Brand Awareness vs Lead Generation Campaigns. What’s The Difference & Why Does It Matter?
All Facebook Ad Campaigns Are NOT Created Equal.
One of the most common (and most important) questions we get here at Ping is, “what is the difference between your Brand Awareness and Lead Generation Facebook ad campaigns? Aren’t they basically the same thing?”
In this article, we hope to answer that question and help you understand what marketing package is the best fit for you. First, we’ll explain what a Facebook ad is and isn’t. Next, we’ll walk you through the difference between a Brand Awareness and a Lead Generation campaign. Finally, we’ll help you understand which option is best for you.
When A Facebook Ad is Not A Facebook Ad
A Facebook ad is a Facebook ad is a Facebook ad… right? Well, not really.
When most people think about creating “Facebook Ads,” they are thinking about using the “Boost Post” option that is presented to Page owners when they publish a post. In fact, we frequently talk to ISP owners that tell us that they “have run Facebook ads in the past,” meaning they have boosted posts on their page.
Due to the high volume of posts on Facebook and the fact that people can only read a certain number of posts per day, there is actually only a small chance that any one of your posts will reach a significant percentage of your total audience. The “Boost Post” option was invented by Facebook in order to give business owners with no other marketing experience the ability to quickly and easily expand the reach of their posts.
Facebook solves this problem for motivated business owners by allowing them to purchase a premium slot in their audience’s news feeds. They don’t publish the exact number, but our rough estimate is that, depending on the time of year, somewhere between every 4th and every 12th post in your news feed falls into this category - you can tell which ones they are by the “sponsored” text where the publishing time and date would normally be.
Most people consider boosted posts to be “ads.” But while they are one form of Facebook ads, we (a marketing agency) mean something entirely different when we talk about “Facebook Ads.”
We build ads out in the Facebook Ads Manager. This program, which is not accessible to normal Facebook users that don’t own at least one business page, is very complex and takes years to truly master. In fact, it is often considered an industry all by itself, with entire marketing agencies that specialize in only one segment of the Facebook Ads ecosystem (like e-commerce). Brand Awareness and Lead Generation are some examples of the categories of ads that can be run through the Facebook Ads Manager.
In the Ads Manager, we have access to many levels of additional options when it comes to publishing and distributing your content. While a Boosted Post typically only shows your content in the News Feed, we can run your content simultaneously on Instagram, on Messenger, on the right hand side of the Facebook desktop site, on Facebook Marketplace, and even on the Facebook Audience Network
The Audience Network is a platform that content creators and companies install on their websites and apps that allows Facebook to show ads on their site in exchange for sharing part of the ad revenue with them. Facebook does not publish how many sites and apps are part of their Audience Network, but it is safe to say that a large percentage - even the majority - of all ads that you see on the internet are actually run through the Facebook Audience Network. Since these sites have Facebook’s code installed, and because you are logged into Facebook on the same browser or device, they know exactly what ads to show you.
When you’re playing a game on your phone and have to watch a 30-second video between rounds, that’s probably a Facebook ad. When you are reading a news article and see an image or video ad in between two paragraphs, that’s probably a Facebook ad. Everywhere you go, you are bombarded with Facebook ads. In fact, you don’t even have to have a Facebook account in order to constantly be shown Facebook ads everywhere you go.
This is what we mean when we say Facebook Ads. We mean that we will be running content for you all over the internet. Trust me, we are not just running Boosted Posts. Anyone that tells you that they can do the same thing as a specialized marketing agency but doesn’t have years of experience setting up campaigns and placing ad buys in the Facebook Ads Manager isn’t doing what we are doing. Because we have access to these tools, platforms, and experience, we are able to run campaigns that are much more cost-effective and generate significantly more measurable results.
The Tools Of Our Trade
Now that you know what a Facebook Ad is and isn’t, let’s talk about what Brand Awareness and Lead Generation campaigns are. With the information you now have, this should be fairly easy to explain. Essentially, these campaigns use the same content and the same ad budget to generate a different set of results by drastically changing how things are set up on the back end in Facebook Ads Manager.
Brand Awareness campaigns are designed to increase recognition of your brand throughout your targeted audience. With the massive amount of data that Facebook has on everyone, they know how likely any given person is to remember an ad that they were shown, and how many times they need to be shown that ad before they’ll remember it. When you set up an ad for Brand Awareness, Facebook will basically sort your audience by this criteria, spending your budget first on the people who are most likely to remember your ads. Then, as those people at the top of the list are shown your ad the number of times that Facebook thinks they need to see something in order to remember it, Facebook’s algorithm will start showing your ad to people that are farther and farther down the list, until they’ve reached your entire audience.
