How To Choose the Right Facebook Ad Objective for Your Goals

July 31, 2023

Marketing Two Cents

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How To Choose the Right Facebook Ads Objective for Your Goals

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Facebook boasts over 2.74 billion monthly active users. That figure is up 12% year-over-year going back since September 2019. It's little wonder that Facebook has grown so popular when it comes to advertising. The potential reach that a Facebook ad can have is staggering. In fact, the average Facebook user clicks on about 12 ads per month.

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However, if you want your Facebook ad campaign to reach your target audience, you must know what campaign objective to select. Often overlooked, Facebook Ads objectives are a key factor that can dictate the success of a campaign.

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Knowing Your Business Goals

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The first step to optimise a Facebook Ads objective is to know what your goals are for the business. There are 11 Facebook campaign objectives to choose between. However, your Facebook Ad goal will dictate which objective to go with as they come divided beneath three different categories. You can consider these three categories as stages of the buyer journey.

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Awareness

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Consider this the starting point with potential customers. If your business goal involves spreading awareness so that people know of your brand, then this is what you would choose. Awareness is often a top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) campaign.

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The campaign objectives beneath Awareness include:

Brand awareness
Reach

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A campaign that focuses on building awareness won't lead to direct sales. At least not at first. The entire purpose of running an awareness campaign is to try and attract customers. They then travel deeper into the sales funnel and you can use gathered data about them to help build target audiences.

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Consideration

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If the business goal focuses more on trying to get customers to take interest in your products or services, then you are at the consideration level. The people you are trying to attract are already aware of your brand and you want them to seek out more information about your business. Consideration falls into the middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU).

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Campaign objectives beneath Consideration include:

Traffic
Engagement
App installs
Video views
Lead generation
Messages

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The business goal involving Consideration will strive to nurture interest in the brand. Ads created with this goal in mind should educate and push engagement. While people at this stage of the buyer journey may not yet be ready to buy, a nudge in the right direction could change that.

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Conversion

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Conversion lands at the bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU). This is where you want to push people who are already aware of your business and interested in its products or services to make a decision.

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The objectives beneath Conversion include:

Conversions
Catalogue sales
Store traffic

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Conversion objectives are all about reminding people to use or buy the products or services offered by the business.

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How To Optimise Your Facebook Ads Objectives

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The biggest mistake you can make is to choose a campaign objective on Facebook Ads that doesn't match what you're hoping to achieve. After all, the objective you choose will have a direct impact on the type of action people will take upon seeing the ad. Consider having a Facebook campaign audit done to help avoid any dire mistakes.

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Brand Awareness

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The point of this objective is to help increase people's awareness of the business and its products or services.

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When you want the word spread about your brand to a broad audience, then Brand Awareness is an ideal objective. You shouldn't expect people at this stage to interact with the brand or take any action yet. Instead, this objective is about informing and keeping your brand at the forefront of people's minds. You will be charged per impression (CPM) for this type of objective.

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Optimizations For Ad Delivery By Brand Awareness

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Objective	Available Optimisation For Delivery	Function	My Note
Brand Awareness	Ad recall lift	Facebook will serve your ads to maximize the total number of people who will remember seeing your ads.	Unable to optimise for certain event Suitable Audience Similar Audience (5%-10%) Demographic Targeting Detailed Interest Targeting

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Optimisation Tips for Brand Awareness Objective

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Brand Awareness Objective	Tips	What Does it Mean
How Facebook Optimise	Use similar (1-5%) Target Audience	Refine your reach, Facebook will also survey your audience to try to improve their delivery optimization.
CPM Model	Test this objective in the middle funnel & lower funnel	Using the Reach objective for remarketing. It can be cheaper than the conversion objective

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Reach

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You will choose Reach when you want your ad shown to as many people as possible that fall within your target audience. This objective is ideal if you hope to reach the maximum number of people possible within a specific audience.

In order for Reach to be effective, keep in mind you need a big budget. You should also already know who your target audience is and isn't. With Reach, you are charged per impression (CPM).

