When deciding for your business to begin or review your social media advertising, choosing the right objective for each social media campaign plays a huge factor in reaching your desired aim and ensuring your social media advertising cost is used effectively.
In our blog post we will recap on what social media advertising is, how it can be beneficial to invest in for your business goals and a deeper look at each of the objectives for Facebook ads. For each objective we will look at why and when to select that objective for your social media advertising campaigns, providing you with social media advertising tips.
Firstly lets look at what we mean when referring to social media advertising.
Gemma Finch
Social Media & Paid Ad Specialist at 1PCS Creative. Love engaging and impactful social content, family time with my little girl and helping companies grow and build their presence online.
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Organic Posts vs. Paid Social Media Ads
For the purpose of this blog post it is important to distinguish between organic posts on social media platforms and social media advertising. When a business publishes a new post to their business page on social media channels whether that be to their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn. This is referred to as organic posts.
The reason being organic posts typically will reach within your existing followers or when people look for relevant keyword searches and discover your post or page. For example due to the relevant hashtags you used or if potential customers found your Facebook business page on Google when researching your business. We cover tips on improving your social media for you business in another blog post in more detail.
Whereas social media advertising is a form of digital advertising which has become increasingly popular, along with Google Ads. With a continuous upward trend for businesses using social media advertising as a key pillar of their digital marketing strategy.
Social media advertising specifically are paid ads which you will likely have come across when scrolling through social media. Examples of advertising options include sponsored content, facebook video ad, photo ads, instagram stories ads or carousel ads which feature 2-10 images. The world is your oyster when it comes to different ad formats available on advertising platforms.
Social media marketing covers a range of social media platforms therefore it is important to choose wisely when planning your social media strategy, to ensure you are getting the best return on ad spend from each social media ad.
The different options of social media marketing include Twitter advertising, Messenger ads, Instagram advertising, LinkedIn advertising and Facebook ads.
Social media advertising allows you to be very specific with your target audience right down to a particular location and radius, to tailored demographics and interests. Including being able to retarget visitors to your website, Facebook page or create a lookalike audience.
Facebook is the largest social media platform with over 2.9 billion monthly active users. Therefore in our blog post today we are specifically going to look at choosing the right objectives for this social media channel. With Facebook owning Instagram then the same principals can be applied to advertising on Instagram too.
Choosing Your Advertising Objective
On the Facebook advertising platform there are several objectives to choose from. When planning your advertising strategy and marketing campaign choosing the right objective for your social media campaign should play a large part.
When selected correctly along with the right target audience and impactful engaging ads will likely see impressive results from your social media advertising campaign.
The main thing is to think of the end result you want to achieve for your business. What are your business goals? These can then funnel down into your advertising goals and digital advertising strategy when targeting potential customers. The result you expect to see feeds directly into each objective for social media ads.
Now we will cover each available advertising objective for your paid social advertising strategy. Facebook recently changed their objectives, with there now being fewer to select from however the principals are the same. The below explains based on the current objectives rolled out in 2022.
Awareness
The aim of the awareness objective is to increase brand awareness and brand reach as much as possible with your budget for the ad campaign. This is done by the adverts being shown to Facebook users most likely to recall your social media advertising campaign.
This objective can be used for any social media ad format on the social platform including video ads, photo ads, story ads and carousel ads depending on what you prefer for your business to build brand awareness.
Traffic
The purpose of the traffic objective is to drive users to a particular destination. There are several options for this within the social ads. This could be to a website, your shop on Facebook or Instagram or to an app.
Some examples would include increasing website traffic to a recent article or blog with important business updates. Or you may have included a new product range or have a sale running on your Facebook and Instagram shop to drive traffic to.
Engagement
Have you noticed ‘sponsored content’ on social media posts with impressive engagement numbers. It could be they selected the engagement objective. Choose this objective when you want to increase your engagement either with a particular post, your page or improve attendance to an event on your page.
When selecting this objective Facebook will target the advert within your target audience to Facebook users most likely to engage with your content. Engagement would include likes, reactions, comments, shares of a post or following your page.
App Promotion
This objective is specifically aimed for attracting people to your app. Therefore this would be selected with the aim to increase the number of installs of your app.
For example if your business has recently launched an app or made major changes to the app, this objective would be the best one to select to increase your install numbers.
Leads
If one of your business goals is to increase your leads data this will be the most suited objective. It is more intuitive than simply collecting data, your social media advertising options can be tailored for specific lead generation.
For example to target users based on if they would be likely to download a brochure with useful tips and advice. Or to complete a form to receive your business newsletter in the future. Your social media campaigns could target a large professional user base to gain lead data, that may otherwise been difficult to attain through other advertising methods.
Sales
Both leads and sales came under the previous objective for Conversions, which is one of the most commonly used and relevant objectives for most business goals. If your ultimate aim is to increase your sales with potential customers, then the sales objective will be the right one for your business.
This can be selected to use across Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Messenger ads and Audience Network advertising across the majority of options within photo and video ads. A fantastic time to use this objective would be for Black Friday, seasonal sales such as Christmas and new product launches.
We hope our blog post has been useful to distinguish the differences between each objective and why each is important. So you can reach your target market and potential customers effectively using the right objective for your business goals.
Our team at 1PCS Creative deliver social media advertising across many industries, so if you are unsure of the right objective for your business or considering running Facebook ad campaigns. Please feel free to get in touch with one of the team who would be happy to help you further.
What is Social Advertising?