We all know that Facebook (META) can be quite a confusing platform sometimes. In this article, we'll look at Campaign Objectives at the campaign level and Performance Goals at the Ad Set level, what’s important to monitor, and what to be careful about.
What Are Campaign Objectives in META Ads?
Let’s start first with the Campaign Objective (sometimes called Business Objective). According to META: "Choose what you want your target users to do after seeing your ad." They have also listed 6 main objectives to choose from:
What specifically META tells us what are these business objectives "Your campaign objective is the business goal you hope to achieve by running your ads. Hover over each one for more information." Okay, but there is more you need to know before publishing your ads.
The slightly more complex part arrives namely the "objective for which the campaign will be optimized," called the Performance Goal. Each Campaign Objective allows us to select specific goals to optimize our campaigns. And I will break down each Business objective what performance goals are.
When you select Awareness business objective, you can optimize your campaign from the following goals.
There is a description for each performance goal. Pretty straightforward for this campaign objective. Let's continue with the next one.
The next one is Traffic Campaign Objective, which could be tricky. With this objective there is also a “Conversion Location” option, which means “Where do we want to direct users.”
We can choose to drive traffic to our website (which I don`t recommend choosing this optimization, I will tell you in the following lines), to your app, to different messaging platforms and Instagram profiles, and to calls.
With the Engagement Objective, similar to Traffic, we have a Conversion Location where we choose where we want users to perform the desired action. The difference here is that when we choose “Website” as the action location, we see the “Maximize number of conversions” option, which is missing with the Traffic Objective.
Here we choose the Event for which we want the campaign to be optimized. This action may be pre-defined by Meta or a Custom Event. That's why the difference with the Traffic Objective is as it is – the Engagement Objective is not only about video views, engagement with page posts, or increasing Page Likes, but also about site engagement itself And that`s why I prefer to use Engagement Business Objective when I want to drive traffic to my website, because I can optimize for specific action that I want and the algorithm will start to search for those people who are more likely to do this action.
We move on to the Leads Objective, which, as the name suggests, aims to attract potential clients. Again, there is a place where the action will be performed, and a different Performance Goal depending on the location chosen.
At the Website level, it’s not a surprise that we again have the "Maximize number of conversions" option. Here too, we need to have events set up for which the campaign will be optimized. If you haven’t read my article on setting up events, you can do so here.
When we switch to Instant Forms, another set of Performance Goals appears:
This is because when we choose the Instant Forms option, we indicate to the platform that we want our inquiries to be made via a contact form directly within the META platforms (Facebook & Instagram).
App Promotions:
Perhaps it would be better to write a separate article about App Promotions, but in short, we can optimize for App Events (specific actions within the app) or App Installs. Before that, however, some other elements must be set up so that the campaign can be optimized for these Performance Goals. If these settings are not done, the campaign can be optimized for Link Clicks and that`s why it is available in traffic campaign objective.
And finally, we reach the Sales Objective:
After selecting the Sales Objective at the ad set level, we're again met with Conversion Location, similar to Engagement and Traffic. In most cases, our goal here would be to "Maximize number of Conversions." Here again, we have various options for setting our Performance Goal.
Choosing Between Sales and Engagement Objectives: Key Differences
Similar to the Engagement Objective, we have the option to choose a Conversion Event. The difference with the Engagement Objective is that with the Sales Objective, we can use events like purchase, add to cart, and initiate checkout. All other configured events can be chosen for both Objectives.
My advice is: if optimizing for orders, choose the Sales Objective; if optimizing for site actions other than a purchase, choose the Engagement Objective. This should be the correct distribution, as any site action other than a purchase falls into the engagement category.
If you need more information or assistance, feel free to contact with me on LinkedIn.
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