Fig - Marketing OS

There’s one campaign objective that 9/10 marketers say doesn’t work anymore. The problem is that it sounds enticing. It even looks good at first, but long-term you’ll be effectively “lighting your money on fire”

If you’re running Awareness campaigns on Meta, you’re not really building your business. While it may seem like you’re gaining traction, what you’re actually getting is the lowest level of engagement that Meta can charge you for, and they’re happy to do it.

What “Awareness” Actually Optimizes For

When you start a new campaign and select “Awareness” in the manager, you’re telling Meta, “Find me the cheapest people possible to show this to.”

You’re impressions and reach will increase but you shouldn’t plan on seeing any new revenue from those views. If you only cared about being in front of the most people, this would be a great pick.

These cheap leads aren’t a cost effective option because these impressions won’t take any real action through the funnel.

It’s hard to know what’s working and what isn’t when you don’t have all your systems talking to one another. Meta ad manager by itself can be misleading by just showing the numbers for their platform instead of how the numbers actually affect your business.

You may see low CPM’s, the massive reach and think “This is great!” While you’re celebrating, your funnel and pipeline go dry.

“But Shouldn’t I Warm Up The Audience?”

That used to be the right thought process. When there were fewer ads, and a higher supply-demand ratio it worked.

You could spend the money to educate your audience and see the return overtime. There were many different components that made this true. The important takeaway is, the conditions then are not the same as today.

In today’s market, if the viewer isn’t clicking, watching for a long time, or opting in, they’re just scrolling.

Meta’s Other Objectives

You don’t need to tell Meta to handle getting awareness because they do it for you automatically.

When you run higher quality conversion, lead, or sales campaigns Meta’s new algorithm already fits your placements to meet a broad audience including new people who have never seen your content.

For our agency that works with coaches and consultants, we never ran awareness campaigns and often stuck to the tried and true sales and lead objectives. Yes they’re more expensive, but the quality of the lead is well worth the cost.

Key Takeaways

There is a world in which awareness campaigns work for the people who have very specific objectives and very large budgets.

Instead of optimizing your ad placements for metrics that look good on the ad platform, optimize for your end goal business objective. If you're just getting started with ads or you're trying to scale below $50 million, you don't need more eyes; you need more action.