Should you target all countries when optimizing for a purchase?
Don’t scream at me, I’m mainly challenging our assumptions here. The more I’ve asked myself this question, the more I want to experiment with it.
It’s generally advised you don’t target all countries when optimizing for leads or any type of engagement. The reason is pretty simple…
There’s a VERY wide range in costs to reach people by country. Meanwhile, the rate of engagement may be about the same worldwide. If you optimize for leads or engagement when targeting worldwide, almost all of your budget will be spent on the cheapest countries to reach.
Why? Because Meta thinks you only care about the initial action, which is the lead. But these cheap leads are very unlikely to become paying customers in some countries — particularly those it’s cheapest to reach.
In theory, optimizing for a purchase should be different. And it’s related to why targeting all countries isn’t ideal for other types of engagement.
While that range of costs to reach people by country still exists, the rate of purchase will not be the same by country. This is a good thing.
The algorithm shouldn’t waste your budget on cheap impressions because it knows that you need purchases. If you target all countries when optimizing for purchases, the algorithm should adjust. If a country isn’t leading to a good Cost per Purchase, your money will be spent elsewhere.
Or at least, this is the way the algorithm should work. It’s why it’s generally okay to use all placements when optimizing for a purchase. It’s the same concept. Audience Network is a huge issue when optimizing for Link Clicks because of the high volume of low-quality clicks it provides. But it doesn’t provide conversions, so the algorithm adjusts.
Have you ever targeted all countries when your goal is sales? What happened?