Facebook is the number one social media platform when it comes to popularity, size, and usage. With roughly 2.85 billion monthly active users, every marketer includes the king of social media in their strategy. An average Facebook user clicks around 12 ads per month. According to a social media agency Hong Kong, clicks among local businesses have increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Around 2/3 of Facebook users visit a local business page once a week. For brands and businesses to optimize their Facebook ads, they should know when to use each campaign objective. Here’s a glimpse of how to do it.

WHAT ARE FACEBOOK AD CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES?

A digital marketing speaker Hong Kong defines Facebook Ad Campaign Objectives as goals that a business wants to achieve when launching an ad or campaign within the platform. They are divided into three broad categories:

  • Awareness to generate interest in their products and services
  • Consideration to get people to seek more information about the brand or business
  • Conversion to encourage people to buy their products and services

Under these 3 broad categories are specific goals as follows:

  • Awareness.
  • Brand awareness aims to boost the number of people who know the brand or service.
  • Reach aims to show an ad to as many people within the target audience group.
  • Consideration.
  • App installs aim to direct people to a store where they can download a business app.
  • Engagement aims to influence people to comment, like, or share the content.
  • Lead generation aims to collect information about people which can be used for future ads and campaigns.
  • Messages aim to connect with your target audience via messaging apps.
  • Traffic aims to drive people to visit the business blog site or website.
  • Video views aim to invite people to share the videos of your business.
  • Conversion.
  • Catalog sales aim to generate sales by showing product catalogs.
  • Conversions aim to encourage people to take actions like add items to a cart, call a business, download an app, subscribe to a newsletter, etc.
  • Store traffic aims to promote a brand’s physical store and drive people nearby.

The Facebook Ad Campaign Objective you select shows what action you want people to do after seeing your ads. Based on these objectives, the Facebook algorithm will show the ads to people who are most likely to take those actions. That is why it is very critical to choose the right campaign objective that aligns with your business goals.

WHEN TO USE EACH FACEBOOK AD CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVE?

As mentioned, a Facebook Ad Campaign Objective tells the platform what you want people to do. Based on its algorithm and the chosen objective, Facebook will show your ads and campaign to the people who will most likely do it. If you choose a wrong objective, Facebook may show your ads to the wrong people. This is the reason why you should be very careful in choosing the right goal. 

Awareness Objectives

These are optimized for impressions. This is for your ads to be shown to the largest number of people within your target audiences. Clicks, comments, likes, and shares for these ads will be typically low. If your goal is to boost sales or drive traffic, don’t choose this objective. The main goal under this category is to build people’s interest. 

  • Brand awareness is a good option if a business wants to build a memorable brand. Through it, they can measure “ad recall lift.” This goal is commonly used by large brands to measure ad lifts and by smaller brands to increase awareness.
  • Reach is a good choice if a business is organizing an event or an upcoming product launch. Businesses can get many eyes on the ads without expecting any action. However, if the goal is to influence people in buying advance tickets for the event, this may not be a suitable campaign objective.

Consideration Objectives

These are designed for low-intent actions. Besides conversions and sales, this category helps your business to prompt people in taking actions such as:

  • App installation
  • Engagement – Comment, Like, or Share a post. Use this objective if you want to add social proofs, boost sign-ups for Facebook events, or increase your number of followers. 
  • Lead Generation – Fill up an information form, subscribe to an email list, etc.
  • Messages – Connect to a business via Messenger, IG Direct, or WhatsApp.
  • Traffic – Drive people to visit your blog site or website.
  • Video Views – Invite people to watch and share your business videos. For a video marketing agency Hong Kong, Facebook is one of the top three platforms on video marketing. Video views are a perfect campaign objective if to get more views on Facebook Live replays and introductory videos about a brand. 

If your goal is to drive conversions and sales, this campaign objective brings the risk of low-quality leads.

Conversion Objectives

Conversion objectives on Facebook lead to higher link clicks and quality leads. They aim to encourage people to buy and use your products and services. It is important to set these ads up properly and take all costs into account.

  • Catalog Sales is a good choice if you have a large number of products and services that you want to present to your target audiences. They are known as dynamic ads on Facebook. Dynamic ads retarget audiences after they completed a purchase on a specific brand. These ads will show relevant items that the buyer may use to enhance his or her previous purchase.
  • Conversions are typically the best campaign objective to start with. But to use this goal, you will need to install Facebook Conversions API and Pixel on your website. You will also need to configure your events under the Events Manager. Once these are accomplished, you can optimize both your ads and events conversion using this goal.
  • Store Traffic is perfect when your business has more than one store branch and you want to drive people nearby to visit these stores. The only thing you need to do is add all your store locations on your Facebook Page together with their hours of operation. Using a specific radius, Facebook will show your ads to local target audiences closest to your stores.

THE BOTTOM LINE

One of the biggest mistakes that a business can make is choosing the wrong Facebook Ad Campaign Objective. By understanding how each campaign objective works, you can choose the right one that aligns with your business goal. To get the best results, experiment on different campaign objectives in your Facebook ads. 

Reference: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/11-facebook-ads-campaign-objectives-and-when-to-use-them/