The main questions people ask about picking the right campaign objective in Meta Ads are 1. Does it matter what I choose and 2. What are the differences between each one?
Each objective has a goal in mind and that goal should reflect the outcome you want for your advertising campaign. This could vary from increasing brand awareness to simply going after more sales.
Well fear no more for this is a place of education, so read on and discover how you can best choose which objective you will want to pursue on your Meta advertising campaign that best suits your marketing goals.
Awareness Objective
Awareness campaigns push your advertising across a large number of accounts with the overall goal of your campaign being a number of different outcomes.
- Awareness,
- Website traffic,
- Video views
- Reach
Each has its own specific goal in mind but looks to achieve a similar outcome of overall awareness for your brand and advertising campaign
Benefits
Broad Reach
Awareness ads can reach a large audience quickly, making them ideal for building brand recognition and visibility. This means that in an audience that is selected, your ad will not be targeted to a certain demographic or interest group, instead it will attempt to reach everyone within the audience selected.
Brand Recognition
These ads are effective in establishing brand identity and recall, which is crucial for new products or brands entering the market. The goal is not for an audience to click on the advertisement, it is more aligned with getting people to see your ad more often so that they can recall when they see a more specific ad later on.
Cost-Effectiveness
Generally, awareness ads have lower costs per impression (CPM) compared to other objectives like conversions or leads as the goal is not for the audience to click. The goal is simply for anyone to see the ad across the platform.
Risks
No focus on sales
These ads are not primarily designed for immediate conversions or sales, so they may not yield instant tangible results in terms of revenue. Especially for small businesses this can be difficult to pursue brand awareness campaigns on tight budgets. A monthly return on investment for social media marketing is the focus for any business on a limited budget and therefore makes the awareness objective difficult.
Long-Term Investment
Building brand awareness is a long-term strategy. It requires time and continuous investment to see significant results. While conversion based advertising is mainly a short to long term strategy, brand awareness is best scheduled for long periods of time with heavy investment to maintain brand presence across social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
Difficult to Measure ROI
The return on investment for an awareness objective can be hard to measure directly compared to more action-oriented campaigns like lead generation or sales that can be directly attributed to a campaign.
Is an awareness objective right for you?
Now that you have a grasp of the pros and cons, you can decide if this objective is right for your social media advertising strategy.
At Blufire, we consider different factors of a business and their goals to determine if this is right for them. We generally find that clients prefer to track sales and create tangible results to calculate a return on investment, whereas clients who are more concerned about brand awareness generally have more of a dispensable budget for general campaigns that cannot generate immediate returns or even track long term success.
As such we recommend you consider the following questions
- Is your budget restricted and/or reliant on a return on advertising spend?
- Are you wanting to increase brand awareness?
If you are yes to all of these questions then we’d recommend you use an awareness objective to get started, if not, then please read on.
Traffic Objective
The goal of these campaigns is to drive more traffic to your destination of choice. This could be a landing page you have developed, or the homepage of your website or simply your social media account’s homepage. Wherever the destination the traffic objective will prioritize getting as many people to click onto that destination as possible.
The benefits
Increased Website Traffic
A benefit of a traffic objective is a significant increase in visitors to your chosen destination, which can be crucial for new websites or product launches. This allows your destination (website or specific landing page) to gain more traction at the beginning of the campaign and get more customers onto your website.
Audience Engagement
Traffic campaigns can enhance user engagement, helping in building brand awareness and familiarity. While the traffic may not be engaged to begin with, the increased number of people on your website will increase audience engagement over time.
Data Collection
More traffic increases data collection, enabling you to understand your audience’s behavior and preferences. Tracking software for your website and landing page allows you to build a database of your users and determine what aspects of your destination is working and engaging an audience and what is it.
Risks
Lower Conversion Rates
High traffic does not necessarily translate into conversions (like sales). People may visit your site but not take the desired action. This is due to Meta prioritizing clicks instead of an audience that would engage and be interested in buying your product or service.
Higher Costs
Paying for each click can become expensive, especially if the campaign is not optimized for conversions. As such, the increased money spent on social media advertising will not have a direct return on investment and thus create a higher overall cost of the campaign.
Audience Relevance / Quality of Traffic
Attracting irrelevant traffic can lead to high bounce rates and low engagement, negatively affecting your website’s performance. It is a growing understanding that Facebook and Instagram push more bot traffic than what is desired to your destination (especially a website) and this means that not only are you paying for this traffic but the traffic is so insignificant.
Is a traffic objective right for you?
