When we create a new ad campaign in Facebook Ad Manager, the first thing we’re prompted to select is the objective of the ad.

The options include:

• Awareness
• Traffic
• Engagement
• Leads
• App Promotion
• Sales

You might be wondering “Which one should I choose?”. Don’t worry, in this blog post, we’ll explore the different objectives we can choose from and which one to choose in Facebook Ads Manager.

Let’s start off with Awareness. Awareness is the ad objective designed to show your ads to the max amount of people for your budget. These people are generally unaware of your brand, so you won’t get many clicks or leads using Awareness. It’s an objective to choose when you want people to know about your brand, especially new customers.

Next, we have Consideration. This is the point where people have seen your brand but aren’t sure whether to buy your product. As the name implies, the people are still exploring other options and in terms of Facebook, this stage is great for getting people to click on your ad, taking them to your site or landing page where they can learn more about your product or explore your services or both.

Finally, there’s the Conversions objective. When choosing this objective, Facebook filters through it’s billions of users showing your ads only to the people who are highly likely to buy your products/services.

But you might still be wondering: “Why should I choose the awareness or consideration objective when I basically want conversions?”

Don’t we all?

The thing is, though we all want leads and it’s the most important objective. Based on your goals, you might choose a different objective.

When to choose Awareness: If you’re customers are in the Awareness part of the marketing funnel, then you’ll want to choose the awareness objective.

When to choose Consideration: If you’re customers have seen your ads but haven’t made a purchase, they’re in the consideration part of the funnel, you should choose the consideration objective.

When to choose Conversion: If you’re customers are ready to buy your products/services, you should choose the conversions objective.

But why?

Won’t I get the leads if I choose Awareness?

Won’t I get clicks if I choose Conversions?

Won’t I get leads if I choose Consideration?

The short answer is yes. Yes, you will.

Here’s the long answer: Although you will get impressions/reach, clicks, and leads on probably any objective you choose, the numbers may vary.

Let’s understand this with a hypothetical example.

If I have a budget of $500 and I run 3 different ad campaigns with objectives Awareness, Consideration and Conversions. All these campaigns will bring in a different number of customers.

An Awareness ad campaign with a budget of $500 can generate reach of 56,000 views, traffic received 40,000 views, and leads got 20,000 views.

Run a Consideration ad campaign with the same budget and you’ll get 1500 clicks from traffic, 630 clicks from video views, and 562 clicks from leads.

Now try a Conversions ad campaign with a leads objective and the same budget and the leads objective will get you around 200 leads, 10 leads with a traffic objective and 3 leads with views.

From this experiment, I want to give you the rough idea of how Facebook Ads work. There isn’t a single best objective. You should choose the objectives based on your ad campaign needs. If you need more reach, then choose Awareness. If you need more clicks, use Consideration, If you want more leads, then choose Conversions.