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Facebook Ads: Traffic or Conversion Campaigns? Here’s why I always do conversion.
Posted by on January 12, 2021 at 7:26 pmA lot of people go back and forth with the strategy of starting with traffic campaigns to “warm up the pixel”, then sometimes even switching to conversions for add to cart before going to purchases.
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It makes sense in theory, but from my experience I’ve seen much better results by just going straight for the conversion for purchases campaign and I have a pretty solid idea as to why this approach is better.
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Just to provide a little context, I made a post last week where I mentioned that this is the strategy that I do for new stores, but wanted to create a whole new post to go into more detail.
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**First, I want to break down why I launch conversion campaigns (optimized for purchase) for new stores.**
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Facebook’s algorithm knows what people are more likely to purchase within an audience that you target based on the many data points that Facebook has for each person. So it will leverage its data to start with since your pixel doesn’t have any data. Then as you start to get more data on your pixel, Facebook will use its own data and yours to improve the results.
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*Here’s an example: if you are running ads for a store that sells shoes, you might just target people on Facebook who are interested in “Nike” or “shoes”, etc. Then you set the objective to be conversions optimized for purchases.*
*My explanation for what I’ve seen that makes the most sense is that Facebook is going to first look within those audiences for people who have activated that purchase pixel event that you are optimizing for.*
*Remember, Facebook has SO much data and pretty much every Shopify store out there has a pixel, and if you have bought something online then chances are you have fired off that specific event. If someone has been on Facebook for 10 years and they’ve NEVER activated the purchase event on a pixel, then I doubt Facebook would show the ad to that person.*
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**Now for why running Traffic or even reach ads towards a very specific audience (page likes, website visitors, reach, etc.) usually doesn’t work as well as a conversion campaign**
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Going back to all of the data has with Facebook, they know what we are interested in, our buying behaviors, etc.
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So many people who run ads only consider the “WHO is in the audience” part of it, but it’s also about the “WHAT and WHEN” of it as well… this might get a little bit technical (my 10 years in IT is showing haha)
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If you run a retargeting ad to someone who visited your store and didn’t purchase, in theory you would probably want to show them that ad as much as possible until they buy, right? So that means you should run traffic or reach to keep showing them the ad until they buy. But here is where that theory falls short. You are STILL optimizing just to get the click on the ad, not the purchase. Facebook knows WHEN I am most likely to fire off a purchase event based on the time of day and they also know WHAT my current situation is when I am more likely to fire off that pixel event.
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Think of all of the other criteria that comes into place instead of WHO you are (part of the retargeting audience) but think about if you are more likely to purchase something when you are on desktop or mobile. If you are more likely to purchase something when you are connected to wifi or cellular. The time of day. The day of the week (hint, payday). Or if you are at home or traveling. If over the last year, 95% of my purchases pixel events happened when I was connected to wifi on a Saturday afternoon, I would bet that Facebook would be smart enough to ONLY show me purchase conversion ads when I am connected to wifi around that time. If I have NEVER fired off a Facebook pixel purchase event after 10pm because I’m in bed just scrolling through my phone trying to fall asleep, then Facebook would probably not show me those ads as well.
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In short, when you run a traffic campaign to a very specific audience, it doesn’t take into account all of the other criteria that comes into place where they are more likely to fire off that pixel event, just when they are more likely to click on it.
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Speaking personally, there are certain scenarios where I will NEVER buy something. If I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and see an ad after looking at Facebook for two seconds, I am not coherent enough to buy something. A super specific reach or traffic campaign would show me that ad anyway. A purchase campaign would wait until I’ve woken up, gotten back from the gym, and logged in on my computer at home.
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Hope this post makes sense and is helpful to those struggling to launch profitable Facebook ads! Best of luck to you all.
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8 Replies
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What about value optimization? I have been doing a lot of testing, it seems like Facebook really wants us to use this (everytime I do purchase optimization it says I will get 0 results even though that is bullshit 99% of the time). Curious if you have used this at all?
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I know this will vary a lot, but can you tell me what’s your average daily budget on a new campaign for a new store optimised for purchases?
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We sell luxury stuff and many of our thing are expensive. We have always gone with conversion purchases. Even tho ROAS are good 5-8x mostly, I started wondering if we should go for conversion add to cart so facebook gets more data (don’t stay on Learning Phase for so long or forever) and probably cheaper CPMs and maybe more people buy? What do you think?
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I run advertising for a personal injury law firm and so far traffic has been absolutely garbage. Conversions showed over 20x the amount of results and the value of the leads from traffic were much worse than the ones from conversion.
Sometimes I wonder if FBs traffic AI chooses people who accidentally click on ads all the time because the conversion rate from the traffic campaigns were absolutely terrible.
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How about with iOS14???
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it does make sense!
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1. Traffic = Clickers that never buy anything.
2. Engagement = Talk about shit all day & never buy anything.
3. Conversion = Chance they may actually BUY something
4. Reach/Awareness = People that Never buy, click or do shitGo #3 all Day…unless you are brand NEW to advertising on F_B and have a smaller budget…then try traffic. Personal Theory, based on experience…they want you hooked and will pull out the GlennGary Glen Ross Leads to set the hook.
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