A traffic objective is implemented by our team when we have recently made changes to a website and need to assess the customer experience en masse with a large data pool to discover how our changes affected user experience and conversion rate optimization. The success of a traffic campaign is not directly dependent on sales and can rely on certain statistics such as click-through-rate and average time spent on a website. Therefore, to make a traffic objective worth your time and effort we recommend you consider the following questions.
- Do you want to increase traffic to your website?
- Are you not concerned about converting your customers on your website?
- Do you have time to assess the performance of your website over the course of 2 months?
If your answers to these questions are all yes, then you will benefit from a traffic campaign. If you answer no to at least one of these questions, then read on and discover which objective is right for you.
Engagement Objective
An engagement objective is used with the goal in mind to find the audience that is most likely to interact with your business online or take a desired action through the ad or website. The outcome may not be a direct conversion from the campaign but instead some form of engagement through social media or email engagement.
The benefits
Enhanced Brand Interaction
Engagement campaigns encourage more users to interact with your content, fostering a sense of community and brand loyalty. This allows your brand to grow on a recognition basis instead of a revenue generated basis.
Increased Organic Reach
High engagement can lead to better organic reach, as the platform’s algorithms tend to favor content that generates interaction. Comments, shares, likes all encourage more engagement and thus this objective pushes for that type of audience to increase engagement.
Audience Insights
Engagement metrics provide valuable insights into what resonates with your audience, helping to refine future content and strategies.
Risks
Lack of Direct Conversion Focus
Engagement does not directly lead to conversions like sales or sign-ups. High engagement rates do not necessarily translate into direct business results. Engagement is more related to brand awareness and recognition than sales which unfortunately cannot be tracked in your revenue generated from advertising spend.
Potential for Negative Feedback
Engagement campaigns might invite unwanted or negative interactions, which can harm your brand’s image if not managed correctly. Comment sections and direct messages on social media habour bad actors that can cause your brand to be represented in a poor light. However, this is as reliable as paying taxes as the social media realm is filled with good and bad actors.
Short-term Impact
Engagement-driven campaigns often provide short-term results and might not contribute to long-term business goals.
Is an engagement objective right for you?
An Engagement objective is right for you if your goal is to increase interactions on your Facebook content and build a more active community, which is essential for enhancing brand visibility and loyalty. It’s particularly beneficial if you aim to gather audience insights and improve future targeting and retargeting strategies. As such, it is important for you to ask the following questions when considering an engagement objective.
- Do you lack overall engagement with your brand and social media accounts?
- Do you have the money to invest in engagement instead of sales?
- Are you willing to wait multiple months with thousands spent on ad spend to see results?
If your answers to these questions are all yes, then you will benefit from an engagement campaign. If you answer no to at least one of these questions, then read on and discover which objective is right for you.
Leads Objective
A lead objective for Meta is to get details from the audience such as phone numbers and emails. This can be done through monthly newsletter sign ups or lead forms filled in to capture the information.
The benefits
Direct Lead Generation
This objective is tailored to gather potential customer information, which is vital for sales and marketing efforts. They encourage direct interaction with leads and removes the need for cold calling and instead creating a targeted contact list that have already shown interest.
Targeted Audience Reach
You can target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors to reach users who are likely interested in your product or service. This moves away from broad audiences and allows your messaging to be more specific to that target audience.
High Conversion Potential
Since the objective is specifically for lead generation, the conversion rate for acquiring leads is generally higher compared to other objectives. This objective is allowing you to access higher quality leads and therefore there is a cost associated with this specific targeting.
Risks
Lead Quality Concerns
Not all leads collected may be of high quality. Some users might fill out forms out of curiosity or by mistake, leading to lower-quality leads. This takes time in vetting the strength of the lead and therefore wastes time and money.
Follow-Up Dependency
The success of a lead generation campaign is highly dependent on effective follow-up strategies. Poor follow-up can result in wasted leads. Without these strategies to follow-up all you are paying for is a database of potential client information.
Higher Initial Cost
While cost-effective in the long run, setting up a successful leads campaign may require a higher initial investment in testing and optimization. Different primary text and creatives will land with different audiences and therefore require data to make additional changes.
Is a lead objective right for you?
A Lead objective is ideal for you if you’re focused on collecting potential customer information, such as emails or phone numbers, directly through Meta platforms, especially beneficial for businesses looking to nurture and convert these leads into sales. This objective suits those who prioritize building a database of prospects for targeted marketing and sales follow-ups. Therefore, to make a lead objective worth your time and effort we recommend you consider the following questions.
