powerful platform, but it is however an awareness-based platform. Due to this, you cannot compare your results on conversions and return on investment to the likes of search engine marketing. With Facebook, you are putting your ads in front of people and hoping they click on it. Whereas when people search for something on Google and your ad shows up- it’s something they are searching for.

If you’re looking for more information or need help with your marketing strategy and interpreting Facebook Ads then please don’t hesitate to contact us – we’re happy to help.