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Optimizations For Ad Delivery By Reach

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Objective	Available Optimisation For Delivery	Function	My Note
Reach	Reach	Facebook will serve your ads to the maximum number of people.	Unable to optimise for certain event
Reach	Impressions	Facebook will deliver your ads to people as many times as possible.	Use this option to target remarketing audience

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Optimisation Tips for Reach Objective

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Reach Objective	Tips	What Does it Mean
How to control your reach	Set frequency control to adjust your reach	You can control the frequency by defining X number of impressions per X number of days.
CPM Model	Test this objective in the middle funnel & lower funnel	Using the Reach objective for remarketing. It can be cheaper than the conversion objective

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Traffic

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When you're looking to push people toward a landing page, blog post, etc., then Traffic is the objective for you. This objective revolves around increasing traffic. It is a great option if you want to promote a blog post, landing page, or even educational content. With Traffic, you are charged either per impression or link click (CPC).

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Optimizations For Ad Delivery By Traffic

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Objective	Available Optimisation For Delivery	Function	My Note
Traffic	Landing Page Views	Facebook will deliver your ads to people who are more likely to click on your ad's link and load the website or Instant Experience. (Pixel)	Recommend using this for prospects campaign
Traffic	Link Clicks	Facebook will deliver your ads to the people most likely to click on them.	Not recommend. Link Click = Ad click
Traffic	impression	Facebook will deliver your ads to people as many times as possible.	Recommend testing this for remarketing campaign & Interest-based campaign
Traffic	Daily Unique Reach	Facebook will deliver your ads to people up to once a day.	Recommend using this for tactical, Interest-based campaign

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Advertising Tips for Traffic Objective

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Traffic Objective	Tips	What Does it Mean
CPM or CPC Model	Use this for your awareness/upper funnel campaigns	It's often cheaper than conversion objective
Landing Page Views Bidding Option	Use this as the bidding option as default	Ad link click doesn't mean a page load & a pageview. This means click has less value
Impression Bidding Option	Facebook will deliver your ads to people as many times as possible.	The frequency will likely be high
Daily Unique Reach Bidding Option	Facebook will deliver your ads to people up to once per day	Facebook will try to reach as many people as possible

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Engagement

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The Engagement objective is best if you want more people seeing and engaging with a specific post or page. Engagement often includes things like comments, likes, shares, etc. When you choose Engagement, you will then be asked to choose from a subcategory to narrow the engagement type: post engagement, page likes, or event responses. With Engagement, you are charged either per impression or page like.

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Optimizations For Ad Delivery By Engagement

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Objective	Available Optimisation For Delivery	Function	My Note
Engagement	Engagement	Impressions - Facebook will deliver your ads to people as many times as possible.	Not recommend
Engagement	Engagement	Post Engagement - Facebook will deliver your ads to the right people to help you get the most likes, shares, or comments on your post at the lowest cost.	Recommend
Engagement	Engagement	Daily Unique Reach - Facebook will deliver your ads to people up to once a day.	Not recommend
Engagement	Page Likes	Facebook will deliver your ads to the right people to help you get more Page likes at the lowest cost.	Recommend
Engagement	Event Responses	Facebook will deliver your ads to the right people to help you get the most event interest at the lowest cost.	TBD

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Tips for Engagement Objective

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Tips	What Does it Mean
A cheap way to build a remarketing pool	Using impression bidding option to test this objective for your lower funnel campaign
A way to build social proof	"After the social proof on the ad is built, take the same ad (using the ad ID) and plug it into other campaigns.

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App Installs

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This is the objective you choose if you want to get people to the store site where they can download an app from the business. If you've launched a mobile app and want to gather numerous installs fast, then this is the objective you'd go with. With App Installs, you are charged either per impression, app installs or link click (CPC).

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You can choose to optimize for:

App installs.
Retention (which means Facebook is trying to identify the people that will be most likely to open your app on day 2 or 7 - your choice - after having installed the app).
App events (which means Facebook will try to identify people that are most likely to complete the selected event.).
Link clicks.

Note: you can optimize for app traffic and app conversions through other campaign objectives but this is the only campaign type that allows you to optimize for app installs.

