Solved: Leads vs. Sales Campaign Objective Confusion

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I had a look at your question and it’s a really common point of confusion, especially with how Meta keeps changing the names of its objectives. The whole 'Leads vs Sales' thing trips a lot of people up, but the answer is actually quite straightforward once you understand how the algorithm thinks.

I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance on this. The short answer is that for what you want to do – get quality email subscribers who you can later convert – you should almost certainly be using the 'Sales' objective, not 'Leads'. It might sound counterintuitive, but I'll walk you through exactly why this is the case and how you should structure your entire approach around this one decision. Getting this right is the foundation for a campaign that actually works, rather than one that just burns through your budget.

You'll need to tell Facebook who you *really* want...

The most important thing to understand about the Facebook (or Meta) ads platform is that it does exactly what you tell it to do, with ruthless efficiency. The objective you choose is a direct command to the algorithm. When you select an objective, you are not just picking a label for your campaign; you are telling the system what kind of person to find for you.

Let's break down the two options in the context of your newsletter:

-> The 'Leads' Objective: When you choose this, especially if you use the on-platform Instant Form (or Lead Gen Form), you are telling Facebook: "Go and find me people within my target audience who are most likely to fill out a form with their name and email address *without leaving Facebook*." The algorithm is brilliant at this. It will find you the people who have a history of clicking on ads and filling out forms. They are often serial competition-enterers or freebie-seekers. The friction is incredibly low. Their details are often auto-filled, so it takes two taps and they're done. The result? You will get a high volume of leads at a very low cost per lead. On paper, it looks fantastic. Your CPL might be £0.50, and you'll feel like a marketing genius.

But here's the problem. You haven't really got a subscriber. You've got data. You've found someone who was willing to perform a low-intent, low-friction action. You haven't filtered for people who are actually interested in your *topic*, who are willing to go to your website, read what you're about, and then make a conscious decision to sign up. The quality of these leads is probaly going to be very low. Their open rates will be terrible, their engagement non-existent, and their likelihood of ever converting into a paying customer is minimal. You are actively paying the platform to find you the worst possible audience for your long-term goal.

-> The 'Sales' Objective: This is confusingly named by Meta. It used to be called the 'Conversions' objective, which was much clearer. When you choose 'Sales', you are telling Facebook: "Go and find me people within my target audience who are most likely to go to my website and complete a specific action that I define as valuable." For you, this valuable action would be a 'Subscribe' or 'CompleteRegistration' event, fired by your Meta Pixel when someone successfully signs up to your newsletter on your landing page.

This is a completely different command. The algorithm now ignores the cheap-to-reach people who just fill out forms. Instead, it hunts for users with a history of clicking on ads, leaving the platform, visiting a landing page, and, crucially, *converting*. These people are more discerning. They cost more to reach because they are in higher demand by other advertisers. The friction is much higher – they have to click the ad, wait for your page to load, read your copy, type in their email, and click subscribe. Anyone who completes this journey has shown genuine intent. They are pre-qualified. They actually want what you are offering.

Your Cost Per Lead (or Cost Per Subscriber, in this case) will be significantly higher than with the 'Leads' objective. No doubt about it. But the quality will be in a different universe. These are the people who will actually open your emails, read your content, and eventually buy from you. You're building a real asset, not just a vanity list of dead emails. For a newsletter, quality is everything. I'd rather have 100 engaged subscribers who cost me £5 each than 1,000 unengaged leads who cost me £0.50 each. I remember one campaign we ran for a Medical Job Matching SaaS client. They initially struggled with high acquisition costs and low-quality leads from other approaches. By switching their Meta Ads campaigns to optimize for trial registrations using the 'Sales' objective, we were able to reduce their cost per user acquisition from £100 to just £7. This dramatically improved the quality of their leads and ultimately their customer acquisition efficiency. The same principle definitely applies here.

We'll need to look at who you're talking to...

Okay, so we've established that the 'Sales' objective is the way forward. The next logical question is: who do we show the ads to? Choosing the right objective is only half the battle. If you point it at the wrong audience, it's still not going to work. This is where most people get it wrong again.

Forget generic demographic targeting. "Men aged 25-45 who live in London and are interested in 'business'" is useless. It tells you nothing of value and leads to generic ads that speak to no one. You need to define your ideal customer by their *pain*. What is the specific, urgent, expensive nightmare that your newsletter helps them solve? Your ideal subscriber isn't a demographic; it's a problem state.

For example, if your newsletter is about AI for small businesses, the nightmare isn't 'needing to learn about AI'. It's 'the terrifying feeling of being left behind by competitors who are using AI to get ahead'. If your newsletter is about sustainable investing, the nightmare isn't 'wanting to invest ethically'. It's 'the anxiety that your money is supporting companies that are destroying the planet, coupled with the confusion of where to even start'.

Once you've isolated that nightmare, you can build your targeting around it. Who experiences this pain most acutely? What do they read? What tools do they use? What podcasts do they listen to? Don't just target the interest "Shopify". That's way too broad. It includes millions of consumers who have bought something from a Shopify store. Instead, target interests like "Shopify Partners", "WooCommerce", or followers of specific e-commerce gurus. These are much more likely to contain the actual store owners you want to reach. The key is to find interests that contain a significant number of your ideal subscribers, and very few people who aren't. It's about signal, not noise.

