Meta Ads Tips: Choose the right objective

The first step to creating a campaign in Meta Ads (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) is selecting the right objective to help you achieve the best results.

Generally speaking, the objectives will match your business marketing goals and follow a similar structure to a marketing funnel.

When you click the create button in Ads Manager, a small window will pop-up showing you the options for your campaign objective.

I will explain the most common objectives and the purposes for each, based on my experience, research, and discussions with Meta marketing agents.

Awareness

The first option and probably least useful option is Awareness. The Awareness objective will optimise your ads to reach as many people as possible but you aren’t likely to get many actionable results such as sales or leads using this option.

So what is it good for? This objective is good for an in-store promotion where you want people to go to a physical store location, a new product launch, or other announcement.

15-second videos work well as an ad creative for awareness because you can see how many people watched the ad. The video views metrics provide a more accurate assessment of the number of people who saw your ad as opposed to reach which shows you the number of times your ad was delivered to someone’s account but not necessarily seen.

As you go further down the funnel, you can retarget this audience who viewed your ads.

Engagement

The Engagement objective is mainly optimised for getting more likes/reactions, comments, shares, and clicks on an ad. This option is good for “boosting” an existing post so that it reaches more people and increases engagement with your audience.

There are also options with this objective to increase Facebook Page Likes or Followers and increase responses for Facebook Events.

Traffic

The remaining options are rather self-explanatory but you should proceed with caution. The Traffic objective will send people to your website, similarly to Awareness, you won’t see many results beyond this.

Remember to install a Meta Pixel and Google Analytics tracking code on your website before you use the following objectives.

This option is good if you have a lower budget and want to increase traffic to your website but don’t want to acquire leads or sales from the ads. For example, if you want to promote an article or landing page on your website, then choose Traffic.

Leads

While most service-based businesses will be looking to acquire leads through their social media ads. This option may not always be the most effective for cold audiences or low budgets, as the cost per result tends to be higher than with other objectives.

However, I have seen good results for newsletter sign-ups, instant forms offering downloadable lead magnets (E.g. a guide, recipe, or eBook in PDF format), or appointment bookings.

It is also important to note that the quality of leads are likely to be lower than other forms of marketing, especially when using instant forms.

Sales

As you can probably guess the Sales objective is optimised for generating purchases from your website. This option is particularly good for eCommerce websites like Shopify, Facebook/Instagram shop, or ticket sales.

It can also be used for other conversions such as Add to Cart, Initiate Checkout, Donate, Subscribe (paid subscription) but I would not typically recommend these conversions unless your website usually experiences a high volume of these events.

Conclusion

The first step to creating a Meta Ads campaign is selecting the right objective and I hope this article will help you to get started towards achieving the best results.

The option that is best for your business may change depending on your situation. If you ever get stuck and want to have a chat, please contact me by phone or email.

This advice is correct as of January 2024 but it is important to note that there are constantly changes in the Meta Ads system and some advice contained in this article may become outdated or irrelevant at a later date.