Stop Wasting Your Ad Budget: How to choose the Right Facebook Campaign Objective

Aug 29

What's this episode of the lionhearted ceo podcast about?

If you've ever felt confused, or like you're playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey when it comes to choosing your Facebook ad objectives - you're not alone!

In this episode, we're demystifying campaign objectives once and for all!

Here's what I'm spilling the tea on:

The three crucial questions you MUST ask before setting up any ad campaign (and why the first one is an absolute game-changer)
Why Facebook thinks I'm obsessed with sensory earphones and skincare (and what this means for your ads)
The truth about why your 'Traffic' objective might be sabotaging your masterclass sign-ups
My foolproof guide to choosing the right objective for your campaign goals (no more guesswork, promise!)

You'll learn how to approach your ad objectives like a true Lionhearted CEO, focusing on what really moves the needle in your campaigns.

Whether you're a total newbie to Facebook ads or looking to fine-tune your strategy, this episode will give you the confidence to choose the right objective every single time.

Ready to stop throwing money down the drain and start seeing real results from your Facebook ads? Top up that cuppa, and let's dive in!

Hi! I’m your host Sophie Griffiths, a Meta ads expert and business growth strategist.

The LionHearted CEO podcast is designed for impatiently ambitious women who are ready to scale and often juggling motherhood alongside their thriving online businesses in coaching, course creation, or service-based business.

If you enjoy the podcast, here are some ways you can continue the conversation:

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Love Instagram? Click here to watch a video I made on the Warm audience trap (hint, it's something almost every client struggles with!)More of a LinkedIn fan? I'm there too! Come and follow me here: Sophie Griffiths

Free Resource:

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Whether you are just starting with Meta (Facebook & Instagram) Ads, you have dabbled but want to build your confidence with your first funnel, or you're already killing it and you're ready for fast growth - I can help! Click here to choose the best option for you

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Read the transcript:

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.

[00:00:00] Hello and a big welcome to Lionhearted CEO, the podcast for unapologetically, impatiently ambitious women who know they want to stop being the bottleneck in their business and become the Lionhearted CEO they know they are meant to be. I'm Sophie Griffiths, a tea enthusiast, marketing and Metis ad specialist and firm believer.

The chocolate should never be kept in the fridge. Join me every Tuesday and Thursday for bold, imperfect, fun approach to marketing and scaling your business without burning out every few months. We'll dive into practical strategies and have inspirational conversations that will support you to create a thriving, sustainable business that brings you joy as well as financial freedom.

Okay, let's jump in. 

Hello and welcome to this. Week's shorter. Actionable episode I'll be honest today. I was like, this isn't a very sexy. Topic. . Talking about campaign objectives for ads. Isn't the kind of content that's like, oh [00:01:00] yeah, that's so exciting. However, it is something that trips people up all the time and it can make. Huge difference to how your campaign performs and the results that you get. 

It is so critical. Now when I'm building any campaign that are three questions that I ask myself. 

What action do I want people to take? Who do I want to see the ad and what do I want them to see? . And in this episode, I'm going to answer the first question. What action do I want them to take? 

You've probably been in this situation where, you know, roughly what you want people to do. 

Let's say, for example, you want someone to sign up to your lead magnet. . You've created a landing page. You've got the nice form there. Everything's ready to go. Now you go on to ads manager. And you click the start new campaign button. 

Know given this list of options and you're like, which one do I want? 

I want people to go onto the website, to the landing page. I want them to sign up. 

Is it traffic? Is it leads. I want people to engage with the app. Like I want them to actually [00:02:00] click on it. So maybe I should choose engagement. And then even when you go into traffic, let's say you've then got link clicks or landing page views. There are so many variables. 

So in this episode, I'm hopefully going to help you simplify it down and give you the core concepts so that you understand no matter what you're doing, you know, which objective you need to use. The first thing you need to understand is that. Facebook knows a lot about you. 

And we just have to kind of come over that uncomfortableness.. What it knows about me is that I am likely to buy from an ad. That is my primary action. I am mostly served e-com ads. I am mostly served things for women who have sensory sensitivities, like Lupe earphones. 

I get that all the time who may be wanting to improve the texture of their skin. I get served all sorts of stuff. Sematic exercise programs. That's my jam. . And the reason why it's, because I buy all that stuff. I've just bought the loop. Ear plug things. I'm very excited for them to arrive. Well, I [00:03:00] don't get served is engagement ads. Where I might be prompted to leave a comment or like it, or share it. 

It's just not going to happen. Facebook knows not just what I'm interested in in terms of my interests. Like I'm a woman with two younger children and I might be interested in decorating my house and skincare and relaxing. It also knows what I'm likely to do when I see these ads. 

So when you're looking at your objectives, . Your telling Facebook, I want you to find me people who are likely to take this action. This is above interests. This is above demographics. This is above anything else. Look alike audiences. . We're not talking about that. 

We're talking about the likelihood that someone is going to take the action you want them to take. So for engagement ads, These are people who are likely to like comment, share. Watch your video, anything like that. It's people who are likely to engage. . And they've shown Facebook and Instagram that they're likely to engage by doing that in the past. Both organically [00:04:00] and with ads. Sales ads. 