Here’s how I’d prioritise your audience testing, assuming you're starting from scratch:

Phase 1: Finding Your Core Audience (Top of Funnel - ToFu)

-> Start with 3-5 different ad sets, each with a small daily budget.
-> Each ad set should target a distinct 'theme' of detailed interests, behaviours, or demographics. For example:
-- Ad Set 1 (Competitors): Target people who follow your direct competitors or similar newsletters.
-- Ad Set 2 (Tools & Software): Target users of specific tools that your ideal subscriber would use.
-- Ad Set 3 (Gurus & Publications): Target followers of key influencers or industry magazines in your niche.
-- Ad Set 4 (Pain Points): Target interests directly related to the 'nightmare' you solve.

The goal here isn't immediate profitability. It's data collection. You're running a scientific experiment to see which pocket of the internet responds best to your message. You let them run for a few days (or until each ad set has spent at least 2-3x your target cost per subscriber) and then you ruthlessly kill the losers and shift budget to the winners.

Phase 2: Scaling with Data (Middle & Bottom of Funnel - MoFu/BoFu)

Once you have a steady stream of traffic and, more importantly, subscribers (you'll want at least a few hundred, ideally 1,000+), you can unlock Meta's most powerful tools.

-> Lookalike Audiences: This is the holy grail. You can create a 'Custom Audience' of your existing newsletter subscribers. Then, you can ask Facebook to build a 'Lookalike Audience' – an audience of millions of other users who share the same characteristics, behaviours, and interests as your best subscribers. A 1% Lookalike of your subscriber list will almost always outperform any interest-based targerting you can build manually. It's your proven audience, scaled.

-> Retargeting: Not everyone who clicks your ad and visits your landing page will subscribe immediately. That's normal. Life gets in the way. You must run a seperate campaign to retarget these people. This is your MoFu/BoFu audience. You can show them different ads – maybe a testimonial, a look inside the newsletter, or addressing a common objection. These audiences are incredibly warm and convert at a very high rate because they are already familiar with you. You'd be amazed how many conversions come from simple retargeting.

I'd say you need to be realistic about costs...

This is the question everyone asks: "What should my cost per subscriber be?" The honest answer is: it depends. It's affected by your industry, your targeting, your ad creative, your landing page, and the country you're in. However, based on my experience running hundreds of campaigns, I can give you a realistic ballpark figure for getting signups in developed, English-speaking countries like the UK.

The maths generally works like this:

You pay a certain amount for each click (Cost Per Click - CPC). A certain percentage of those clicks will then convert into subscribers on your landing page (Conversion Rate - CVR). Your Cost Per Subscriber is simply your CPC divided by your CVR.

Here’s a typical range for a well-optimised campaign targeting a developed country:

So, you could be looking at anything from under £2 to as high as £15 per subscriber. If you're seeing a cost of £4-£5, that's actually quite normal and perfectly healthy. The goal isn't to get the absolute cheapest subscriber possible; it's to acquire a *valuable* subscriber for less than they are worth to you in the long run. I remember one campaign we ran to grow an app's user base; we managed to get over 45,000 signups at under £2 each, but that was after months of rigorous testing of audiences, creatives, and landing pages to acheive that level of efficiency. You have to work to get your costs down.

You probably should look at what you're saying...

Your ad copy and creative are just as important as your objective and targeting. A great ad shown to the perfect audience can still fail if the message is wrong. The biggest mistake I see is people describing the *features* of their newsletter ("Get weekly tips and news") instead of the *transformation* it provides.

No one wants more email. They want a solution to their problem. You need a message they can't ignore. I find the 'Before-After-Bridge' framework works incredibly well for this.

-> Before: Describe their current world of pain. Agitate the 'nightmare' we talked about earlier. Show them you understand their frustration.
Example: "Another Sunday evening spent dreading the work week? Scrolling through endless articles on productivity but still feeling stuck and overwhelmed..."

-> After: Paint a vivid picture of their desired future. What does life look like once their problem is solved? This is the 'heaven' they want to get to.
Example: "Imagine waking up Monday morning with a clear, simple plan. Knowing the exact three things that will move the needle for you this week, and having the focus to get them done by Wednesday..."

-> Bridge: Position your newsletter as the simple, practical bridge that takes them from their 'hell' to their 'heaven'.
Example: "My 'Focused Five' newsletter is the bridge. Every Sunday, I send one email with five actionable, no-fluff strategies to help you win your week. No hype. Just results. Subscribe for free."

This structure works because it connects with the prospect on an emotional level. You're not just asking for their email; you're offering them a way out of a problem they're desperate to solve. Your ad creative (the image or video) should then visually represent this transformation. It could be a simple image of someone looking stressed vs someone looking relaxed and in control. This is far more powerful than just putting your logo on a coloured background.

You'll need a solid plan to put this into action...

I know this is a lot of information to take in. Writting and managing paid ad campaigns effectively involves a lot of moving parts, and it's easy to get lost. It's not about setting and forgetting; it's a continuous process of testing, learning, and optimising. To make it clearer, I've distilled my core advice into a simple, actionable plan.

This is the main advice I have for you:

As you can see, getting this right is a bit more involved than just boosting a post. It requires a strategic approach, a clear understanding of the platform's mechanics, and a commitment to testing and data analysis. This is the difference between an ad campaign that becomes a reliable growth engine for your newsletter and one that becomes a frustrating money pit.

This is the kind of strategic thinking and methodical execution we bring to our clients every day. We handle everything from the deep audience research and campaign structuring to the daily optimisations and reporting, allowing our clients to focus on what they do best – creating great content.

If you'd like to have a chat and go through your specific plans in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation strategy session where we can audit your current setup (if you have one) and map out a clear path forward. It's a great way to get some expert eyes on your project and see if professional help might be the right next step for you.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh