Boosting is so easy and very tempting. Have you ever been tempted to click on the ‘Boost’ button that appears once you’ve published a Facebook post that is already getting noticed? I have. I’ve boosted posts previously – before I realised the power of the Facebook Ad that is.
It’s easy to understand why so many business owners boost a post – it’s flattering when Facebook prompts you to boost with an encouraging message of “your post is performing 95% better than ….”. And who doesn’t want their Facebook posts to do well.
But there’s a huge difference between a post ‘doing well’ – one that gets lots of comments and likes – and one that gets you paying customers. In this blog I’ll be telling you the difference between boosting a post and using Facebook ads and discussing whether boosting posts on Facebook is worth it.
Boosting Facebook Posts
Let’s take a quick look at the features available to you when you boost a Facebook post
Facebook could not have made this any easier. After their encouraging message inviting you to boost a post for a relatively small sum of money there’s not a lot you need to do.
- Click the blue Boost button
- Select your objective from a choice of three:
- Send people to your website
- Get people to react to your post
- To connect and chat with people
- Choose whether to add a button to sit directly underneath your post, for example you can direct someone to click on a ‘learn more’ button which will take them to your website.
Select who the post is to be boosted to. You can pick people from a certain age group, from their interests, from their location, etc.
State where the boosted post is to land – you have a choice of Facebook, Messenger and Instagram
Confirm the duration.
The ‘all knowing all seeing’ Facebook knows who is likely to react with your post from past behaviours and send the post to them. By boosting a post, you will definitely see a lot of interaction and maybe more people visiting your website, but the reality is that you may not make any sales from it
What is the Ads platform and how does it differ to boosting a post?
“So, exactly how does the Facebook advertising platform work as it looks so complicated?” I hear this from a lot from my clients. But, once you know your way around the ad platform, you’ll wonder why you’ve not used it as part of your social media marketing strategy before.
As you can see you now have 9 objectives to select from to form a sales funnel (rather than just 3 objectives when you boost).
- Awareness (first column shown above) – this targets people who have not heard of your brand. Facebook will send your ad to people who they believe are likely to interact and take interest in the post even though they have not seen a post from you previously.
- Consideration (second column shown above) – this targets people who have heard of you and are considering buying from you.
- Conversion (third column shown above) – this targets individuals who, in most cases, know your brand and are likely to buy from you.
And just look at the placement choices! With 17 different options you can really be where your potential customers hang out.
You can also create as many ads as you like – in fact, the more the better! These posts will never sit on your business page and only be seen by your target audience.
Facebook ads v boost
Let’s go over some of the main Facebook ads vs boosting points:
- Facebook ads give you 9 objectives to choose from. Boosts only give you 3.
- Facebook ads give you 17 placements to choose from. Boosts only give you 3.
- You can add Facebook pixels to an ad. Pixels track the journey a person takes if they click onto a post of yours and then click the link onto your website. It even tracks what they click on once they’re on the website. Not available when boosting.
- Facebook ads are seen by your potential customers who may buy your service or product, unlike boosted posts which go to people who are likely to click the like button or leave a comment.
- Facebook ads allow you to target individuals at different stages of your sales funnel. When boosting you won’t be able to reach people in the ‘conversion’ phase.
- You can send Facebook ads to individuals who have visited your website, tracked by the pixel. Not available when boosting.
- You can send Facebook ads to individuals who have put something of yours into the shopping cart, but not finished the purchase again using the pixel. Not available when boosting.
- You can send Facebook ads to only those you follow you. Not available when boosting.
- You can pause and resume Facebook ads at any time. Not available when boosting.
- You can duplicate, test and compare ads to see what pictures give you the best conversion rate for a particular audience. Not available when boosting.
- Your ads won’t appear on your page, so you can create loads of sales ads without filling up your page. Boosted posts are already published and are on your page, so you don’t want to do too many for fear of putting off your followers.
This last bullet point is very significant. A Facebook business page should share content that really adds value and strengthens your relationship with customers – it shouldn’t be about the hard sell. So, if you were wondering whether you should boost every Facebook post, then no – your page will soon fill up with very salesy posts and turn potential customers off.
Analytics and cost effectiveness
Is boosting Facebook posts a waste of money? You can find this out for yourself. If you’ve ever boosted a post, you’ll know how much you spent and whether you got any sales from it.
Before I sign off allow me to quickly show you some of the analytics available when you use Facebook ads. Here’s an example from an ad I ran to advertise my Online Facebook Course which targeted individuals who have not heard of my brand before, with the one objective to head to my website to download a free tutorial.
You can see that I created a lot of ad posts (14 in total) for just the one product. For some ads I used the same image but changed the text and so on. This allowed me to analyse which ads gave me a greater return on investment and create a content formula that works for my target audience.
Test. And test again to get the best value. It’s easy to switch off the ads that just aren’t working to focus your budget on those that do!
Want to learn more about Facebook ads?
Yes – that’s great news! My next interactive Facebook Ad online workshop starts on Tuesday 17th November 2020 at 9.30am. I’ll guide you through all the features you need to know about for one hour every day for four days and give you some homework so you can get your campaign started. At the end of day four, you’ll have your very own Facebook ad campaign up and running.
Bye for now,
Becs