These are people like me, who I likely to buy. They're likely to see an ad maybe multiple times. It doesn't necessarily have to be the first time I'm in loop. I've been stalking me for months. But I am likely to go on and then go through to a website and then buy. Traffic. . These are people who are likely to see an ad. Click on the button and go to an external website. 

They might not necessarily buy when they're over there. Maybe they consume the content. Maybe they read the blog. Maybe they watch a video that's over there. All we're asking Facebook to do is find people that are likely to aid click on the ad. 

So that's link clicks. People who are likely to click on the link. Or asking Facebook to find people who are likely to view the landing page. I read the blog we'd whatever's on the page. So that's traffic with landing page views or traffic with link clicks. . That's the difference? So is he the people who are likely to click the link or people who are likely to click the link and read the landing page? The next one is leads. 

By now you might already have guessed the pattern here. Leeds is [00:05:00] asking Facebook to find me people who are likely to give me that information. Some people are more likely to give you their name and email address than others. Some people think, no, it's not safe. I'm not going to do it. 

I'm interested. Other people are like, yeah, have it. Here's my name. I want to sign up for every freebie. Every PDF, every free guide, anything you can throw at me, I am going to give you my email address cause I am a ready for it. The next one is awareness. Now this one trips people up. 

Because all asking Facebook to do . Is actually just find people. . We want them to find people and we're just going to show them their ad. We are not asking for any action on awareness. . We just want people to be aware. 

Now often people use awareness because they think, oh, lots of people are going to see it. 

And a small businesses that can be , really desirable. We want people to see our content. If I can just get people to see it. However, I would always challenge yourself to think, do I just want people to see it or do I want them to engage with it? 

, do I want them to like comment, share, follow me?

Do [00:06:00] we want people to click through onto Instagram and actually consume your content and then decide if they want to follow you from there. Do you actually want people to go through to your email list and give you their email address? 

So actually just always challenge yourself there. Do you want people to be just aware or do you want them to actually take an action? Because if you want an action, choose one of the other objectives. And then the last one is app promotion. . I mean, that does what it says on the 10 people who are likely to sign up to an app that's actually quite specialized ads app promotion ones that say, I don't tend to do those with clients. But essentially it's exactly the same concept. 

So those are the core campaign objectives. . And when you would use them, 

I'm just going to give you a few examples. So today I had my fortnightly group coaching call with the people on the audience builder course. And one really lovely lady came on and was showing me some ads that she'd done before. And we were talking about why they maybe had worked. So what happened is she had had some help setting them up from someone she found on Fiverr and they had set up the ads so that [00:07:00] someone was going through to sign up to her master class. 

. She had the date in the diary. She wanted people to sign up to it. She had a landing page where she had all the information about the masterclass and the ads that have been set up where traffic. Optimize for link clicks. . Now she hadn't had hardly any people sign up. Despite over a thousand people clicking through from the ad onto the landing page. 

There's just a handful of people have signed up. . And she couldn't understand why. And she was thinking, is the page not very good? Is it not very compelling? , is it that I need to work on? Is it the ads I need to work on? , is it the audience that I've chosen? Is it the graphic? 

Is it the copy? . Now it might be all of that. we actually didn't look all of that. However, the first thing I saw was the objective. Traffic with link clicks, optimized. . Now, if we just go back to everything, I've just said, Facebook is finding people who are likely to. see the ad. And click on the link. 

That is all. Facebook is finding, it's not finding people who are likely to [00:08:00] sign up to something on the landing page. It's not finding people who are likely to give their details. It's not finding people who even likely , to view and read the landing page. . So what has ended up happening is she spent about 400 pounds trying to get people into this webinar. She's then going to sell her program from, and the ads are just not working you can totally understand why that's confusing and frustrating , because you think, yeah. I want people to click on the link to go through to my landing page, the traffic, and sign up for my webinar. But actually what I would suggest would be that if you wanted to get people to go to a landing page and sign up to a masterclass, a webinar. you would actually use the leads objective, and then you'd optimize for website signups. 

Now when I'm doing lead ads with people, so signing up to grow your email list. I do leads optimize for instant form. Which is where a form. pops up and people put their name in. And that's actually what I would suggest normally before you then start doing landing page ads. But if you were going to do landing page, it would be leads. Optimize for a website, not [00:09:00] traffic, despite traffic sounding like the obvious one, because you want people to click through and go onto your website. So I hope that has been helpful. 

I hope that that gives you a little bit of clarity around objectives when to use them and some core principles to come back to when you're building your campaign thinking. What. Action. Do I want people to take. And then asking Facebook to find you those right. People, because. at the first step, if you select the wrong objective, everything you do after that, 

Your audience, your. copy, or graphic your landing page. Everything else is going to be so much harder. To get great results. If you haven't selected the right objective to begin with. , that is enough for me today. I hope that was really, really helpful. And you are able to use that in your ads as you run them . As always, I love to hear from you. 

So come on over to Instagram and say hi, if you've listened to the episode. And let me know if you are going to be doing anything different going forward.

Thank you so much for listening today. Before you go, if this episode struck record with [00:10:00] you, I'd be over the moon. If you could take a moment to rate, subscribe, and leave a review, your words not only brighten up my day, but they are also the magic that helps others discover this lion hearted community.

Again, thank you so much and I will see you next week.