The following article will analyze commonly used goals, with real-life examples for your reference.

Brand Awareness Goals

Brand awareness is a group of campaigns at the “top of the funnel”, helping products or services reach as many people as possible. Main goals are usually

• Maximize ad reach: most commonly used when wanting to cover the brand.
• Maximize impressions: repeat ads many times to increase memorability.
• Improve ad recall (Ad Recall Lift): suitable for businesses that need to build a long-term brand.
• Maximize video views (Thruplay): used when wanting to promote messages through videos.

For example: A newly launched fashion brand will often run a "Reach" campaign to widely cover product images. Or for F&B brands, running food promotion videos with the “ThruPlay” objective helps them create a customer base that has watched the video, from which they can remarket at a later stage.

The strength of this campaign is to help customers get acquainted with the brand, but it should be noted: the recognition campaign rarely creates direct orders, it only plays a foundational role for the following steps.

Traffic Objective

Unlike recognition, traffic campaigns aim to lead customers to your website, landing page or a platform that you control. This is a way for you to both introduce your product and collect behavioral data.

For example, a language center can run traffic ads to its landing page to register for consultation. Here, they attach pixels to collect data, then run remarketing to the group of people who have visited but have not left information.

Notable point: the “Link Click” and “Landing Page View” goals seem similar but are actually very different. “Link Click” might just be a user who clicks on a link but leaves immediately, while “Landing Page View” is optimized for those who actually load the page successfully. This is a small detail but directly affects the quality of the data you get.

Engagement Goal

An ad with many likes, comments, and shares often creates a much more trustworthy feeling than one with only a few views. That is why interactive campaigns are always used by advertisers to beautify the fanpage surface, increase trust and attract potential customers.

Commonly used goals are:

• Interaction with posts
• Video views (Thruplay)
• Join a community group
• Respond to events
• Maximum messages
• Maximum purchases via text
• Maximum calls
• Maximum page likes

It's important to note that engagement doesn't equal conversions. If it stops at likes and comments without a follow-up remarketing plan, the campaign will hardly bring real sales.

Lead Generation Target

This campaign is suitable for businesses that need to collect data to nurture and care. It is commonly found in education, services, B2B or real estate.

Common goals are:

• Collect data via direct form filling on Facebook/Instagram
• Increase leads via messages
• Increase chat leads on Instagram
• Maximize direct calls
• Increase website visits

The advantage of this type of campaign is that Facebook provides a form right in the platform, helping customers fill it out faster. However, the disadvantage is that the quality of the data is sometimes low because users fill in the information just to "see", not really having a need. Therefore, many businesses combine lead forms with telemarketing or email automation to filter quality leads.

Sales/Conversions Target

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

For example, an online shoe store often chooses the “Purchase” target so that Facebook optimizes to people with the highest purchasing power. A luxury furniture brand can choose “Value Optimization” to prioritize customers with high spending power, instead of just counting the number of orders.

The key here is data. If the pixel has not collected enough conversion data, the algorithm will not optimize well. Therefore, many advertisers often follow the route: run recognition → traffic → lead → conversion. This approach helps build the file step by step, before “closing the deal” at the final stage.

Conclusion

There is no single “best” goal for every situation. Recognition helps make the brand known, traffic brings customers to your platform, interaction creates trust, lead generation collects data, and conversion is the closing stage.

It is important to understand your product, your customers, and your resources to choose the right goal at the right time. An effective advertising campaign is not just based on a formula, but on the ability to flexibly combine goals to build a complete marketing funnel. Then, advertising is not just spending money but actually becomes a lever for sustainable revenue growth.