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Video Views

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The Video Views objective is all about sharing videos from your business to gather views. The purpose of this objective boils down to getting more people to watch video content from the business. With Video Views, you are charged either per impression, ThruPlay, or 2-second continuous video view. Same with traffic objective, reach objectives, use this objective on middle funnel campaigns and compare the cost per landing page view

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Optimizations For Ad Delivery By Video View
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Objective	Available Optimisation For Delivery	Function	My Note
Video View	ThruPlay	Facebook will deliver your ads to help you get the most completed video plays if the video is 15 seconds or shorter. For longer videos, this will optimize for people most likely to play at least 15 seconds.	Recommend using this for awareness campaign
Video View	2-Second Continuous Video Views	Facebook will deliver your ads to get the most video views of 2 continuous seconds or more. Most 2-second continuous video views will have at least 50% of the video pixels on screen	Only use this if optimisation above limit your reach

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Lead Generation

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When you wish to gather more lead information about potential customers, then Lead Generation is the right objective for your business. For example, Lead Generation can help collect email addresses but will not drive people to your website. You are charged per impression with Lead Generation.

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Optimizations For Ad Delivery By Lead Generation

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Objective	Available Optimisation For Delivery	Function	My Note
Lead Generation	Lead	Facebook will deliver your ads to the right people to help you get the most leads at the lowest cost.Leads optimize to quantity, giving you the highest volume of leads for your budget. This was how Lead Generation campaigns previously functioned by default.	Recommend using this if you don't have CAPI connected
Lead Generation	Conversion Leads	Facebook will deliver your ads to help you get leads that are most likely to convert. Conversion Leads use signals from your backend data to serve ads to users more likely to be a more quality conversion.	Recommend using this if you have CAPI connected

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Tips for Lead Generation Objective

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Lead Generation Objective	Tips
Top of Funnel or Low Intent Prospecting Audiences	To drive downloads for awareness level content, all while building your email list.
Mid-funnel	To drive downloads in exchange for mid-funnel content.
Low Funnel or High Intent Audiences	To drive quote or pricing requests or to drive coupons or access to promotions.

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Messages

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The Messages objective will help to push people toward conversing with your business on Messenger, Instagram Direct, or WhatsApp. The purpose behind this is to help nudge customers toward completing purchases, offering them support, or even answering their questions. You are charged per impression with the Messages objective.

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Optimizations For Ad Delivery By Messages

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Objective	Available Optimisation For Delivery	Function
Messages	Conversation	Facebook will deliver your ads to people most likely to have a conversation with you through messaging.
Messages	Leads	Facebook will deliver your ads to the right people to help you get the most leads at the lowest cost.
Messages	Link clicks	Facebook will deliver your ads to the people most likely to click on them.
Messages	Replies	Facebook will deliver your ads to people most likely to have a conversation with you through messages.

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With this objective, you can do the following to improve the customer service experience:

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Create your own custom welcome message.
Use a standard welcome message from a template.
Use an automated chat.
Create an automated process to get more leads (Emails, names, zip code and more)

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I never use this as the Facebook ad objective in my campaigns. So unless most of your leads & main customer support portal are coming from Facebook (Meta) messager, I wouldn't recommend using this objective in your Facebook Ads.

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Conversions

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Located at the bottom-of-the-funnel, the Conversions objective is meant to help push customers to take a specific action. This action might be downloading an app, making a purchase, or even registering on the business site. You are charged either per impression or link clicks (CPC) with the Conversions objective. If eligible (Has generated at least 30 attributed optimised click-through purchases with values over the last seven days), you'll be able to optimize for value, in place of lowest cost or target cost conversions. Optimizing for value tells Facebook to optimize for a certain ROAS.

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Optimizations For Ad Delivery By Conversion

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Objective	Available Optimisation For Delivery	Function	My Note
Conversions	Conversion	Facebook will deliver your ads to the right people to help you get the most website conversions.	Recommend
Conversions	Conversation	Facebook will deliver your ads to people most likely to have a conversation with you through messaging.	No preference
Conversions	Link Clicks	Facebook will deliver your ads to the people most likely to click on them.	No preference
Conversions	Impression	Facebook will deliver your ads to people as many times as possible.	No preference
Conversions	Daily Unique Reach	Facebook will deliver your ads to people up to once a day.	No preference

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Optimisation Tips for Conversion Objective

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Conversion Objective	Tips	What does it mean
Awareness	Target similar audience (5-10%)	Set your own "page view" event and optimise it for Lowest Cost
Consideration	Target similar (1-2%) audience with detail targeting	Set "Add-to-cart" or a micro-conv. as the conversion event and optimise for Lowest Cost
Remarketing	Re-target website visitors & cart abandoners	Set "purchase" as the conversion event and optimise for Target CPA

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Catalogue Sales

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This is the ideal objective if you run an e-commerce store and want to show multiple products to help generate sales. You set up your product catalogue and then Facebook handles the rest by showing multiple items to your target audience. You are charged either per impression or link click (CPC) with this objective.