This process/algorithm is designed to generate the most results for your money. The reason why Facebook continues to rake in billions of advertising dollars every quarter despite negative press is because none of their competitors have mastered this. There is no other ad platform out there (even Google) that is so efficient at delivering the specific results that you want. They simply have so much data on everyone that their algorithms and AI are constantly looking through it to determine who is likely to do what, and when.
Here’s an example: when your wife freaks out because she started seeing ads for prenatal vitamins before you’ve told anyone else that you are pregnant, that’s not necessarily because they are actually listening to your conversations… that’s because Facebook’s ad platform watched you visit websites about fertility for 9 months, saw your GPS signal at two different obstetricians and a fertility doctor within the past 6 months, recorded your “marital aids” Amazon purchases 3 months ago and saw you download a “how big is my baby today” app this morning. Therefore, Facebook’s algorithm has determined a high probability that you are expecting, and has started showing ads targeting “expecting mothers” to your wife.
Lead Generation ads use the same concepts for a different outcome. Once again, by optimizing your campaigns for Lead Generation, you are shaping who sees your ads, where they see those ads, and when. Now your ads are being shown to people that Facebook knows are statistically more likely than most to click on links similar to yours, or to fill out a lead form similar to yours (depending on what kind of content you are running).
This process is how we can run the exact same ad to the exact same content and see two completely different results.
For example, we can set up an ad that sends people to a page on your website to fill out a form for more information. If you set up that ad for Brand Awareness, you will see a very low Cost Per Impression (an impression is every time your ad is displayed on a screen), but your Cost Per Click and Cost Per Lead will be high. You could spend $500 and generate $5 leads. At the same time, we can use that same budget to run that same content to the same audience but optimized for Lead Generation, and generate 100 leads for that $500, but your Cost Per Impression is ten times higher than the Brand Awareness ad. Basically, your ad was more expensive to run per person because the people seeing your ad were more likely to become leads.
Side note: when you tell people that Facebook ads don’t work because you don’t click on them, that’s not really true. Facebook knows exactly what kind of ads work on you. When someone creates an ad similar to those, Facebook puts it in front of you. They are counting on the fact that you never realize that your purchasing decision was in any way influenced by anything you saw or engaged with. That’s what makes an ad successful. In fact, attention spans have grown so short that most people only remember engaging with an ad for about 5 minutes after doing so. An ad probably played a part in bringing you to this article and you don’t even realize it.
Choose Your Weapon
Now, let’s get down to business. As a marketing agency, we focus primarily on Brand Awareness and Lead Generation campaigns because that is what is best suited for ISPs. In fact, we’ve spent literally millions of dollars figuring out what works and doesn’t work specifically for ISPs, so you can take our word on that. There might be specific situations where something else is needed, but 95 times out of 100, we’ll want to go with one of those two campaigns.
But which one do you need?
Well, that depends on your business goals. When you book a free consultation with one of our ISP marketing experts (link), they’ll ask you about where you are at in your business and what you are looking to accomplish. Let’s look at a few different scenarios that we deal with on a regular basis.
• Are you a new company that nobody knows about, that is looking to get your name out there for the first time? Brand Awareness (for now) will deliver the best long-term results for you.
• Are you a rapidly growing company with a well-trained sales team that is looking to increase the volume of incoming leads? Lead Generation will generate the highest return on investment for you.
• Have you recently acquired an existing ISP and are looking to communicate a rebranding to their service area? Brand Awareness will help you accomplish this goal.
• Have you just hired your first full-time salesperson and need to fill up his pipeline? Lead Generation will make the phone ring.
• Have you recently upgraded your network after a period of decline and need to make sure everyone knows about this in order to boost your company’s overall reputation? Brand Awareness will help get you back on track.
• Have you recently been awarded a large government grant, and you need to rapidly scale up in order to meet your deliverables? Lead Generation will ramp up your take rate.
• Are you a well-established ISP that is facing energetic competition from a young up-and-comer squeezing into your coverage area? Brand Awareness will keep you top-of-mind and help drown out your competitors.
• Are you trying to drive pre-sales for a new area in order to help secure funding for your infrastructure? Lead Generation will help you build a list of interested potential customers.
As you can see, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but there is a solution to fit every size.
We are the industry leaders in helping ISPs grow and meet their business goals. We aren’t just a marketing agency - we call ourselves the world’s only ISP Growth Agency.
Get started on your growth journey today - book a call with one of our ISP marketing experts, or sign up for our Brand Awareness or Lead Generation plans today!
