This article will analyze commonly used goals, along with practical examples for your reference.

If you're unfamiliar with ad formats, you can read more detailed instructions in the Top 7 Most Popular Basic Facebook Ad Formats guide before choosing your targeting.

Brand Awareness Objective

Brand awareness is a group of campaigns at the "top of the funnel," helping a product or service reach as many people as possible. The main objectives are usually:

• Maximizing the number of people who see the advertisement: this is most often used when you want to increase brand awareness.
• Maximize impressions: repeat ads multiple times to increase recall.
• Improve ad recall (Ad Recall Lift): suitable for businesses that need to build a long-term brand.
• Maximize video views (Thruplay): Use this when you want to promote your message through video.

Brand Awareness Campaign

For example, a newly launched fashion brand will often run a "Reach" campaign to widely promote its products. Or, for F&B brands, running promotional videos about food with a "ThruPlay" objective helps them build a customer base of those who have watched the videos, thereby facilitating remarketing in a later stage.

The strength of this campaign is that it helps customers become familiar with the brand, but it's important to note that awareness campaigns rarely generate direct orders; they only serve as a foundation for subsequent steps.

Traffic Objective

Unlike brand awareness campaigns, traffic campaigns aim to drive customers to your website, landing page, or a platform you control. This is a way to both introduce your product and collect behavioral data.

For example, a language center could run ads driving traffic to a consultation registration landing page. They would then place a pixel there to collect data, and subsequently run remarketing campaigns targeting visitors who haven't provided their information.

Traffic Campaign

It's important to note that while the goals of "Link Click" and "Landing Page View" seem similar, they are actually quite different. "Link Click" might simply be a user clicking on a link but leaving immediately, while "Landing Page View" is optimized for users who actually load the page successfully. This is a small detail, but it directly impacts the quality of the data you collect.

Engagement Objectives

An advertisement with many likes, comments, and shares usually inspires much more trust than one with only a few views. That's why engagement campaigns are always used by advertisers to enhance the appearance of their fan pages, increase trust, and attract potential customers.

Engagement Campaign

Commonly used objectives include:

• Interact with the post
• Video views (Thruplay)
• Join the community group
• Event Response
• Maximum number of messages
• Maximum number of purchases via text message.
• Sponsored Message
• Maximum number of calls
• Maximum number of page likes

It's important to note that interaction doesn't automatically equate to conversion. If you only focus on likes and comments without a follow-up remarketing plan, your campaign is unlikely to generate real sales.

Lead Generation Objective

This campaign is suitable for businesses that need to collect data for nurturing and customer care. It's commonly seen in education, services, B2B, or real estate.

Commonly used objectives include:

• Data is collected through forms filled out directly on Facebook/Instagram.
• Increase leads through text messaging.
• Increase potential customers chatting on Instagram.
• Maximum number of direct calls
• Increase potential customers visiting your website.

Lead Generation Campaign

The advantage of this type of campaign is that Facebook provides the form directly on the platform, allowing customers to fill it out faster. However, the disadvantage is that the data quality is sometimes low because users fill out the information just to "check it out," not because they actually have a need. Therefore, many businesses combine lead forms with telemarketing or email automation to filter for quality leads.

If you're experiencing problems with bad leads or significant lead loss during the nurturing process, you might want to check out this article: No more forgotten leads: Automate management, triple your conversion rate.

Sales/Conversions Targets

This is the most important target group because it is directly linked to revenue. Businesses can optimize for Conversions (purchases, form submissions, service registrations) or Value (order value).

For example, an online shoe store might choose the "Purchase" objective so that Facebook optimizes targeting to those most likely to buy. A high-end furniture brand might choose "Value Optimization" to prioritize customers with higher spending power, rather than just counting the number of orders.

Sales/Conversions Campaign

The key here is data. If the pixel hasn't collected enough conversion data, the algorithm won't optimize well. Therefore, many advertisers often follow this path: awareness → traffic → lead → conversion. This approach helps build the audience step by step before closing the deal at the final stage.

Conclude

There is no single "best" goal for every situation. Brand recognition helps your brand become known, traffic brings customers to your platform, interaction builds trust, lead generation collects data, and conversion is the final stage in closing a sale.

It's crucial to understand your product, customers, and resources to choose the right target audience at the right time. An effective advertising campaign doesn't just rely on a ready-made formula, but on the ability to flexibly combine objectives to build a complete marketing funnel. Then, advertising doesn't just spend money; it truly becomes a lever for sustainable revenue growth.

If you're just starting out and need a clearer implementation roadmap, you can refer to the article: Practical Secrets to Helping Beginners Run Effective Ads Right From the Start.