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Facebook campaign objective: which one to choose to get enquiries
Awareness, traffic, engagement, leads, sales: Meta optimises exactly the objective you choose. Which one to pick when you want quote requests or online sales.
Published on · Joh · 5 min read
When you create a campaign on Meta, the first choice is the objective. It is also the most important, and the most often wrong: Meta looks for exactly what you ask for. Ask for clicks, you get clicks. Ask for quote requests, you get quote requests.
The six objectives
| Objective | What Meta looks for | For whom |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness | Showing the ad to as many people as possible, as cheaply as possible | Brands that want to be known |
| Traffic | Clicks to a site or page | Rarely the right choice for selling |
| Engagement | Likes, comments, messages | Pages that want engagement |
| Leads | Forms filled in, calls, enquiries | Businesses that want quotes |
| App promotion | Installs | Apps |
| Sales | Purchases on a site | Online shops |
The most common mistake: the Traffic objective
It seems logical: you want visits to your site. But Meta then looks for the people who click most, not those who request a quote. They are often browsers, people who click out of reflex and leave straight away.
The "Boost post" button also pushes towards engagement or traffic objectives. What a boosted post really does.
For a business that wants quotes: Leads
The Leads objective mainly comes in two variants:
- Instant form: the request is filled in without leaving Facebook or Instagram. More volume, less filtering. The instant form.
- On your website: the person lands on your page and sends the request. Less volume, often more qualified. The pixel and conversions API must report the request properly to Meta. The conversions API.
For an online shop: Sales
The Sales objective needs reliable purchase tracking. Meta then optimises for purchases, and can even aim for order value. Meta Ads for an e-commerce brand.
The signal matters as much as the objective
Choosing Leads isn't enough: the conversion you measure has to be the right one. If your tracking counts a simple click on the contact button as a "lead", Meta will look for clickers. The closer the signal is to the real enquiry, and even better the real customer, the better the campaign finds the right people.
That is what I set first with a new client: the objective, then what we report back as a conversion. How to structure a Meta campaign for enquiries.
Further reading: Advantage+ campaigns and Why your Facebook ad isn't working.
Not sure which objective your campaigns run on? . We open your account together; it is often the first thing to fix.