I believe a lot of Facebook advertisers are getting mixed messages on this topic.
When it comes to marketing, we always go back to the most important question, which you're asked the moment you click on "Create Ad" on Facebook Ad Manager: What is your marketing objective and goal?
If you are running Facebook Ads for an established brand with a big budget, marketing is no longer just about sales, but also creating awareness for brand recognition even if the person is not yet your customer. You want to infuse your brand stories into people's mind by telling them who you are, at the same time building trust between your brand and your potential customer.
You may want to run multiple videos - long and short, shooting from different angles with different messages just to penetrate the market effectively. Here you might be looking at Video Views, Awareness or Engagement campaigns instead of Conversion campaign.
However if you are a small business, or running Facebook Ads for SMEs, most likely you have limited budget to spend on advertising, and every single cent counts. You do not have a strong brand presence yet to close sales, hence the world "Brand" always come after "Sales". Here, you should be looking at Conversion campaign.
Sometimes Facebook may suggest that you will receive 0 conversion based on this setup, and recommends you to go with Traffic campaign optimized for Landing Page Views. You may realize your campaign getting surprisingly low CPM and high CTR, but they simply view your site and bounce after reading your page without taking any action.
Here's my honest suggestion:
Regardless of which stage you are in your marketing funnel, always stick with Conversion campaign. If you're an ecommerce going after sales, go with Purchase Conversion campaign. If you're a squeeze page going after lead generation, go with Lead Conversion campaign.
Why? Because Facebook Ad is a robot, she will work towards the one goal you assigned to her.
If you ask her to get more sales for you, she will go around and look for people who are likely to buy stuff. If you ask her to get more people to "Add To Cart", she will go around and look for people who are likely to add to cart, but not ready to make a purchase - consider this group of people as "Window Shoppers", like me.
In my Amazon account, I have added almost 20 items to cart, but I never consider making a purchase anytime soon. Perhaps I'm waiting for some special promotion or discounts before I proceed to checkout - I don't know. There are way too many uncertainties.
- If you want people to buy, go with Conversion campaign.
- If you want people to be aware of your brand, feel free to go with other campaign objectives.
Know your marketing objective, get everything aligned with your goal. In such way, you will never do yourself wrong.