- Are you looking for new clients in this campaign?
- Are you willing to follow up and nurture these leads?
- Are you able to take on more work while spending money on new leads?
If your answers to these questions are all yes, then you will benefit from a lead objective in a campaign. If you answer no to at least one of these questions, then read on and discover which objective is right for you.
App Promotion Objective
This objective is directly related to mobile devices, trying to get the audience to install an app or take on specific action within the app. With existing apps, a campaign may request a certain action to be taken within the app like trying a new feature in the app.
The benefits
Targeted User Acquisition
You can specifically target users who are more likely to be interested in your app, leading to higher-quality downloads.
Increased App Visibility
Promoting your app on Meta’s vast network can significantly increase its visibility and user base.
Customizable Call-to-Action
You can tailor the call-to-action buttons (like “Download” or “Play”) to match your app’s main objective.
Risks
Cost Per Install (CPI) Can Be High
Depending on the competition in your app’s category, the cost per install can be high, impacting your marketing budget.
Quality of Installs
High download numbers do not necessarily translate into active, engaged users. Some users may install the app but not use it.
Market Saturation
The app market is highly saturated, making it challenging to stand out, even with paid promotions.
Is a traffic objective right for you?
An app promotion objective is suitable for you if your primary goal is to increase downloads and engagement for your mobile app, leveraging Meta’s targeted advertising to reach potential users who are likely to be interested in your app or additional features it provides. Therefore, to make a traffic objective worth your time and effort we recommend you consider the following questions.
- Is your main product an app for iPhone or iPad?
- Do you have an app that you want to be downloaded more?
- Do you have a new feature on your app you wish people to use?
If your answers to these questions are all yes, then you will benefit from an app promotion objective based campaign. If you answer no to at least one of these questions, then read on and discover which objective is right for you.
Sales Objective
This objective is used to target people who are likely to purchase your product or service. Tracking options on Meta allow you to track statistics like add-to-cart. These pixels allow you to track sales from the Meta platform and are perfect for e-commerce websites.
The benefits
Direct Revenue Generation
The primary benefit is the direct impact on sales, providing a tangible return on investment (ROI). Reviewing performance is easier to discover if the campaign was successful or not. The ability to shift campaigns to keep good performing ads and removing poor performing ads increases performance and allows you to create the most amount of return on ad spend.
Highly Targeted Advertising
Meta’s advanced targeting options allow you to reach potential customers based on their interests, behaviors, demographics, and even purchase history. All of this access to information creates a very targeted advertising campaign that is superior to any other form of advertising.
Retargeting Capabilities
You can retarget users who have interacted with your brand but haven’t made a purchase, increasing the chances of conversion. This form of conversion is through funneling potential customers through to your website for consideration and then retargeting them to encourage a sale with a special deal either through the Meta advertising platform or other forms like email marketing.
Risks
Higher Cost
Sales-focused campaigns can be more costly than other objectives, especially in competitive industries. This is due to the target audience being much smaller than a broad audience and your competitors largely targeting a similar demographic.
Conversion Dependency
Success is highly dependent on conversion rates. High traffic with low conversion rates can lead to inefficient spending. Performance doesn’t stop at the advertising level. Websites need to be able to direct traffic to optimise for conversions working in tandem with the advertising campaign.
Ad Fatigue
Overexposure of ads to the same audience can lead to decreased effectiveness. With an audience seeing that ad multiple times it can lead to increased costs for an audience that have already shown they are not interested.
Is a traffic objective right for you?
A Sales objective is ideal for you if you’re aiming to drive direct sales, either online or in-store, by leveraging Meta’s targeted advertising to reach potential customers who are most likely to make purchases. This objective is particularly effective for businesses seeking tangible revenue generation and measurable return on investment from their advertising efforts. Therefore, to make a sales objective worth your time and effort we recommend you consider the following questions.
- Are you wanting to increase sales almost immediately?
- Do you want to track ROI and make sure performance is optimized for your campaign?
- Do you have a product-based business?
If your answers to these questions are all yes, then you will benefit from a sales objective-based campaign.
Conclusion
Hopefully by this stage of the article you have discovered which objective is right for you. Now that you have this information you can take the next in your social media advertising campaign.
Remember that your goals for the advertising campaign need to be clear as the outcome of the campaign is largely dependent on what you want to achieve. Some objectives don’t drive a return on investment immediately and thus are treated as an investment into the brand/business.
Not everyone is in this position and must be considered carefully before taking on a new Meta advertising campaign.
