You could grow your business's social media followers completely organically on Facebook in an ideal world. Armed with tips on best practices, you could create and schedule your posts with the assurance your target audience will see your posts.
Unfortunately, while they have made progress and changes to the algorithm in recent years to help businesses grow their reach, Facebook still values content shared by friends and family over companies. With more businesses having a solid social media presence, it is harder to naturally get in front of their target audience.
So, most businesses will need to supplement their organic content marketing efforts with paid Facebook advertising. Facebook ads can do many things for small businesses, like ensuring your posts make it onto your customers’ feeds. They are also great for helping customers find your product or service, with an 80% greater discovery rate than on your own website.
Compared to most platforms, Facebook ads are relatively inexpensive. You can also drill down into hyper-specific groups to really target specific groups of users.
But if you want to truly get the most out of a limited marketing budget, you’ll need to understand the ad objectives available to you with Facebook advertising. Facebook lists 11 objectives divided into three common marketing goal categories – Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. Choosing the right objectives for your business needs is vital to the success of your social media marketing efforts.
Let’s dive into the full 11 to get a feel for which might suit your business needs.
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness advertising aims to grow people’s awareness of your brand. They are typically used as the first step in a marketing funnel to attract new customers to your business. Unfortunately, since this is the first time many are hearing about your business, the click-through rates for these advertisements are usually lower. But they effectively promote your existence and start an ongoing conversation with your future customers.
Reach
A reach ad will show your advertisement to as many people as possible in your target grouping. You’re just reaching out to them without expectations. This is another advertising tactic that won’t have high engagement rates. Still, it will ensure your post or ad appears in your target audience’s feed.
Traffic
Traffic ads are the go-to choice if you’d like to drive people to a specific destination (usually a URL). Facebook will track the number of people who click on your links, so you’ll have to manage how you track conversions. But traffic ads can be a great way to drive customers to a specific spot.
Engagement
For Facebook, engagement is measured in likes, comments, and shares. Engagement ads can also include offers claimed from your page. This is where you really start getting into the full power of social media, where customers can give you feedback on what you’re putting in front of them. It’s not enough to simply get views these days. You want your audience to engage with the content you share.
App Installs
More and more businesses are creating their own apps to give a better experience to their customers. If you’d like your customers to download and install your new app, this is the ad type for you.
Video Views
2022 is the year of short-form video content. Hopefully, you are producing video content for your audience. If so, the video views objective will get more people to watch your creations. People love seeing product demos and explanation videos, so you can expect higher engagement numbers with this type of video content.
Lead Generation
Lead magnets, like e-books, are an excellent way to reach customers. The lead generation objective is an ideal way to get people to opt into your lead magnet from within Facebook. This will help them feel safer about signing up and ensure there are fewer hurdles in the way, increasing engagement numbers.
Messages
There’s a lot of power in the social part of social media that many businesses fail to tap into. Customers regularly have questions about a product or service or need an answer to a quick question. Using message ads to prompt customers to reach out to your business directly is a fantastic way to get a conversation started with your customers and highlight your stellar customer service.
Conversions
This ad objective is perfect for when you’ve nurtured your lead and are ready to push them into taking a specific action. Example conversions from Facebook could be adding an item to their cart, finalizing a purchase, RSVP’ing to an event, or more. This is a highly effective finisher for customers already familiar with your brand and should come at the end of your marketing funnel.
Catalog Sales
If you have a product catalog on an eCommerce site, this objective will help you feature products and generate sales. You have probably already seen this ad objective in action, with a business promoting individual products to your feed.
Store Visits
The final Facebook ad objective helps those with brick and mortar stores. You can use this objective to entice nearby customers to visit your store. Be sure your business location details are accurate in Business Manager.
So, Which Facebook Ad Objective is the Right Choice for You?
Every business has specific objectives, targets, and goals for its growth. So, unfortunately, it’s hard to give an easy, clear-cut answer to which is the right objective for your business.
But with years of experience helping small businesses with their SEO optimization and digital marketing, we do have a few tips to help you out:
Reach
Reach is best used by those looking to shotgun out their information to the most possible viewers. If your business is more local or targeted, this could often be a waste of your marketing budget.
Brand Awareness
This is an excellent objective for new businesses or those who feel that their competitors are more known in their market.
Traffic
Be sure to hold off using traffic objectives until you are certain your website is fully optimized and ready. You often only get one shot with most customers, and you don’t want to spend money to drive your customers away. Ensure everything is well designed, built for conversions, and ready to track customer movement before launching to get the most bang for your buck.
Store Visits
Using this ad objective is a no-brainer if you have a local brick-and-mortar store. It’s great for driving traffic to your business when people are in the area. Even if you don’t intend for people to come in and physically buy from your shop, it’s an excellent reminder that you exist and are part of your local community.
Hopefully, we didn’t overwhelm you with too much information. If you still need more information, you can always get additional information from your Facebook ads manager page. Our key takeaway for you is to get you thinking about your business needs and choosing the correct objectives for your website SEO marketing strategy.
It’s good to keep a few objectives running simultaneously. You’ll always have customers at different stages of your sales funnel. If that seems too much for you to handle on your own, please reach out to us today.
We’ll be glad to advise or take over your Facebook advertising for you.
