Are your Facebook ads hitting your targets, or are they falling short of the mark? One smart way to figure this out is by using Facebook ads campaign objectives. If you go to the Facebook Ads Manager and begin creating a Facebook ad campaign, you’ll get the choice to select a campaign objective.
Successful Facebook ad campaigns all start with selecting the right objectives. There are so many great reasons to invest your marketing budget into these ads, but only if you’re planning on doing them properly.
The objective that you select will determine what optimization and bidding options throughout the campaign set up process. Basically, you’re letting Facebook know what you would like to achieve with each campaign, and they are then providing you with the proper tools to do it.
- Awareness: Objectives that generate interest in your product or service. Awareness advertising is more suited for top of the funnel brand advertising where your focus is to generate branding, attention and awareness. These type of campaigns have KPI such as brand recall.
- Consideration: Objectives that get people to start thinking about your business and look for more information about it. Consideration is mid funnel advertising where people may already be aware of the type of products or services you offer.
- Conversions: Objectives that encourage people interested in your business to purchase your services or products. Conversions is bottom of the funnel advertising to generate leads and sales with a measurable cost per acquisition (CPA) or return on ad spend( ROAS)
Types of Facebook Campaign Objectives
Facebook actually has 11 different campaign objectives that you can choose from, although you must bear in mind that you are able to use some if you have downloaded Facebook Pixel. Below you’ll find the available objectives:
Making sure you select the correct objective from the beginning is important. Make sure you consider this before setting up the campaign so you know what to select. For each objective, there are different platforms, optimization options, and ad formats. For example, the objective Brand Awareness is as follows:
Brand awareness – Local awareness
Reach people who are more likely to pay attention to your ads and increase awareness for your brand. Increase awareness of your brand by reaching people who are more likely to be interested in it.
Reach
Show your ad to the maximum number of people. Setting a frequency cap to ensure maximum exposure for the lowest cost is a key optimisation method.
Traffic
Send more people to a destination on or off Facebook, such as a website, app or Messenger conversation.
Engagement
Get more people to see and engage with your post or Page. Engagement can include comments, shares, likes, event responses and offer claims. Post engagements, page likes and event responses
App installs
Get more people to install your app. Send people to the app store where they can download your app.
Video views
Get more people to view your video content. Promote videos that show behind-the-scenes footage, product launches or customer stories to raise awareness about your brand.
Lead generation
Collect lead information from people who are interested in your business. Drive more sales leads, such as email addresses, from people interested in your brand or business. To learn more check out our blog post Facebook Ads Lead Generation Tips
Messages
Get more people to have conversations with your business in Messenger to complete purchases, answer questions or offer support. Get more people to send messages to your business in Messenger.
Conversions
Get people to take valuable actions on your website, in your app or in Messenger, such as adding payment information or making a purchase. Use the Facebook pixel or app events to track and measure conversions. Drive valuable actions on your website, in your app or in Messenger.
Catalogue sales
Create ads that automatically show items from your catalogue based on your target audience. Create ads that automatically show items from your catalogue based on your target audience. Catalogue sales can be used with lookalike audiences, custom audiences and core audiences.
Store visits
Drive visits to your physical stores by showing ads to people who are nearby. Drive visits to your physical stores by showing ads to people who are nearby.
Optimisation Options
Platforms:
Facebook
Instagram
Auction Optimization Options:
- Leads
- Sales
Reach & Frequency Options
- Brand Awareness
- Ad recall lift
Auction vs Reach/Frequency
When creating a campaign objective, you can also select if you want to use auction or reach/frequency.
Auction based Objectives
If you’re looking to drive a specific conversion with your campaign, you’ll be able to better off optimising for your goals if you choose the auction buying type instead of the reach and frequency buying type.
Enter your ads in the auction. You’ll be able to choose a bid strategy to help meet your goals, such as controlling cost per result or spending your budget efficiently.
The reach and frequency buying type can help to maximise the number of people you can reach with your ads and to optimise the number of times those people see your ads.
