All 15 Facebook Advertising Objectives – Stop Wasting Time, Losing Money and Pulling Out Your Hair

Like What Your Reading? Please Share

Choosing the ‘right’ Facebook advertising objectives is confusing.

Because of the sheer number of objectives, the continuously changing nature of Facebook, and the desire to get sales.

Let us make big brush strokes and put sense to these 16 campaign objectives…

Facebook Advertising Objectives Defined

The Facebook advertising objective is at the top of the hierarchy and defines everything below it.

Think of the Facebook advertising objectives as the top-level action you want people to take when they see your ad.

*The action you want people to take.*

E.g. if you want people to watch a 60-second video – then choose the #6 video view objective.

If you want people to engage with a Facebook post – then choose #4a Post engagement.

If you want more traffic to your website – then choose #3 Traffic.

Choose the campaign objective that best matches the goals you want to achieve.

The image below shows how Facebook organizes advertising campaigns. Ads at the bottom, ad sets in the middle, and objective at the top.

Facebook Advertising Objectives - the Facebook Advertising Campaign Structure
Facebook Campaign Structure

…the Facebook advertising objectives set the template for ad sets and ad creation… and you’ll get a different set of options that are best-suited to the goal. The Facebook campaign objectives determine what optimization and charge choices you’ll have.

Facebook for Business

Facebook organizes the campaign objectives using three over-arching steps – ACC.

Google, Bing, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat etc., all use the same ACC campaign structure.

  • Awareness: Objectives that generate interest in your product or service
  • Consideration: Objectives that get people to start thinking about your business and look for more information about it
  • Conversions: Objectives that encourage people interested in your business to buy, use your product/service or visit your bricks and mortar store

Keep in mind 🤔 : Facebook finds people to achieve your chosen campaign objective.

Meaning if you choose *click to website* then Facebook will find people in your audience who will click on the ad taking them to the website.

If you choose the page post engagement, PPE then, Facebook finds people in your audience that will like, comment and share your Facebook posts.

The 11 Facebook Advertising Objectives 2020

Awareness ObjectivesConsideration ObjectivesConversion Objectives
Brand awarenessTrafficConversions
ReachEngagement – Post Engagement, Page likes, Event Response, Offer claimsCatalogue Sales
App installsStore Traffic
 Video views
 Lead Generation
Messages

Instead of a table here is a screengrab of the Facebook Ads Manager

Facebook Campaign Objectives 2021
Facebook Advertising Objectives 2020

Note the campaign objectives are in three columns – Awareness, Consideration, and Conversions!

Facebook Advertising Objectives: Awareness Objectives #1-2

The first marketing step is brand awareness. Introducing your brand to brand-aware audiences.

#1 Brand Awareness

Facebook Advertising Objectives the Brand awareness icon
Brand Awareness Icon

Reach people more likely to pay attention to your ads and increase awareness for your brand.

Facebook first announced Brand Awareness ads in September 2015:

…Brand awareness is designed to help advertisers find the audiences most likely to recall their ads. It takes two primary factors into account: attention and reach. We’ve found that it’s not just how many people you reach that matters—it’s also crucial to break through and earn people’s attention.

“Breakthrough and earn people’s attention” finds people in your chosen audience who will remember your ad. It sounds like magic to me.

If people remember your ad then you are ‘top of mind’ in your prospect. Say ‘Wow that is Powerful‘.

Facebook can now tell which people, in your audience, are more likely to see and recall your advert.

Brand awareness is not just for luxury brands but also for small local businesses. For example, if own a restaurant, set the ad frequency you want for the ads, and let it run almost indefinitely with a small daily budget. Consistency will help your business become more recognized and recalled by the target audience.

After you build a stronger relationship with people, switch to direct response campaigns to generate more website visits and sales.

#2 Reach

Reach icon

Choose the Reach objective if you’d like to show your ad to the largest audience for your budget

The reach objective shows your ads to the maximum number of people in your audience, once per day. Facebook focuses on the volume of impressions and not the volume of people reached.

The reach objective lets you:

  • Maximize your reach over the full length of your campaign and,
  • Set the minimum number of days before the same person sees your ad again through frequency controls
Reach Objective, frequency capping

From Facebook Example Reach use cases include

  • When you want to reach a large proportion of your target audience with your ads to help drive sales.
  • When you have a narrower audience and want to make sure everyone in that group has seen your ad.

Facebook Advertising Objectives: Consideration #3-8

Consideration campaigns nurture and warm up prospects before they buy from you.

#3 Traffic

Facebook Advertising Objectives - Clicks to website icon

Use the Traffic objective to send people to a destination on or off Facebook.

e.g. “Send people to your web page.” The traffic campaign objective find people who are more likely than others to click on your ads and go to your page/site.

Traffic works for ads on:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram

What can you do with the Traffic objective?

Grow your traffic, promote pages or products, and let people know about your business.

Naturally, choose which webpage you want to send people to – not the home page. Put some thought into both the audience you choose and the ads you show the audience and then by extension which page to send people to.

The magical power of the ads platform is that it will find the people in your audience more likely to click on ads taking them to web pages.

#4 Engagement

Facebook Advertising Objectives - Post engagement icon

Updated April 2017, 2020. The engagement objective contains Post Engagement, Page Likes, and Event Responses.

Get more people to see and engage with your post or Page. Engagement can include comments, shares, likes, event responses and offer claims.

#4a Post Engagement

Facebook Advertising Objectives - Post engagement icon

Use the Page post engagement objective to boost your post.

Recall the blue ‘Boost‘ button on your Facebook page. Yeah, how can you miss it? The Boost button is the post-engagement objective. When used you ask Facebook to serve your post to people who are more likely to like, comment, and share your post.

