Action begets Results- or as a marketer would say, “Targeted Action Begets Results”. With 11 different objectives to choose from on your Facebook and Instagram ads, choosing the right objective for what you want to achieve is a priority. It would be an absolute waste of time, effort and money to show the wrong ads to the wrong people at the wrong time.

Your objective choice informs Facebook of your intention with the campaign and what is the action that you would desire from your audience. The social media platform then identifies those users in the target audience who would be most likely to take the action of your choosing, based on the user data at their fingertips.

Let’s look into the 3 main categories under which the 11 Facebook ads campaign objectives are divided:

Awareness
This category deals with getting your ad out to as many members of the target audience as possible within the budget specified.

Brand Awareness
Objective: Have target audience recall brand name and/or to build a memorable brand
When to use: When you want impressions
When not to use: If you want to encourage sales or drive traffic

Reach
Objective: To get as many people to see your ad but not focus on them taking any specific action yet
When to use: Good option to promote one-time local events
When not to use: Not recommended if online sales or website traffic expected or for an event that requires ticket sale

Consideration
If your goal is to get specific low-intent actions, one of the 6 consideration campaign goals have to be selected.

When not to use Consideration as a goal: When high-intent actions are desired.

Traffic
Objective: To drive users to your website- link clicks, landing page views
When to use: To redirect users to a blog post or a menu

Engagement
Objective: To get either post engagement (reactions, comments, video views or shares on a post), get page likes (only on Facebook) and receive event responses
When to use: To increase reactions to a post, page likes and event sign-ups

App Installs
Objective: Increase downloads of your App
When to use: When more downloads of the app is desired

Video Views
Objective: Trust building and improving awareness within a cold audience
Suggestion: Create a compelling and attention-grabbing video. Retarget audience based on how much of the video they watch down the marketing funnel.
When to use: Introductory video, instructional videos, increased views on Facebook live replay

Lead Generation
Objective: To collect contact details from potential customers
When to use: Website not optimised yet or no sign-up setup on the website but the intention is to collect contact details

Messages
Objective: To spark conversations with potential customers
Note: Be sure to check if this type of campaign objective is accepted in your geographic area
When to use: Opening up a conversation space for customers

Conversion
Within this category, customers are pushed to take a higher intent action like make a purchase or book a service. There is a higher price point involved with the conversion campaign objectives as compared to others.

Conversions
When to use: To get website visits for a purchase or entry of their contact details to become a lead

Catalogue Sales
When to use: To draw buyers to a large product catalogue

Store Traffic
When to use: When multiple physical store locations are present and the goal is to drive customers to the one closest to them
When not to use: Stores with single locations (Use Reach objective instead)

There isn’t a one size fits all approach to choosing ad campaign adjectives. There must be an alignment with what you hope to achieve with the ad and which one of the 11 campaign objectives you choose.