Reach And Frequency Objectives
Reach and frequency should only be used when targeting audiences over two hundred thousand people (200,000). They are also more suited for top of the funnel marketing objectives such as branding and awareness. You’ll often see reach and frequency ads appear on the Facebook news feed. This includes instant articles, in stream videos, and suggested videos. However, just like when you buy ads through the auction, the ad placements and ad formats available to you depend on the type of ad creative that you want to use for your ad.
So, if you choose the reach objective with reach and frequency buying, your ads can appear on the news feed. As the Reach objective is compatible with all ad formats except 360 video and 360 photo, you’ll be able to choose from all formats except 360 video and 360 photo. If you upload video creative, your ads can also appear in in-stream videos and suggested videos.
Reach and frequency buying is potentially the best choice when you would like to increase brand awareness and put yourself in front of around 200,000 or so people. It works best with the Reach, Brand Awareness or Video Views objectives.
When To Choose The Reach And Frequency Buying Type? In short:
If your goal is to reach more people and drive awareness for your brand, choose the reach and frequency buying type.
If the success measure for your campaign is to drive your audience to take a specific action after seeing your ad, choose the auction.
How to Setup a Facebook Ads Campaign
Although they offer many overwhelming options, they can also offer amazing customization and creative control over your ad campaigns. You can really narrow down who you are marketing to, and even make it so you only target your ads to people who are already following your page.
The targeting and retargeting options that you have are truly fantastic. Here’s a quick run down of putting together a successful Facebook Ad campaign:
Strategy
Start by developing your strategy – if you don’t do this first, you’ll be dazzled by all of the options you have and likely get confused. You need to ask yourself the right questions so you can come up with a suitable strategy.
Select Objective
Select your objective – Facebook will optimize ad placements based on your objective, so you absolutely have to select the right one. The right objective can actually help to save you money and improve your results.
Target Audience
Flesh out who you want to target – you need to be very specific about who you’d like to target. Use remarketing custom audiences, lookalike audiences, demographic targeting, and other options to ensure you’re targeting the right groups of people.
Platforms, Placements & Devices
Select where you want to display your ads – you can choose mobile only, desktop, or both, for instance.
Budget
Set a budget – you’ll now select your budget, schedule your ads, and select an optimization method. You can choose a lifetime budget or a daily budget, and it’s up to you whether you want your ads to run indefinitely or you want them to start and finish at a set date.
Ad Format
Choose your ad format – choose from single image ads, video ads, etc. Check out this article for more details on Facebook Ads Types and Formats
Specifics
Don’t forget the details – don’t miss things out from the very bottom of the creative section, where you can include small details, things like CTAs and URL descriptions.
Monitor
Monitor your ads – Facebook’s Ads Manager will show you the details of all of your active campaigns. Watch the CPC, frequency, relevance scores, and number of actions taken carefully as they are your most important stats.
Facebook Sales Funnel
Advertising Sales/Purchase funnels have existed for hundreds of years. The AIDA (Attention Interest Desire Action) funnel is the most famous, but many other variations exist. Both Google and Facebook organise campaign objectives by funnels. (The stage that you want to reach and target your audience).
The top of the funnel is more suited to awareness and brand, and the bottom of a funnel is more suited to direct response and sales campaigns with measurable ROI objectives. When creating a Facebook campaign as illustrated in the image below, the top of the funnel campaign objectives are listed on the left side, with the bottom of the funnel objectives on the right. Facebook Ads Management and optimisation is about selecting the most suited advertising
Facebook has 3 stages of the Sales marketing funnel.
a)- Awareness b) Consideration, c) Conversion. (A is the top of the funnel and C is the bottom).
Facebook Ads has three main areas to understand:
- Campaign Objectives (Stage of funnel e.g. Page Likes/Brand top of the funnel and website conversions /bottom of the funnel).
- Targeting options (The most important in advertising). Build target audiences using core audiences, custom audiences and lookalike audiences.