The ‘boost’ solves for *get more likes, comments and shares*.

The PPE objective is useful especially when testing the ‘responsiveness of an audience’.

‘Responsiveness of an audience’? Huh? Yes, when testing audiences use the PPE objective and test an offer.

The only way to find out if an audience responds to an offer is to test. The PPE objective gets the answer fast. The audience likes, comments and shares or they don’t. If they don’t then you have not wasted much money to get your answer

#4b Page Likes

Page Like icon

Use the Page Likes objective to promote your Facebook Page

As the name implies the goal of this campaign objective is to get page likes for your page. Page likes are a vanity metric and focusing on likes as a business KPI is not the most effective use of your time or money. Further, page likes are not correlated with business results.

Worse rumours abound of Facebook removing page likes from pages circulating the interwebs.

#4c Event responses

Event responses icon

Promote your Facebook event to increase your attendance.

“Reach people who are more likely to attend your next event.”

The goal of this campaign objective is to get more people through the door of your in-person event (wonder if this can be used for online events?).

Start by creating an event on your page. Then promote the event using the Event response objective. Selecting the audience as per normal process. When a person expresses interest or desire to attend your event the event will be automatically added to the Facebook calendar.

#5 App Installs

App install icon

Send people to the store where they can purchase your app or get people to download your mobile app.

The goal of the mobile app installs campaign objective is to grow your business through the downloading of your app.

The mobile app install objective connects your ad with the people who are more likely to install your app, so you can get more people using your app. Mobile App Install adverts link directly to the App Store, Google Play and Kindle Fire store.

These ads can be shown across Facebook, Instagram and the Audience Network.

#6 Video Views

Video views icon

Promote videos. 60-second videos covering the topics of why, how and what of your business. Or show behind-the-scenes footage, product launches or customer stories to raise awareness about your brand.

Use the video view objective to get video views.

Note: The video views objective optimizes for video views.

Other ad objectives that support video do not optimize for video views. The traffic website objective with a video ad is optimized for traffic and not optimized for video views.

#7 Lead generation

Lead generation icon

Collect lead information from people interested in your business, inside Facebook.

The lead generation objective adds a form to your advert to collect information from people interested in your business.

These ads collect information from people on Facebook, avoiding taking people from Facebook to a landing page.

#8 Messages

Facebook Advertising Objectives Messages in Messenger, Instagram Direct and WhatsApp

Connect with people on Messenger, Instagram Direct, and WhatsApp. Communicate with potential or existing customers to encourage interest in your business

Ads that click to Messenger work with three objectives: MessagesTraffic, and Conversions. During ad creation, you’ll create both the ad and the welcome experience people see in Messenger after they click on your ad.

Note: You can’t target ads that click to Messenger to people under the age of 18.

Facebook Advertising Objectives – Conversions #9-11

The third stage of the Facebook funnel is getting prospects to convert. Convert into lead, trial a product, or become a customer.

#9 Conversions

Website conversion icon

Get people to take valuable actions on your website, such as watching a demo or purchasing a product. Use the Facebook pixel to measure and optimize ads for conversions.

The Conversions objective is designed to find people in your target audience who will take valuable actions on your website.

*Valuable actions* being signup, purchase, or demo a product. Essentially, people hand over contact details or money on your website.

The conversion objective is the best when you want a conversion – all else being equal.

Install the Facebook Conversion Pixel on your website as its uses allow you to measure the exact number of conversions.

Do not confuse the Traffic and Conversion objectives. Remember Facebook is optimized for the chosen objective.

The Traffic objective solves the traffic problem, not the conversion (sales) problem.

The Conversions objective finds people who are more likely to take valuable actions (convert) on your website. Both are similar as they take people from Facebook to your website but differ in their ‘last mile’ of action. Here look at this versus signup, register, add to cart, buy now etc.

#10 Catalog Sales

Product Catalog sales icon

Create ads that automatically show products from your product catalog based on your target audience

Automatically promote relevant products from your entire catalogue across any device.

From Facebook

Dynamic adverts are a solution to help you promote your entire product catalogue on Facebook. Dynamic adverts work best for e-commerce and retailers with high web traffic and a large inventory looking to re-engage their shoppers and drive conversions online.

#11 Store Traffic

store visits icon

Promote multiple business locations to people who are nearby.

The store visit objectives promote your brick-and-mortar business locations to people who are nearby.

Perfect for local businesses like restaurants, medispa, hair salons, and car dealerships. The store visits objective is designed to drive store visits and in-store sales.

It lets you reach people within a set distance of one or many of your business locations with ads designed to help people navigate to or contact the location closest to them.

Facebook Advertising Objectives: Advert Placement

The ad placement is either automatic or manual. Automatic ad placement cedes control to Facebook with the ad displayed in locations Facebook deems best.

Choose manual placement and options are the news feeds, instant articles, desktop right-hand column, Instagram, audience network or Facebook Messenger.

Facebook Ads Placement
Adverts Placement Instagram, Facebook and Audience Network

Note: Not all placements are available with all advertising objectives or ad types.

Facebook Advertising Objectives FAQ

Each stage of the funnel, ACC, requires a campaign objective. And not every campaign objective suits every business.

Lol! Match the campaign objective with what you are trying to achieve! If you want sales to choose conversions. If you want traffic to a blog post choose traffic.

Like What Your Reading? Please Share

3 Comments

  1. Its like you read my mind! You seem to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you could do with a few pics to drive the message home a little bit, but other than that, this is great blog. An excellent read. I will certainly be back.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.