Brand Awareness vs Lead Generation Campaigns. What’s The Difference & Why Does It Matter?
All Facebook Ad Campaigns Are NOT Created Equal.
One of the most common (and most important) questions we get here at Ping is, “what is the difference between your Brand Awareness and Lead Generation Facebook ad campaigns? Aren’t they basically the same thing?”
In this article, we hope to answer that question and help you understand what marketing package is the best fit for you. First, we’ll explain what a Facebook ad is and isn’t. Next, we’ll walk you through the difference between a Brand Awareness and a Lead Generation campaign. Finally, we’ll help you understand which option is best for you.
When A Facebook Ad is Not A Facebook Ad
A Facebook ad is a Facebook ad is a Facebook ad… right? Well, not really.
When most people think about creating “Facebook Ads,” they are thinking about using the “Boost Post” option that is presented to Page owners when they publish a post. In fact, we frequently talk to ISP owners that tell us that they “have run Facebook ads in the past,” meaning they have boosted posts on their page.
Due to the high volume of posts on Facebook and the fact that people can only read a certain number of posts per day, there is actually only a small chance that any one of your posts will reach a significant percentage of your total audience. The “Boost Post” option was invented by Facebook in order to give business owners with no other marketing experience the ability to quickly and easily expand the reach of their posts.
Facebook solves this problem for motivated business owners by allowing them to purchase a premium slot in their audience’s news feeds. They don’t publish the exact number, but our rough estimate is that, depending on the time of year, somewhere between every 4th and every 12th post in your news feed falls into this category - you can tell which ones they are by the “sponsored” text where the publishing time and date would normally be.
Most people consider boosted posts to be “ads.” But while they are one form of Facebook ads, we (a marketing agency) mean something entirely different when we talk about “Facebook Ads.”
We build ads out in the Facebook Ads Manager. This program, which is not accessible to normal Facebook users that don’t own at least one business page, is very complex and takes years to truly master. In fact, it is often considered an industry all by itself, with entire marketing agencies that specialize in only one segment of the Facebook Ads ecosystem (like e-commerce). Brand Awareness and Lead Generation are some examples of the categories of ads that can be run through the Facebook Ads Manager.
In the Ads Manager, we have access to many levels of additional options when it comes to publishing and distributing your content. While a Boosted Post typically only shows your content in the News Feed, we can run your content simultaneously on Instagram, on Messenger, on the right hand side of the Facebook desktop site, on Facebook Marketplace, and even on the Facebook Audience Network
The Audience Network is a platform that content creators and companies install on their websites and apps that allows Facebook to show ads on their site in exchange for sharing part of the ad revenue with them. Facebook does not publish how many sites and apps are part of their Audience Network, but it is safe to say that a large percentage - even the majority - of all ads that you see on the internet are actually run through the Facebook Audience Network. Since these sites have Facebook’s code installed, and because you are logged into Facebook on the same browser or device, they know exactly what ads to show you.
When you’re playing a game on your phone and have to watch a 30-second video between rounds, that’s probably a Facebook ad. When you are reading a news article and see an image or video ad in between two paragraphs, that’s probably a Facebook ad. Everywhere you go, you are bombarded with Facebook ads. In fact, you don’t even have to have a Facebook account in order to constantly be shown Facebook ads everywhere you go.
This is what we mean when we say Facebook Ads. We mean that we will be running content for you all over the internet. Trust me, we are not just running Boosted Posts. Anyone that tells you that they can do the same thing as a specialized marketing agency but doesn’t have years of experience setting up campaigns and placing ad buys in the Facebook Ads Manager isn’t doing what we are doing. Because we have access to these tools, platforms, and experience, we are able to run campaigns that are much more cost-effective and generate significantly more measurable results.
The Tools Of Our Trade
Now that you know what a Facebook Ad is and isn’t, let’s talk about what Brand Awareness and Lead Generation campaigns are. With the information you now have, this should be fairly easy to explain. Essentially, these campaigns use the same content and the same ad budget to generate a different set results by drastically changing how things are set up on the back end in Facebook Ads Manager.
Brand Awareness campaigns are designed to increase recognition of your brand throughout your targeted audience. With the massive amount of data that Facebook has on everyone, they know how likely any given person is to remember an ad that they were shown, and how many times they need to be shown that ad before they’ll remember it. When you set up an ad for Brand Awareness, Facebook will basically sort your audience by this criteria, spending your budget first on the people who are most likely to remember your ads. Then, as those people at the top of the list are shown your ad the number of times that Facebook thinks they need to see something in order to remember it, Facebook’s algorithm will start showing your ad to people that are farther and farther down the list, until they’ve reached your entire audience.