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Make sure you have a well-defined product feed set up with optimised product titles and product descriptions. Moreover, you can utilise this function for SaaS/tech companies. You can use page path as product id and tailor-made the title, description, image link and brand for each page. The rest of the parameters can be a constant value.

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Here’s the other differences you should know:

You can optimize for link clicks, conversion events, or impressions.
You can set a bid cap.
You can be charged on impressions or link clicks.

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Optimizations For Ad Delivery By Catelogue Sale

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Objective	Available Optimisation For Delivery	Function	My Note
Catalog	Value	Facebook will deliver your ads to people to maximize the total purchase value generated and get the highest return on ad spend (ROAS).	Barely see it work
Catalog	Conversion Events	Facebook will deliver your ads to people more likely to take action when they see a product from your catalog.	Recommend
Catalog	Link Clicks	Facebook will deliver your ads to the people most likely to click on them.	Not Recommend
Catalog	Impression	Facebook will deliver your ads to people as many times as possible.	Not Recommend

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Catalogue Sales Facebook Ads Objectives Tips

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Catalogue Sale Objective	Tips	What does it mean
All-covered Product Feed	Create a feed that covers all your products and optimise for add to cart	All products that did not have higher margin targets are combined here to give Facebook Algo the flexibility to match each shopper with the right product.
High-Value Product Feed	Create a feed that only covers the high-value products and optimise for purchase	By setting a lower ROAS goal for their high margin products, they ensure that they will sell as many high-margin products as possible.
Theme-based or New Released Product Feed	Create a feed that is based on product category & optimise for purchase	ROAS is set very low to ensure visibility of these products.

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Store Traffic

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Do you want to promote your brick-and-mortar business location? If so, then Store Traffic is the objective you'd go with. This is ideal for business owners who operate multiple physical locations and want to drive foot traffic and in-store sales to a target location.

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Optimizations For Ad Delivery By Store Traffic

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Objective	Available Optimisation For Delivery	Function	My Note
Store Visits	Daily Unique Reach	Facebook will deliver your ads to people up to once a day.	Personally, I think this is the same as Reach objective or traffic objective
Store Visits	Store Visit	Facebook will deliver your ads to people more likely to visit your business locations.	Suitable for big shopping mall

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Tips that you should know:

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Facebook uses a combination of data points to report on store traffic, including:

Information from people with location services enabled on their phones.
Satellite imagery and mapping data from third parties.

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Store Traffic Objective	Tips	What Does It Mean
How Does It Track & Report	Information from people with location services enabled on their phones.Satellite imagery and mapping data from third parties.	The tracking is highly dependant on user devices. It would be more accurate if your customers are young adults who are more adpaptable for technology
What's The Optimisation Type	Daily unique reach	There's no much difference for using Reach + Location
Suitbale Businesses	Business with multiple brick-and-mortar locations	It's not suitable for businesses that only have 1-2 stores
How Does It Verify Accuracy	Facebook Polls	It's hard to gurantee the report & tracking accuracy
How To Optimise	Upload Offline Events	Record your offline purchase and update the list every day

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Choose Your Facebook Ads Objectives Carefully

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Keep in mind that the Facebook Ads objectives you decide on influence how Facebook chooses to deliver the ad and who it is shown to. The results you will get will revolve around both your campaign objective and the optimisations you make. So, be sure to choose an objective that aligns with the end goals of your business. Test Everything!

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If you need help optimizing your Facebook Ads, then let Dean Long Digital Marketing help. Contact us today!

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Hongxin(Dean) Long

Dean Long is a Sydney-based performance marketing and communication professional with expertise in paid search, paid social, affiliate, and digital advertising. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Information Systems and Management and is also a distinguished MBA graduate from Western Sydney University.