Choose Your Own Adventure

Meta: Choose Your Own Adventure

If you have ever created campaigns in Meta, you have probably experienced your fair share of “wait… these are not the results I expected” moments. There are a whole host of reasons why campaigns can go in a totally different direction than initially expected. Whether it be creative, copy, targeting, budgeting, etc… the list goes on.  

But probably the most important factor of all is what objective you choose. We love to say, “Meta is a choose-your-own-adventure game, and each objective will take you down a completely different path”. It can be tricky navigating through all the options, so here is a sweet and simple guide so you can know what the heck you are getting into when selecting your objective! Let’s set you up for success from the beginning.  

Awareness

‘Get attentive eyeballs on your ads’ Increase visibility and build brand awareness 

  • Reach (now a subset under Awareness objective)

    ‘Get the MOST eyeballs on your ads’ 

This objective is all about reaching the largest number of people that fall within your target segments. It is typically a level below in terms of audience quality when compared to a true ‘Awareness’ objective, so the CPM will likely be a bit cheaper, but still a great option. 

KPIs: CPM & Frequency  

  • Ad Recall Lift

    ‘Get mesmerized eyeballs on your ads’  

Serve to people most likely to remember or “recall” your ad within 2 days – This is somewhat of a black box Meta metric. Users may see the occasional poll here or there asking if they recall seeing an ad, but this metric is more likely coming from projections based on the thousands of signals Meta collects on people like you and me. This coupled with machine learning gives us this “Ad Recall Lift” metric. So, it is a bit vague on how concrete this data is, but the idea is that with this objective you are serving ads to an audience that is more likely to remember them.  

KPIs: CPM, Estimated Ad Recall Lift, & Cost per Estimated Ad Recall Lift  

  • Video Views (now a subset under Awareness objective)

    ‘More Engaged Viewers’  

    If you have video assets, this is a great choice. The platform will optimize towards maximum view rates and more efficient CPCVs, the CPM will be slightly more expensive though. 


Traffic

‘The good traffic, no honking or road rage here’ Traffic is exactly what it sounds like, getting traffic to your site! Increasing the volume of people that make it to your destination URL.

  • Link Clicks

    ‘Clicks, clicks, and more clicks!’

Link clicks are really optimizing towards the best CTR results, which can be awesome seeing a CTR above 1%, but to be honest, it isn’t always the highest quality clicks. A pure ‘Link Click’ campaign might bring thousands of people to your site, but that doesn’t mean they will spend time with your brand. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but just something to keep in mind.

KPIs: CTR & CPC

  • Landing Page Views (subset under Traffic objective) —

    ‘The sophisticated click’

If the ‘Link Click’ objective was Walmart, ‘Landing Page Views’ would be Target. A little more elevated but the price tag matches the experience. You will see higher-quality clicks and likely more post-click activity, but your CPC and CPM will likely be more expensive.

KPIs: Cost per Landing Page View, CTR, CPC

Engagement

‘It gets the people going’

  • Post Engagement

    As Will Ferrell says, it really does get the people going. Engagement campaigns will bring in those warm and fuzzy metrics like comments, shares, likes, and saves. This is great if you have something like a giveaway that you want to create buzz around (although be careful, sometimes Meta doesn’t favor giveaways or vanity plays).

    • Hot tip: If you use a video asset for an engagement campaign, Meta will optimize towards video views instead of comments, shares, likes, etc… Make sure your asset and objective are aligned with your desired outcome, i.e.: if you want a large volume of comments and likes, stick with a static asset.

    KPIs: Engagement Rate & CPE

Sales & Leads

(Conversions are found in both now with the update)

‘The crème de la crème’

  • The gold at the end of the rainbow, the treasure at X marks the spot, the holy grail conversion. It is what we all want and dream of but sometimes it can be tricky to get right. Creating a more ‘full funnel’ approach helps your audience become familiar with your brand and gives them more of the ‘why’ behind your products or services. Running stand-alone conversion campaigns may work for a few weeks or months but the low-hanging fruit will eventually all get harvested. Thinking about the customer journey and having a holistic marketing approach will help make your conversion pieces just that much more successful.

KPIs: CPA

Chris Okroy