If you’ve tried setting up your own Facebook ads in the past, you’ll know that it can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you’re not a social media expert. We’ve explained a bit more about the different types of objectives and what you’d use them for.
The three pillars of Facebook ads
Facebook adverts come in three different categories – Awareness, Consideration and Conversion. These are then split up into different objectives, depending on what you want to achieve.
Awareness adverts
Consideration adverts
Conversion adverts
Awareness adverts
There are only two objectives in the Awareness ads pillar – brand awareness and reach.
Brand awareness – Facebook describes this category as showing your ads to ‘people who are most likely to remember them’. Generally, we wouldn’t recommend brand awareness ads – we want people to take action whenever they engage with one of our ads, and this merely increases visibility.
Reach – Reach adverts go out to as many people in your target audience. Again, as this merely increases visibility, we wouldn’t typically recommend it. However, if you wanted to reach people within a local area – say for example, if you had just opened a new shop and wanted local people to know about it – this would help you get the word out to as many people as possible.
Consideration adverts
This is Facebook’s most popular category, and for good reason – the objectives are ideal for all kinds of businesses and encourage users to take some kind of action.
Traffic – These adverts are designed to get as many people to your website as possible. If you don’t have a strong conversion action on your website, then traffic ads are a good option, as they’ll show the ad to a large audience who are likely to click.
Engagement – If you have a specific post you want people to engage with, such as a giveaway or an event that you want people to respond to, then Engagement ads can work well. This objective serves your ad to people who are most likely to comment/share/like the ad on Facebook, and uses the Facebook algorithm to identify people who do this regularly on brand pages within your niche. This also includes the Page Likes option, which can be very useful when you first launch your page.
App installs – If you have an app on the App Store or Google Play store and want a helping hand to get it on your customers’ phones, then the App Installs objective is the one for you.
Video views – Want to boost your latest video’s views on Facebook? If you don’t have any other action you want users to take, then you might choose the video views objective. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that you can use video with ANY of the above objectives – so if you don’t specifically want to increase views on your video and get people engaging on Facebook with it, then think about what you want your audience to do and choose a different objective instead.
Lead generation – If you want people to sign up to your newsletter, or request a demo of your product, you could opt for the Lead Generation objective. However, these type of ads tend to work better on LinkedIn, especially if your audience is B2B.
Messages – This objective encourages people to contact you via Messenger. We’d recommend staying away from this one unless you have a really clever bot set up that gives the user value, like Philadelphia’s recipe suggestion bot – if someone wants to message you about your services, they will do, regardless of an advert.
Conversions
The Conversions pillar is when we start getting into the real nitty-gritty of Facebook ads. Unless you have Facebook’s pixel or Conversions API integrated in your website, you can’t use these ads. However, if you have an online shop, or plan on tracking downloads and enquiry form submissions, they can be invaluable.
Conversions – This is your standard, cover-all conversion ad format and the one that most people will want to use. Set up the event you want to track through the Facebook pixel – whether that’s sales, form submissions or clicking on a certain element – and the ad will be served to people most likely to convert once they get to your website.
Catalogue sales – This objective relies on you having set up a Facebook catalogue, and pulls products from that catalogue to advertise as a carousel. The conversion is tracked when someone makes a purchase through the ad. Unless you have a large e-commerce site with lots of products, we’d recommend using the main Conversions ad format instead.
Store visits – If you have a physical presence and want to track how many people visit your shop as a result of seeing a Facebook ad, this format tracks user locations in correlation to your ad. However, people need to have location services enabled on their phone for this to be of any value.
Whether you’re feeling more confident about your Facebook ads or still need a helping hand, say hello to our team. We’ll not only help you choose the right objective, but we’ll create ads that really convert with stylish graphics, attention-grabbing copy and expert strategy. Contact us today to find out more.
- Snap x Cameo: Snapchat’s new partnership with Cameo - 9 May 2022
- The latest Twitter changes – May 2022 - 4 May 2022
- The State of Facebook Ads in 2022 - 1 April 2022
Contact us to find out more
Ready to step into the world of digital advertising? Drop our team a message to find out how we can make your business a success online.
