A Comprehensive (Beginners) Guide to SEO
Our 8 part guide on all aspects of SEO, from how search engines work to the effects of UI and UX.
What are Facebook Ad Objectives?
Like any other objective, Facebook Marketing objectives outline what you are looking to accomplish from each campaign. When choosing your marketing objective, you are presented with options from three categories – awareness, consideration and conversion with different options within each objective.
*Facebook categories refer to the basic marketing funnel process
The type objective you choose should first be defined by which stage of the marketing funnel your target audience is in, then the type of campaign will largely depend on the type of product or service you want to promote along with the overall KPI.
How do Facebook ad objectives affect the campaign?
Facebook Ad Objectives are far more complex and useful than just being a medium for arranging and organising your ads. Facebook is a sophisticated tool, and by telling it your objectives, or the results you want to achieve, its algorithm will adjust to help you achieve the maximum results for your assigned budget, whilst also giving the best experience to its users.
Facebook will use your objective to decide which users view your ad and depending on your bid; they will target users who have a history of taking specific actions and which users are more likely to want to see and engage with the ad.
An ad’s total value has three components: bidding, estimated action rate, and quality and relevance (also known as user value).
Bidding, there are three ways you can bid on Facebook Ads, Lowest Cost, Lowest Cost with Bid Cap, and Target Cost. Lowest cost is the default bid selected and the strategy that is used in most campaigns.
Estimated Action Rate, there are several factors that make up the estimated action rate, including, likes, comments, shares, views, clicks etc. These factors also help make up the Ad Relevance score.
Relevance score is a rating advertisers see after the ad has started running. A low Ad Relevance score can have a negative effect on an Ads overall ‘Value’ and may mean its shown to a smaller audience and have a higher CPC.
What are the Facebook Ad objectives?
Below, we will give a brief introduction to the available objectives along with some pointers as to when they should be used.
- Brand Awareness
As the name would suggest, the objective is increasing brand awareness, so you are reaching out to potential customers. They form the beginning of the funnel, so you are looking to make a positive first impression. Selling is not what you are optimising, but you can still get your product “in front” of people and see what happens.
- Reach
Again, it would seem relatively obvious what your objective is. You are aiming to reach out to a broader group of people within your target audience. Your purpose is for more people to see the ad rather than fewer people see it more times. Try not to be too specific with your target audience and keep your ad frequency low. In these circumstances, you are looking for quantity over quality – a rarity we know!
- Traffic
Traffic is one of the most popular objectives for apparent reasons. Your objective is to drive traffic to a specific page on your website. It is usually the landing page, but it may be a particular product or even blog on your site. You are trying to provide information about something critical to your business – a product, service or event perhaps.
The traffic doesn’t even need to be directed to your website; it could be an app, WhatsApp or a Messenger page. Wherever you lead traffic to, it should have a direct correlation to your ad; otherwise, its impact will be reduced. In the worst-case scenario, Facebook may even reject your ad. Traffic is one of the more complex options, and our team can explain this in further detail relating it directly to your objectives, business and website.
- Engagement
The aim of Engagement is to try and get people to engage with your posts and your Facebook page. Contrary to what we said earlier, you are trying to achieve Likes, Comments or perhaps responses to events. It is useful for creating “social proof” and is an excellent way of promoting events as well as boosting your organic rankings via a better perceived online reputation.
- App Installs
Once again, the name tells you exactly what the objective is. It is to encourage greater engagement with your app and to achieve this; more people must install your app. You need to explain how people will benefit by installing your app and what it will do for them and how they will benefit. Don’t be frightened to blow your own trumpet, if you don’t let people know how good your app is, then even the most targeted campaign is destined to fail!
- Video Views
When you consider YouTube, you start to appreciate the impact that videos play as part of any marketing campaign, and indeed that is no different with Facebook. However, be careful that you don’t get too drawn into this objective. Just because your ad features a video, is getting video views your goal or would you prefer more engagement or another objective. If so, focus on your main objective.
- Lead Generation
Lead generation is a crucial part of building your funnel, so this objective is perfectly aligned for creating leads. The ads usually include easy to complete or even auto-fill forms and may consist of some type of offer such as a free eBook, money off or a consultation. Lead generation ads are a great pre-cursor to another campaign as they build a wider audience. It is useful if you have had significant success in the past with other Facebook Ad campaigns.
- Messages
The messages objective is one of the newer features. It is quite simply designed to take visitors to a messaging platform which can be Messenger or WhatsApp and begin an interaction or dialogue. You have to opportunity to answer questions, explain your products or services or anything else that the user wishes to engage with you about!
- Conversions
Conversions are an objective that is quite specific and relates to a particular type of conversions such as newsletter signups, sales or a registration. Facebook can help you to achieve any of these three types of conversions. For this to be successful, you need to be very clear about what kind of conversions you are hoping to achieve. When used correctly, it can be incredibly useful and successful!
- Catalog Sales
Have you got a catalog on your Facebook page? If you have, this could be a great objective for you. Items from your catalog will be shown to a relevant audience to increase engagement and subsequently, increasing sales. Catalogue Sales is a heavily targeted objective and is one of the most dynamic functions with Facebook deciding products that would appeal to different users either through up-selling or cross-selling.
- Store Visits
Finally, Store Visits is quite complicated and not something available to all stores. You need to be present in multiple locations and have physical premises. It is ideal for larger businesses or franchises but not suitable for most SMEs. It relies on map cards so users can see where your locations are. The primary method of tracking this objective is using the “People Nearby Who Saw Your Ads” facility, which can be found in your Page Insights.
If this is something that you think would apply to your business, our team can explain it in more detail.
Conclusion
It is crucial that you select the right Facebook Ad objective for your campaign. You should change your objectives to suit your different campaigns rather than focusing on the same one each time. The best way to get familiar with this is just to try it and run a few split tests and monitor the results. It will allow you to gauge what works best for your target audience as there isn’t a “one size fits all” solution.
Although it may seem quite complicated at first, actually it isn’t, and when you are in the screens, it is pretty self-explanatory. We certainly recommend planning ahead before going to the Ad Manager as not having the information to hand can be frustrating and lead to errors.
If you would like to know more about Facebook Advertising, or digital marketing in general, speak to one of the team at Phoenix Media today on 02 038 5400 or get in touch through our contact page.
