Facebook Ad Objectives: 11 Types of Facebook Ad Objectives

Facebook has over 2.3 billion monthly active users, making it one of the top platforms for reaching and engaging your audience. If you’ve investigated setting up a Facebook advertising campaign, you probably noticed there are a lot of ad objectives. What are these objectives?

How do you determine which one is right for your campaign? We’ll answer those questions in this blog post! Keep reading to learn more!

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What are Facebook ad objectives?

Facebook ad objectives define the goal of your specific Facebook campaign — they determine what you want to accomplish, from increasing brand awareness to earning sales.

Facebook ad objectives are broken down into three categories: awareness, consideration, and conversion. Each category offers specific objectives that align with your overall goals.

Types of Facebook ad objectives: Awareness objectives

The first set of Facebook advertising objectives is the awareness category.

There are two objectives you can select.

Brand awareness

Use this Facebook ad objective if… you want to focus on introducing people to your brand. The first ad objective we’ll look at is brand awareness. You’ll want to set this objective if you want to help new people discover your brand.

Brand awareness is an excellent objective for introducing people to your brand and helping them get familiar with who you are as a business and what you do. The goal of this ad objective is to make a memorable impression on your audience. When you set this ad objective, it’s not crucial for users to interact with your content at this stage.

Mainly, the focus is on people becoming aware of and familiar with your brand, which may mean they simply take notice of an ad.

Reach

Use this Facebook ad objective if… you want to reach as many people as possible. Reach is the second Facebook ad objective that falls under the awareness category. You’ll choose this objective if you want to reach a broad audience.

If you select reach, remember that the focus is to reach as many people as possible, not showing the ad as many times as possible. This option is best for companies that have a broad audience. If you have a niche audience, this objective won’t be as valuable because there aren’t as many people to show your ad to like there is with a broad audience.

Types of Facebook ad objectives: Consideration objectives

Next on our list of Facebook advertising objectives are objectives that fall under the consideration category.

At the consideration stage, people are weighing their options and trying to decide which business best fits their needs. There are many ad objectives you can set under this category.

Traffic

Use this Facebook ad objective if… you want to increase traffic to your website. Traffic is one of the Facebook ad objectives that focuses solely on driving traffic to a website outside the platform.

It could be a blog post, a landing page, or just a page on your website. It’s a great objective to set if people are familiar with your business, and you want to send them to a page of interest. The purpose of this objective is not to earn sales or to get people to register for an event, though those events may occur with this objective.

The focus of the Traffic objective is to get people to visit your website. Anything after that is just a bonus! When you run an ad to increase traffic, Facebook will show your ad to people who are most likely to click your link and engage.

App installs

Use this Facebook ad objective if… you want to get people to download your app.

As the name implies, this Facebook campaign objective focuses on getting people to download your company’s app. This objective is great to reach people familiar with your business or people who engage with your business that don’t know about your app. Even though the ad focuses on installs, it can still help you drive traffic to your app or increase engagement in your app for people that already have your app downloaded.

Engagement

Use this Facebook ad objective… if you want people to engage with your ad content.

Next on our list of Facebook ad campaign objectives is engagement. When you choose this objective, you focus on getting people to interact with your content. Engagements include reactions, likes, comments, and shares.

You’ll want to choose this objective if you’re looking to increase likes on your social media pages, get event responses, or get people to claim offers. When you select this objective, Facebook delivers your ad to people most likely to engage with your ads.

Lead generation

Use this Facebook ad objective if… you want to generate leads within Facebook’s platform. The lead generation objective focuses on your business obtaining leads without the leads leaving Facebook’s platform.

In other words, you don’t direct someone to your site. Typically, these ads offer items like ebooks, classes, or consultations. When someone clicks on this ad, they’ll get a form that’s autofilled, so users can fill out their submission quickly.

Facebook can autofill information like name and email address, making leads more likely to convert. This ad objective is great if you’re looking to obtain leads through form submissions.

Video views

Use this Facebook ad objective if… you want to increase views on your videos. This Facebook advertising objective is perfect if you want to increase the number of views videos receive on the platform.

With this objective, you focus on getting people to watch your video, not getting them to click your link or visit your site (although these actions are definitely a bonus!). HOT TIP: It’s important to note that you don’t have to choose video views as your objective if you want to use a video in your ad. This objective is solely if you’re going to use your videos to increase views — you can still use videos for purposes like increasing engagement or brand awareness.

Messages

Use this Facebook ad objective if… You want users to message your business directly.

The messages’ ad objective focuses on getting people to message your business and ask questions. This ad objective enables you to connect with people through Messenger, Instagram Direct, or WhatsApp. If you choose this objective, you run an ad to encourage people to communicate with your business.

When they click on the ad, it directs them to the appropriate messaging platform. You can answer their questions, offer recommendations for your products or services, or help them overcome issues or concerns with your product/service.

Type of Facebook ad objectives: Conversion objectives

The last set of Facebook advertising objectives we’ll look at is the conversion objectives. There are three objectives you can choose from for your ads.

Conversions

Use this Facebook ad objective if… you want to optimize for a particular type of conversion.

When you select the conversions objective out of all the different types of Facebook ad objectives, you choose to focus on a specific action for your ad. This action may be to buy a product, sign up for an email list, or register for an event. If you set this objective, you’ll want to ensure that you use the Facebook Pixel so that your ads work effectively.

It can also help you collect data to target the right people for future conversion-focused campaigns. The critical thing to remember with this objective is that conversions aren’t limited to people buying products. If you have other conversion objectives in mind, you can choose this objective.

Catalog sales

Use this Facebook ad objective if… you have an ecommerce store and want to promote product sales.

The catalog sales objective focuses on helping ecommerce stores boost sales. To use this Facebook ad campaign objective, you need to upload your product catalog to Facebook. Once you have your catalog uploaded, you can generate product feeds to use for your ads.

So, you can create specific product feeds depending upon who you’re targeting. This objective is great if you want to use Facebook to sell more products.

Store visits

Use this Facebook ad objective if… you want to drive people to visit you in your brick and mortar store. The last objective we’ll cover is store visits.

The store visits objective is the only Facebook ad campaign objective that focuses on driving offline sales. With this campaign objective, you deliver ads based on location. These ads are meant for companies that have multiple locations, like Dunkin’ or McDonalds.

Facebook will deliver these ads promptly based on the target user’s location. It’s important to note that it’s harder to track results from this ad campaign because sales are offline. Regardless, it’s still a great ad objective to get more people in your store.

Figure out the right Facebook ad objectives for your business

Now that you know the different types of Facebook ad objectives, you may not know which one is best for your Facebook campaigns.

Our team at WebFX can help you choose the right objectives and help you create compelling ad copy that drives the best results. Not to mention, we’ve driven over $10 billion in sales and over 24 million leads for our clients in the past five years. Ready to start advertising on Facebook?

Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our Facebook advertising services!