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The beauty of Facebook’s advertising platform is that it truly can be used by nearly anyone. Unlike the more sophisticated digital ad platforms, designed in an age where the line between business owner and digital marketer was much more distinct, Facebook’s Ad Manager seems to built for virtually anyone who knows how to operate a computer.

From Facebook’s perspective, this is fairly brilliant. Increased ease of use means more of the billion or so people logging into Facebook every day can become advertisers, and that, of course, drives the potential for revenue through the roof. And if the latest figures from Facebook are any indication, that’s precisely how it’s worked.

But for the large-scale advertiser, Facebook’s basic Ad Manager still leaves a lot to be desired. We know the general rule with digital (or any) advertising – that the easier it is to do something, the more it probably costs you – and so we yearn for the advanced targeting, flexibility, and high degree of control present in a platform like AdWords.

Fortunately for us, Facebook is not blind to this. It wants to be the ideal platform for major advertisers, too, and so it introduced Power Editor, an ad interface not at all unlike AdWords which essentially runs as a highly sophisticated browser plugin. (It’s optimized for Chrome, so we’d recommend avoiding other browsers when you use it.)

And what’s great about Power Editor is that it has a lot of features under the hood that aren’t present in Ad manager – presumably to simplify the interface and reduce friction. If you’re serious about getting the most out of your Facebook ads, you will certainly want to make use of these.

There’s a lot we could talk about with Power Editor, but for now we’ll stick to arguably the most important and powerful difference: the campaign objective types not present in Ad Manager.

Why Facebook Campaign Objectives Matter

Objectives are at the core of Facebook’s advertising system – they’re the only major attribute determined at the campaign level. Accordingly, they’re the first campaign attribute you pick, and should influence nearly every other decision you make when choosing how your ad appears, the copy you use, and so on.

Tl;dr: Objectives matter. So let’s take a look at which ones are available in Ad Manager, and compare those with Power Editor:

What Campaign Objectives Are Available In Facebook Ad Manager?

Below is the screen you see when you first load the Ad Manager and select “Create Campaign” from the navigation on the left:

Facebook Ad manager Campaign Objectives

As you can see, these are not particularly technical descriptions of ad campaign objectives… and that’s the beauty of them. Facebook is trying hard to reach business owners (and even just Page owners) by using language that speaks to their needs as clearly and simply as possible.

But for our sake, and for the sake of the next section, let’s put these into slightly more marketing-friendly terms:

  • “Boost your posts” – Increase impressions and engagement for your posts
  • “Promote your Page” – Earn Page likes by showing ads for your Page
  • “Send people to your website” – Drive website traffic from social (well, Facebook)
  • “Increase conversions on your website” – Increase web conversions from social (pretty straightforward)
  • “Get installs of your app” – Advertise your app, optimizing for conversions (installs)
  • “Increase engagement in your app” – this one pretty much says it!
  • “Reach people near your business” – Advertise to potential local customers
  • “Raise attendance at your event” – Advertise your event online to increase attendance
  • “Get people to claim your offer” – Incentivize customers to purchase or visit you in person with custom sales or discounts
  • “Get video views” – Increase impressions / views on your videos on Facebook

Seem reasonable enough?

Now, with these in mind, let’s take a look at the set of objectives available in Power Editor.

What Campaign Types Are Only Available In Power Editor?

Facebook Power Editor Campaign Objectives

As you can see, there’s still a lot of overlap. Ten of the 13 objectives in Power Editor are also available in Ad Manager. But let’s zero in on the three that are only available in Power Editor, and why they truly are so… powerful.

1. Lead Generation

This is seriously one of the best reasons out there to use Power Editor over Ad Manager. The Lead Generation objective and ad format allow you to collect users’ names, email addresses, and phone numbers more easily than ever before on Facebook – and it’s still under the user’s control.

Essentially, when a user sees your ad and clicks the call to action, they’ll be shown a form with fields that you choose when creating the ad. Then, Facebook auto-fills their information and allows them to decide whether to submit it.

For anyone even remotely versed in digital marketing and lead generation, this is huge. Forms are the key to generating leads, but friction in the process is what keeps users from signing up, even if they’re interested in what you have to offer.

Facebook’s new format does away with this friction entirely, allowing the user to simply choose “yes” or “no” in submitting their information to you. It’s a feature that literally every advertiser on Facebook interested in generating leads should be using.

2. Product Catalog

This ad format will only be useful to some advertisers, but to ecommerce brands in particular, its invaluably powerful. In order to make use of them, you first need to import your product catalog into Facebook (instructions here).

Once you’ve done that, you can start to use dynamic product ads – one of the most useful formats for ecommerce advertisers. By using this ad format, you can dynamically and individually craft and show creative (copy, imagery, and calls-to-action) for each product in your inventory.

There’s also some audience targeting functionality built in, specific to this format. When you choose your audience, you can choose to include or exclude product viewing and purchasing behavior. So, if you don’t want to show ads to someone who’s already bought the product in question – a pretty important step in preventing ad fatigue. But you can also use this to target customers who’ve demonstrated interest, focusing an audience down to users who have viewed the product or added it to their cart within a specified range of time.

For complete instructions on how to create product catalog ads, look here.

3. Post Engagement (vs. Post Boosting)

One of the most easy-to-use (and therefore generally brilliant) features within Facebook is the solid blue “Boost Post” button that appears on nearly all Page posts. The “Boost” feature has no doubt been the introduction to paid content promotion for countless Facebook advertisers, and for those looking to quickly get their posts in front of more eyes, it’s hard to find an easier method.

But, again, the easier it is to use, the more you’re likely spending for the same amount of value, so in our opinion it makes sense to dig deeper.

Why Should You Avoid Boosting A Facebook Post?

By using the Post Engagement campaign objective in Power Editor, instead of directly boosting a post from your page, you get access to increased interest targeting, placement and device targeting, Custom Audience targeting, conversion tracking, and more.

Keep in mind that with Boosted posts, you also can only run a single boost for each ad at a time – heavily limiting your ability to A/B test across different audiences, one of the digital advertiser’s most powerful tools.

While Facebook seems to have improved targeting options for Boosted posts, they’re still not as flexible as Power Editor, which makes all of Facebook’s advertising options freely available to any advertiser. We strongly recommend using Power Editor’s Post Engagement feature instead, which will allow you to get more eyes on your posts while also making it possible to take advantage of the sheer power of Facebook interest targeting, custom audiences, and more.

So, what did we miss? Any Power Editor features you can’t live without? Is there an argument to be made for using Ad Manager instead?

Let us know in the comments below!