- Advert Formats & Types (Some ad formats are only available with certain campaign objectives and targeting options).
Building a sale funnel on Facebook using different campaign formats to target people on
Build awareness
- Boost Your Posts
- Video Views Objective
- Building Brand Awareness with Ads
- Achieving Scale with the Reach Objective
- Brand Best Practices
- Video Ads: Buying and Tradeoffs
- Facebook Video Foundations
- Build Your Brand with In-stream Video Ads
Drive consideration
- How to Drive Actions Online, in Stores, and in Mobile Apps
- Moving Hearts and Minds with the Traffic Objective
- Video Views Objective
- Facebook Events
- Offers: Attract, Convert, and Reward Customers
- Facebook for B2B Marketers
- Video Ads: Buying and Tradeoffs
- Facebook Video Foundations
- Build Your Brand with In-stream Video Ads
Generate Conversions
- Generate leads
- How to Drive Actions Online, in Stores, and in Mobile Apps
- Simplifying Lead Generation in a Cross-Device World
- Promote my app
- Increase online sales
- How to Drive Actions Online, in Stores, and in Mobile Apps
- Offers: Attract, Convert, and Reward Customers
- Turn Shoppers Into Buyers With Dynamic Ads
- Book More Business With Dynamic Ads for Travel
- Enhance Your Direct Response Campaigns with Audience Network
- Closing the Deal with Conversions
- Increase in-store sales
E-commerce and travel can use an objective named catalogue sales. This is the same format as website conversions. It is essentially Website conversions- but using the product/hotel catalogue feed from the website to dynamically generate adverts. (This will be expanded into other industries).
Website clicks campaign objective focus more on clicks than conversions. (Mid-funnel).
Page Likes objective to focus on getting more page likes. It is top of the funnel, brand advertising. Similar to building an email list to retarget.
The campaign objectives at the bottom of the funnel(sales)- is Website conversions and Product Catalogue Sales. The objective of Product Catalogue sales is actually Website conversions- so they are the same objective.
Using dynamic ads with pricing is best for the bottom of the funnel advertising- vs brand/top of the funnel. Top of the funnel is more lifestyle and general creative- rather than pricing etc. It is more informational- focusing on awareness.
Website click conversions campaign objective focuses on getting the most clicks. This may buy cheaper traffic.
Page Likes is a good option to test with a lookalike audience.
Supported Ad Formats
Ad formats is the media, copy and appearance of the advert. The Facebook ad formats include
Video
Collection
Carousel
Slideshow
Single image
Testing includes experimenting with different campaign objectives – and ad formats.
For imagery to be used as ad creative assets, most ad formats have a recommend Picture size is around 1000 x 1000 pixels. (1024 x 1024 to be exact, however Facebook will automatically scale the image).
Different campaign objectives and ad format/types can be used with the same targeting).
For example, an interest such as shopping, gym, sports shoes can be used with Facebook Page likes, website conversions, product catalogue sales etc.
The rest of the objectives can be met with various methods, including photo and carousel ads, video ads, and instant full screen experience ads. They can be placed on facebook feeds, Instant Articles, In-Stream Videos, Suggested Videos, and so on. Learn more about Facebook Ad Formats here
Ad placements (Where you want your ads to run)
- Audience Network
- Messenger
The targeting options are limited to your specific industry- but Facebook is expanding the interests targeting options all the time. Interests are shown both on Facebook, and off Facebook- via the Facebook Pixel and Social logins
Conclusion:
Using Facebook ad campaign objectives can make a huge difference to your marketing campaigns. If you do it properly, you can make a huge return on investment. However, if you get it wrong then you’ll waste a ton of money. The information laid out here can help you to avoid mistakes and get the most out of each campaign. Changing your objective could potentially make a substantial difference to your efforts.
It is good to start by setting campaign objectives, choosing targeting options and ad formats. For the SMB market it is often best to start at the bottom of the funnel and work upwards, with mid market and enterprise companies starting at the top of the funnel working downwards