This process/algorithm is designed to generate the most results for your money. The reason why Facebook continues to rake in billions of advertising dollars every quarter despite negative press is because none of their competitors have mastered this. There is no other ad platform out there (even Google) that is so efficient at delivering the specific results that you want. They simply have so much data on everyone that their algorithms and AI are constantly looking through it to determine who is likely to do what, and when.
Here’s an example: when your wife freaks out because she started seeing ads for prenatal vitamins before you’ve told anyone else that you are pregnant, that’s not necessarily because they are actually listening to your conversations… that’s because Facebook’s ad platform watched you visit websites about fertility for 9 months, saw your gps signal at two different obstetricians and a fertility doctor within the past 6 months, recorded your “marital aids” Amazon purchases 3 months ago and saw you download a “how big is my baby today” app this morning. Therefore, Facebook’s algorithm has determined a high probability that you are expecting, and has started showing ads targeting “expecting mothers” to your wife.
Lead Generation ads use the same concepts for a different outcome. Once again, by optimizing your campaigns for Lead Generation, you are shaping who sees your ads, where they see those ads, and when. Now your ads are being shown to people that Facebook knows are statistically more likely than most to click on links similar to yours, or to fill out a lead form similar to yours (depending on what kind of content you are running).
This process is how we can run the exact same ad to the exact same content and see two completely different results.
For example, we can set up an ad that sends people to a page on your website to fill out a form for more information. If you set up that ad for Brand Awareness, you will see a very low Cost Per Impression (an impression is every time your ad is displayed on a screen), but your Cost Per Click and Cost Per Lead will be high. You could spend $500 and generate $5 leads. At the same time, we can use that same budget to run that same content to the same audience but optimized for Lead Generation, and generate 100 leads for that $500, but your Cost Per Impression is ten times higher than the Brand Awareness ad. Basically, your ad was more expensive to run per person because the people seeing your ad were more likely to become leads.
Side note: when you tell people that Facebook ads don’t work because you don’t click on them, that’s not really true. Facebook knows exactly what kind of ads work on you. When someone creates an ad similar to those, Facebook puts it in front of you. They are counting on the fact that you never realize that your purchasing decision was in any way influenced by anything you saw or engaged with. That’s what makes an ad successful. In fact, attention spans have grown so short that most people only remember engaging with an ad for about 5 minutes after doing so. An ad probably played a part in bringing you to this article and you don’t even realize it.
Choose Your Weapon
Now, let’s get down to business. As a marketing agency, we focus primarily on Brand Awareness and Lead Generation campaigns because that is what is best suited for ISPs. In fact, we’ve spent literally millions of dollars figuring out what works and doesn’t work specifically for ISPs, so you can take our word on that. There might be specific situations where something else is needed, but 95 times out of 100, we’ll want to go with one of those two campaigns.
But which one do you need?
Well, that depends on your business goals. When you book a free consultation with one of our ISP marketing experts (link), they’ll ask you about where you are at in your business and what you are looking to accomplish. Let’s look at a few different scenarios that we deal with on a regular basis.
• Are you a new company that nobody knows about, that is looking to get your name out there for the first time? Brand Awareness (for now) will deliver the best long-term results for you.
• Are you a rapidly growing company with a well-trained sales team that is looking to increase the volume of incoming leads? Lead Generation will generate the highest return on investment for you.
• Have you recently acquired an existing ISP and are looking to communicate a rebranding to their service area? Brand Awareness will help you accomplish this goal.
• Have you just hired your first full-time salesperson and need to fill up his pipeline? Lead Generation will make the phone ring.
• Have you recently upgraded your network after a period of decline and need to make sure everyone knows about this in order to boost your company’s overall reputation? Brand Awareness will help get you back on track.
• Have you recently been awarded a large government grant, and you need to rapidly scale up in order to meet your deliverables? Lead Generation will ramp up your take rate.
• Are you a well-established ISP that is facing energetic competition from a young up-and-comer squeezing into your coverage area? Brand Awareness will keep you top-of-mind and help drown out your competitors.
• Are you trying to drive pre-sales for a new area in order to help secure funding for your infrastructure? Lead Generation will help you build a list of interested potential customers.
As you can see, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but there is a solution to fit every size.
We are the industry leaders in helping ISPs grow and meet their business goals. We aren’t just a marketing agency - we call ourselves the world’s only ISP Growth Agency.
Get started on your growth journey today - book a call with one of our ISP marketing experts, or sign up for our Brand Awareness or Lead Generation plans today!
