What Are The Facebook Advertising Goal Types?
There are 9 types of Facebook Advertising goal types, each with their own place in the sales funnel. Here they are at a glance:
- Get More Messages
- Promote Your Business Locally
- Get More Bookings
- Boost A Post
- Get More Leads
- Promote Your Page
- Get More Calls
- Get More People To Contact You
- Get More Website Visitors
How Do The Facebook Advertising Goal Types Work?
Get More Messages
Messaging campaigns are the bread and butter of Facebook advertising, simply because they’re one of the most straight forward campaigns to set up. Create an ad, offer a product or service, choose your audience, sit back and wait.
There are a few key elements to messaging ads, the copy, the artwork and the call to action; perfect all three and you should see a pretty decent, low cost return.
Your ad copy needs to be short and sweet, consider adding emojis into your headlines which can improve click through rate a whopping 241%! When we’re putting ad copy together we like to list the main features and benefits using the ✔️ emoji.
Promote Your Business Locally
Promoting your business locally through Facebook will essentially deliver your ads to people either within a specific radius, or specific postcodes.
Don’t expect floods of extra calls or enquiries using the Promote Your Business Locally goal type, that’s not what they’re about. Instead, think of them as the start of your customers purchasing journey.
Making them aware of your business is the first step in making sale.
Get More Bookings
When you’re setting up your Facebook Advertising for the first time, you’ll notice there are a number of ready made call to action options available, which, essentially act as the conversion driver of your campaigns.
One of these, and perhaps the most upfront is the Get More Bookings CTA. Whilst most people shy away from the Get More Bookings goal type, we think it definitely has it’s place! Firstly, ad set up is pretty straight forward, so if you’re not a natural copy-writer, you should still see some return using the booking CTA and decent artwork. Secondly, when coupled with an irresistible offer, such as a free trial, discounted service price or no obligation consultations, they can be a goldmine for quality leads!
As always, your advert’s success will depend upon the targeting and ad copy, so be sure to offer something irresistible in exchange for a booking!
Boost A Post
In an ideal world the organic reach of your posts (the number of people who see your posts naturally) would be 100%. Unfortunately, Facebook has systematically throttle organic reach with the sole intention of generating advertising revenue. We’ll not say much else on that, it is what it is.
With that in mind, boosting your posts is a pretty cost effective means of reaching a bigger audience with your posts and content. We like using boosted posts on our ‘best’ content, the posts that we think will get people talking and stir up a reaction, that way, they’ll build the best possible traction and create exponential awareness.
When boosting posts you can choose between targeting everyone or people who like your page. It’s up to you to decide which is best, but keep in mind that; whilst targeting just your current page followers is more precise, there will inevitably be a smaller audience.
Get More Leads
Lead generation campaigns are pretty labour intensive, so if you’re planning one, be sure to set aside some proper time to get things perfected.
Essentially, there are two steps to lead generation campaigns on Facebook; creating your lead form and creating your adverts.
The advert element is pretty straight forward, be sure to include eye catching artwork and, short, snappy headlines with a solid call to action. Our advice; offer something in exchange for a ‘lead’. For instance, if you were selling business services, you could offer a free toolkit, in exchange for making an enquiry.
The form element of your lead generation campaign can include key information such as name, telephone number and email address. You can also include qualifying questions in your form such as ‘when are you ready to buy?’, ‘do you have a budget in mind?’ and ‘would you be interested in any other services?’. Adding qualifying questions can really help at the follow up stage, helping you prioritise hot and cold leads.
Before you complete your lead form, Facebook offers two options, ‘more leads’ and ‘qualified leads’, these are essentially the same, with qualified leads having to pass through an extra review page during the sign up process.
Pro Tip: Using a CRM such as Capsule or Salesforce? With Facebook’s lead generation ads you can connect straight to these, seamlessly pulling in all the customer information you need!
Promote Your Page
Promoting your page will show your adverts in users news feeds, inviting them to ‘like’ your page. Whilst buying likes has had a bad press in the past (where it essentially crashed organic reach), you shouldn’t shy away from promoting your page, using fairly stringent targeting, which will create one of the starting points of your sales funnel.
You’ve got to get your audience from somewhere, right?
Get More Calls
Another one of the ‘out of the box’ call to action options available is the relatively new feature; Call Now.
You’ll need to be pretty comfortable writing ad copy for the Call Now CTA to be effective, after all, why should a potential customer call you? Don’t forget, in many cases there are reasons why they simply can’t (Hey there customers secretly Facebooking in work time, we see you!).
One thing to keep in mind with Get More Calls goal types, tracking can, in some cases be a little more complex to track, which means you could end up using budget without knowing what’s working and what isn’t.
Get More People To Contact You
Something which has taken a bit of a battering recently, along with attracting unnecessary negative press thanks to Facebook’s ongoing war with Apple is the messenger ad type which aims to Get More People To Contact You.
