No, we’re not trying to be dramatic, we really do think you should stop boosting your Facebook posts and here’s why…
If you’re new to Facebook Ads, or online advertising in general, you’ve probably made your first go at digital advertising by running Facebook Ads via the devilishly convenient boosted post. However, many businesses’ assume that boosted posts are the same thing as Facebook Ads. But there are some huge differences between Facebook Ads and boosted posts.
What is a boosted post?
Simply put, a boosted post is a post to your Facebook Business Page that you have put a little money behind in order to reach more people than it would organically. When you boost a post with that bright blue button, the post is delivered to the News Feeds of users who fit within your general targeting parameters; interests, demographics and geography. Don’t get me wrong, this is the simplest way to advertise on Facebook.
But while it’s easy to hit ‘Boost’ on your Facebook posts, boosting is likely not the best option to drive true business value for your brand.
So, what’s the difference between Boosting and Facebook Ads?
Whilst boosting can help you improve your post’s reach, that improvement is only superficial. In addition, your targeting options are extremely limited. Yes, you can choose behaviours and interests, demographics, and geography, but, you can’t use your custom audiences or select ad placements like feeds, market place messenger, stories or even Instagram.
As a rule, you should build custom audiences based on your own website traffic, your Facebook page and post engagement, your Instagram traffic, and your email lists. And you should consider creating Lookalike Audiences – audiences with similar characteristics to your custom audience. By doing this, you can achieve real results with Facebook Ads. And unfortunately, boosting does not allow you to use any of these audience options which is why the improvements are ‘superficial’.
In a nutshell, by boosting your posts, you’re not leveraging the full potential of Facebook’s advertising system.
What should I be doing instead?
Instead of boosting your posts, consider creating promoted posts using Facebook’s Ad Manager, or even familiarising yourself with the platform. By using the Ads Manager, you’ll be able to expand your content’s reach and optimise your Facebook Ads for traffic or engagement, just like a boosted post, but you will also be benefitting from better targeting and more features, whilst also increasing your control over your budget via the ad auction settings.
Setting up a simple promoted post campaign in Facebook’s Ads Manager is simple. Here is seven easy steps to get you started:
- In Ads Manager, click the green “create” button, under Campaign Tab
- Select your objective: “Awareness” “Consideration” or “Conversion”.
- Choose your targeting parameters to ensure your content reaches your target audience.
- Define your budget: you can set a daily budget or a lifetime budget (campaigns with a lifetime budget will end once the budget has ran out).
- In the “Creative” section, choose “Use Existing Post” and select the post/s you want to sponsor – or you can create new ad creative if required.
- Confirm and launch the campaign.
- Repeat this process until you’ve promoted all applicable posts.
This process does require more time than simply boosting your posts, however based on our experience, this method generates better results, at a more cost-effective rate.
If you want help with your Facebook Ads Management or Facebook Ads Training contact us today:
Phone: 028 3754 9025
Email: [email protected]
