Should You Create a Tailored Leads Campaign Over the Manual Setup?

If you’ve selected the Leads objectiveWhen you create a campaign, one of the first things you'll do is select an objective. The campaign objective is your ultimate goal. Your selection will impact options, including optimization and delivery. Options include Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App Promotion, and Sales. More in Meta Ads Manager recently, you may have seen an immediate prompt for a Tailored Leads Campaign. It looks like this…

Meta has been testing and rolling out Tailored Leads since November of 2022, if not earlier. And if you’ve experimented with Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, you’ve certainly spotted similarities.

Is there a clear benefit to using Tailored Leads CampaignsThe campaign is the foundation of your Facebook ad. This is where you'll set an advertising objective, which defines what you want your ad to achieve. More? Do Tailored Leads provide unique features and optimizations compared to manual leads campaigns, similar to the way Advantage+ Shopping does compared to manual sales campaigns?

Let’s explore…

Defining Tailored Leads

Let’s go back to that initial definition of a Tailored Leads Campaign:

Create your campaign in fewer steps using the tailored leads campaign. It’s preset with built-in best practices to help you get more leads at the best value.

So far, nothing jumps out as a unique benefit. Meta defines it as “preset with built-in best practices.” That doesn’t inspire excitement. It doesn’t sound unique.

Let’s go through the setup process…

Campaign Setup

First, you won’t be able to utilize A/B testingSplit testing (or A/B testing) allows you to test changes in Facebook variables like ad creative, audience, or placement to determine which approach performs best. More or Advantage Campaign BudgetAdvantage Campaign Budget (formerly Campaign Budget Optimization) automatically manages your Facebook campaign budget across ad sets to get you the overall best results. More directly from campaign creation. Those options aren’t there.

The campaign and ad setAn ad set is a Facebook ads grouping where settings like targeting, scheduling, optimization, and placement are determined. More are completed in one shorter step. This is a streamlined process.

One big difference is that the Tailored Leads Campaign only includes four conversion location options: Instant Forms, Messenger, Instagram, and Calls.

It’s missing Website, Instant Forms and Messenger (combined), and App. Here’s the conversion location section when setting this up manually…

This is a big deal, especially if you like to collect leads from your website. You won’t be using Tailored Leads.

There also isn’t an option to use manual bidding with Tailored Leads. This is stripped down.

Presets

Some of the missing features aren’t actually missing. You just won’t be able to change them, so Meta put them out of view. There are several presets that you aren’t able to customize.

Now we see that the bid strategyWhen you enter an ad into the auction, Meta will bid for you. But in some cases, it may benefit you to adjust the bidding strategy to get better results. Options include Highest Volume, Cost Per Result Goal, Highest Value, ROAS Goal, and Bid Cap. More is set at Highest Volume. You won’t be able to change that.

Advantage+ PlacementsFormerly known as Automatic Placements. When you utilize Advantage+ Placements, Meta will automatically optimize which placements are used and when to get you the most results for your budget. More is automatically on, and you won’t be able to remove placements if you prefer.

Finally, you’ll be optimizing for Leads, which sorta explains why the Website conversion location is missing. When you utilize the website conversion location, you then go through the steps of selecting your pixel and the optimizationThe Performance Goal is chosen within the ad set and determines optimization and delivery. How you optimize impacts who sees your ad. Meta will show your ad to people most likely to perform your desired action. More event of your choice.

Added Features?

Advantage+ Shopping also streamlines the campaign creation process by locking in presets. But what makes it especially unique is that it offers features related to defining your current customers and some added machine learning to drive sales.

Unless I’m missing something, I see none of that here. Tailored Leads Campaigns simply appear to be a Boost button for leads in Ads Manager. It simplifies things for newer advertisers to prevent them from modifying settings that will make their results worse.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think Tailored Leads Campaigns offer anything that is unique, special, or powerful. All indications are that you could easily recreate a Tailored Leads Campaign by creating a manual leads campaign that utilizes the same settings.

You could not say the same of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. You can’t completely recreate it with a manual campaign (mainly due to the current customer features and machine learning).

Should You Use It?

Sure, knock yourself out. I’d love to be proven wrong and hear that results from Tailored Leads Campaigns are incredible and can’t be duplicated with manual campaigns. But I have serious doubts.

If you are overwhelmed and are unsure about the best way to set up your campaigns, Tailored Leads is a good starting point.