Our advice? Diversify. We love the messenger placements, direct response and quick return that a Facebook message offers, but, in truth you’ll probably need to use these ad types alongside a wider marketing strategy; after all, who would message a complete stranger?
Get More Website Visitors
Another incredibly simple Facebook advertising goal type that’s easy to set up and pretty robust in it’s operation. Essentially, the Get More Website Visitors goal places your advert (including artwork and copy) in front of potential customers, asking them to click through to your site (if they’re interested) for more information on your products or services.
Ad placements can be as diverse or restricted as you like, whether it’s a complete ‘coverall’ of the entire Facebook network (including placements in Messenger and Instagram), on any device type, or single placements in desktop news feeds only.
If you’re unsure which placements will work best for your advertising campaign, why not start conservatively, opting out of Instagram placements for example and building from there (after testing). Keep in mind, whilst your ad copy and artwork will stay the same, the two platforms have a slightly different audience and user interface, which could affect the quality of your campaign.
Which Facebook Advertising Type Should I Choose?
Before you can figure out which Facebook advertising campaign type is best for you, it’s important to understand what your objectives are. Essentially, you need to think about what you want your ads to do and what you want people to do when they see your campaigns.
If you’re launching a new product or service for example, you may want to keep things quite broad, with users simply seeing your brand in their feed. If, however, you’re looking for something a little more direct, you may be interested in running ads that develop cold, hard leads. A bit of friendly advice; be realistic! Sure, everyone wants leads, more business, but it doesn’t always pay to go straight in for the kill.
Here’s a good way to separate and consider which advertising type is best for you:
Awareness
Raising awareness is a great place to start if your launching a new product or service. Building brand awareness may seem like a folly, but you really do need to build trust in customers before they’ll use your business, that starts with them getting to know you.
Using Brand Awareness campaigns on Facebook, such as promoting your business locally or boosted posts is a quick, easy and relatively cheap way of getting your name out there. You can also restrict your ads to specific demographics such as specific age groups, which may help if your business only really serves certain customer groups.
How We Use It
Convert Digital run impression ads on Facebook for Web Design Services, in desktop and mobile feeds to; people living in Sheffield who are interested in self employment. From this, we’re letting potential business owners know we’re here, planting the seed and developing new prospects.
Consideration
Consideration is a major part in the customer purchasing process, so you’re going to need to convince would customers to choose you over competitors. Getting more traffic through Facebook advertising is one way you can push people to your website and get your unique message across.
We’re a big fan of driving traffic to websites from Facebook ads because, even though they’re less direct than Google Advertising, they offer a chance to connect with customers much higher up the sales funnel; resulting in more long term conversions.
How We Use It
Once we’ve built an audience using the awareness campaigns, we’ll want to get our message across; what makes us different? What makes us worth working with? To do this, we run ads that deliver link clicks to our dedicated web design landing pages.
Action (Conversions)
Conversions are, ultimately, every business’ most important advertising objective. Using Facebook advertising to convert would be customers into actual, paying ones is a pretty effective, low cost option, provided they’ve been cultivated through the entire sales funnel.
Using goal types such as; Get More Leads, Get More Bookings, Get More Calls and Get More People To Contact you can really drive sales.
Conversion optimised ad campaigns on Facebook are a great additional revenue stream, delivering pretty solid leads at volume.
How We Use It
Once we’ve warmed people up; they know who we are, they trust us and they like what we do, it’s time to get some commitment. We use lead generation ads alongside getting people to message us which deliver on two fronts.
Firstly, lead generation ads use a pretty in depth form, which really weeds out the chancers. Secondly, message based ad campaigns act as a wider conversation starter, where people may be making a quick inquiry (such as ‘how much for a three page website?’). Together, these really bring in the bacon.
The Wrap Up | Which Goal Type Is The Best?
The question which crops up time and time again when it comes to Facebook Advertising is ‘Which goal type is the best?’ Basically, if you’re going to the effort of setting up a whole campaign and using your advertising budget, you’ll rightly want to know which ad type will bring in the best return. Here’s the thing; it depends.
When we’re setting up advertising, especially on Facebook, we like to think about the customer’s complete journey and target them every step of the way. It may seem like a no brainer to go straight in for the lead generation, get more bookings and get more calls ad types, but has your potential customer really been loved up enough to part with their info or money? If the answer is no, you need to go a little further up the sales funnel!
Using all three stages of a customer’s journey; Awareness, Consideration and Action for the basis of your Facebook Advertising strategy will definitely reap rewards, especially if you treat them with equal importance.
We hope we’ve helped clear up Facebook Advertising for you; it’s a tricky business but once you’ve got your head around it, you’ll definitely see the benefit.
As always, don’t forget to share this with your friends, we appreciate everyone’s support and love!
