How to Use Each Meta Campaign Type in Your Ecomm Strategy

Meta Ads - Main Campaign Types Guide

This guide summarises the main campaign types available to advertisers in Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram). 

It is important to always keep in mind that Meta is very good at targeting people who are most likely to perform the action you are optimising for in your campaign choice. For this reason, it is generally best to choose the conversion action you want to achieve - for most ecommerce businesses, this is Purchase Conversion (Sales). 

However, other campaign types can be very effective at building out your sales funnel, collating social proof and building brand awareness, so they are a great addition to a comprehensive ads strategy, budget allowing. They are also a relatively cost-effective way of reaching a wider audience than you might be able to achieve through purchase conversion campaigns alone. 

Purchase Conversion (Sales)

Drives potential customers and returning customers to buy. 

Can be used for: 

• TOF - finding new customers for scaling and acquisition

• MOF and BOF Retargeting 

• Sales/Offers

Content types to prioritise: 

• Product-focused 

• Clear messaging on pricing and product USP

• Testimonial or review-based content

• Include a mix of carousel, collection and video ads 

• Dynamic and non-dynamic ads (dynamic use your product catalogue)

• UGC, influencer-style videos or ‘unboxing’ style content that show the product in action

• Clear CTA - Shop Now

Engagement

These are optimised to get people to interact with your ad in app. Likes, comments, clicks, shares, saves and 3+ second video views all count as an ‘engagement’. 

For this reason, it is important to be aware that video content and image content serve quite different purposes in Engagement - it can be better to keep them separate if you want to prioritise more valuable conversions like comments and likes, rather than video views. This is particularly important if social proof is your aim. These campaigns are used for:

• Pulling more audiences into your funnel for future retargeting with purchase conversion campaigns 

• Building up social proof on ads for brand authority

• Pushing successful organic content and/or key brand messages or offers

• Testing messaging and tone before conversion campaigns

• Pushing community-building content to encourage brand loyalty

  
  

Content types to prioritise:

• Founder-led videos or talking heads

• Influencer-style content and UGC

• Behind-the-scenes content of photo shoots, etc

• Brand storytelling

• Reels, memes or videos with a strong hook

• Product launches and bestsellers

• Content that encourages comments or shares - ask questions or offer choices to spark replies. 

Traffic

Traffic campaigns are optimised to drive clicks to your website or landing page (not to drive sales). For this reason, they can overinflate your website visitor numbers and lead to a high bounce rate and low conversion rate, so they should be used in moderation. Keep in mind that people who click links are not necessarily high-intent buyers. 

However, Traffic campaigns do have their uses and, when running alongside an effective purchase conversion campaign on a relatively low budget, they can be an effective way of building out the funnel. These campaigns are used for:

• Sending potential customers to offers and new collections you want to prioritise

• Signposting content that is less sales-based, such as blogs, competitions or news

• Warming up audiences ahead of conversion activity

• Feeding information to a new Facebook pixel

Content types to prioritise:

• Competitions and offers

• Messaging that builds curiosity or offers value

• Launches of new collections

• News (such as being awarded B Corp status)

Reach

Reach or Brand Awareness campaigns are optimised to show your ad to as many people as possible within your target audience. They are generally a top-of-funnel campaign type, to introduce new audiences to your brand (rather than to specific products or ranges). They can also be used in retargeting, to spread a message to as many warm audience members as possible.

As a standalone, you are unlikely to see any purchase conversions from Reach campaigns, but they are a vital part of a broad ad strategy for customer discovery. When run alongside a purchase conversion strategy, they are an effective way to build brand recognition, feeding other campaigns to encourage customers further down the funnel. They will often be the first touchpoint in the customer journey.  They can be used for: 

• Brand awareness and visibility at scale

• Supporting other campaigns through brand recall

• Offers and other time-sensitive messaging

• Maintaining presence with high-frequency, low-cost delivery

Content types to prioritise:

• Brand-first creatives that are immediately recognisable and communicate your brand’s ethos

• For video, messaging that has a hook within the first 1-2 seconds

• Bold and clear branding

• Simple, memorable messaging

Lead Generation

Although most ecommerce brands don’t use lead generation as a significant, always-on aspect of their strategy, this campaign type can be used very effectively to build out email lists and generate interest in the brand. It can also be used for in-store events, competitions and discounts. There are two ways of setting up lead generation campaigns: 

• using an in-app Instant Form. These keep the user on Facebook or Instagram and autofill their details, making them very simple to complete. As a result, the quality of the leads can be lower. Depending on the CRM you use, leads can be automatically pulled into your email lists and onto an email flow relevant to your ad. Alternativelym they can be downloaded from Meta Ads Manager manually. The disadvantage of the manual method is that you cannot use an automated, immediate email flow to contact new leads with discount codes, etc. 

• By directing leads to a landing page on your website, where they can complete a form. This has a lower take-up rate than an instant form, but it can lead to higher-quality leads as a result of the extra step required. 

Lead ads in ecommerce can be used for:

• Capturing emails for product launches or newsletters

• Promoting a discount code which requires email sign-up

• Competitions and giveaways

• Building lists for email nurturing and remarketing

Content types to prioritise:

• Clear and direct messaging that highlights the benefit of signing up

• Strong offer (e.g. freebie, exclusive access, discount)

• Simple creatives with a focus on the value exchange

• Statics or short videos with a strong CTA

• UGC or founder-led content that builds trust quickly

Keep in mind with lead ads that you must be compliant with data protection laws. If using an Instant Form, you will need to include links to your data policy and terms and conditions.

Summary

Whilst it is important to spend your budget wisely and primarily prioritise campaigns that will lead to your ultimate goal (sales), other campaign types in Meta are often overlooked by ecommerce advertisers but can be a really effective part of a rounded digital ads strategy. 

You don’t have to use every campaign type on offer and, if your budget is limited, it isn’t a good idea to do so. You still want to spend the majority of your budget on sales campaigns. But you might be pleasantly surprised by the positive impact a more rounded digital ads strategy can have, using selected campaign types that make the most sense for your brand and for where you are in your digital advertising journey. 

Test and see what works best for you.

Good luck!