Objectives on Facebook relate to what your goal is with your Facebook Ad. This means, what do you want people to do when they see or watch your ad.
It’s the first step when you’re creating a campaign in the Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor and it’s the first moment that you can trip up and set up for success or failure.
Most people when they start running Facebook Ads will begin by hitting the boost post button.
It’s so easy, you post an image, video or link and Facebook tells you you’ll reach more people if you boost it. So you do, and sure you may get some more likes & comments on the post, your reach increases but in reality what you really wanted people to do (your objective) was to come and read your blog post, or come and check out your online store.
Unfortunately, boosted posts aren’t designed to do that.
Boosted posts have an objective of making your post appear higher in the Newsfeed, so there’s a better chance your audience will see them.
Therefore by boosting a post you’re telling Facebook I want you to show this post to people on Facebook. What you’re not doing is telling Facebook to optimise it for people to click to your website, or to take action on your website.
To start running your ads the right way, you’ll need to head into Ads Manager or Power Editor and choose the right objective for your ads and ultimately for your budget will be spent getting you closer to your goal.
How do you know which Objective to choose?
If you’ve come this far in this blog post, you’ve most likely also gotten to this point in the Ads Manager and wondered where to from now, what do these all mean?

Brand Awareness
Increase the recall of your ad. While it sounds like something you may want to do, the results are difficult to measure and compare against other ad types.
Reach
Shows your ad to the largest audience possible for your budget
Traffic
Does what it says, Facebook will show your ads to more people who have a likelihood of clicking out of Facebook. Traffic is the objective you want to use if you want people to visit your website
Engagement
This works in a similar way to Boosted Posts. If you want to increase the likes, comments and shares on your posts then set your ads up for engagement.
Bonus Dotti Tip
If you’ve already posted on Facebook and want to get more ‘engagement’ you can use this ad objective and select ‘Use Existing Post’.

App Installs
For promotion of Mobile Apps
Video Views
Facebook will show your ads to people who more often watch videos on Facebook in order to increase brand awareness. Using Video Views to increase brand awareness without even requiring people to click can be a great way to create audiences for retargeting.
Lead Generation
A way for you to gather people’s email addresses who are interested in your business without taking them off Facebook.
Conversions
This is when you want people to click off Facebook to your website and take a particular action such as signing up for your mailing list or purchasing a product. You’re able to measure the success of your different ads & audiences based on how many conversions each one gets.
Product Catalog Sales
For businesses with an online store which has been set up within Facebook Ads with a Product Catalog.
Store Visits
For promotion of local businesses targeting people within a set distance of one or many of your store locations with ads designed to help people navigate to or contact the location closest to them. Depending on what you are promoting, you may find that an Engagement or Traffic campaign targeting people within your area works just as well, if not better.
What do we recommend?
If you’re just starting out with Facebook Ads we recommend you stick to a few rules:
>> Use the Traffic Objective when…
You want people to click out to your website to read a blog post, check out a product, or find out more information this type of ad objective will serve you well. While you may not be able to ultimately track whether your sales or enquiries came directly from Facebook, we’ve definitely had clients who have noticed a spike in business when they’ve been running this type of ad.
Retargeting Tip : If you run a traffic ad and have the Facebook Tracking Pixel installed on your website, you’ll then be able to retarget your website visitors later on.
>> Use the Video Views Objective when…
If you’ve uploaded a video to Facebook, or would like to use a video for an ad to increase brand awareness, this will be the best way to get more people to see your ad. Remember, Facebook counts a video views 3 second so you’ll want to change up how you view the results.
Retargeting Tip: If you run a video views ad, you can then create an audience of people who have watched over a certain amount of your ad as an audience. Such as 3 seconds, 10 seconds, 25% etc
>>Use the Engagement Objective when…
With some of the businesses we work with, in particular local businesses, it’s possible for you to create an ad which has all the information contained within the text of the ad.
This is when you may want people to call you to book, or come to an event but they don’t need to click to find out more. Engagement ads will increase visibility and your social proof.
>>Use the Conversions Objective when…
You want people to take specific actions on your website and be able to track which ads & audiences are contributing to this. Check out our FB Ads Masterclass LIVE for a resource on how to set this up.