Boosting Posts vs Using Facebook Ads Manager: What you need to know…

Love them or hate them, Facebook Ads are a great tool to promote your business online, but only when done right.

One of the reasons business owners dislike 'Facebook Ads' is because they've boosted posts and got little to no return. 

Boosting a post (Boosts) is different to running Facebook Ads through Ads Manager (Facebook's native ad management tool). While both show up on Facebook feeds as a 'Sponsored' post and both are referred to Facebook Ads, understanding the difference is key to understanding how to get the best results from Facebook Ads.

Boosts

Boosting a post is essentially paying to promote a post already shared to your Facebook page, often with the purpose to get in in front of more people and to get more 'engagement', usually from people not already following your page.

Facebook offers a similar option to 'Promote' your page using your cover photo and page bio.

Boosting allows you to easily spend money to promote your business without leaving the Facebook or Instagram app and unfortunately ease comes at a cost as many people skip some important steps.

When you Boost a post, Facebook often selects  a lot of default options that aren't always in the best interest of your business. Common examples include using the default audience of everyone 18+ NZ-wide and optimising for engagement or messages instead of reach or website traffic.

Facebook Ads (through Ads Manager)

Facebook Ads are run through Ads Manager, Facebook’s interface for managing ad campaigns. This allows you to create more purposefully designed ads that don’t appear on your regular Page Feed. This gives you more control over the content, ad objective, budget and targeting. 

Ads Manager allows you to run multiple ads within a single budget and gives you many more options in terms of ad goals and ad creative.

Understanding the key differences:
Comparing the results of a Post Boost vs a Facebook ad is like comparing apple and oranges. It can be hard to compare results from Boosted posts because of the variables involved - spending $20 boosting one post might have completely different results from boosting another post for the same amount. Even if you’re happy Boosting posts and are getting good results, it’s worth knowing what your options are.

Audience and intention
When you're making a post to your page you're generally speaking to an audience that is already following you and has an idea of what your business is and sells. If you're wanting to reach new customers and people already not following your page which is generally the goal of boosting, you may want to provide more or different information to these people.

Boosting can often be an afterthought after making a page post. With Facebook Ads Manager, you’re creating a campaign designed to be run as advertising. That being said, it is possible to use Ads Manager to further promote existing posts, similar to Boosting but with much more control. 

Reach vs Impressions
The metrics between the two can also be confusing but also very telling as to why certain boosts do better than others. A key thing to note is the difference between reach and impressions. Reach is the number of individual people who have seen your post, impressions is the total number of times your posts has appeared. A boosted post can generate a lot of impressions but the reach isn't actually very high because your post was shown to a smaller group of people multiple times rather than showing it once to a much larger audience.

Tips for improvement if Boosting: 
​My guiding principle is that ads should be set up to reach the right people with the right content, in the right places, at the right time. This looks like getting your target audience right and having an engaging ad creative people will take a second or two to look at and read rather than scrolling right past.

• Be selective with your target audience
• Ensure your post has a call-to-action
• Track your ad spend 
• Understand what goal Facebook is optimising for

However you're looking for cost-effective, consistent ad campaigns, using Facebook Ads manager is the way to go as it allows you to reach more people for less if brand awareness is your goal.

When it's comes to successful social media marketing, consistency is key and Facebook Ad manager enable you to create much more strategic campaigns over a longer period of time rather than an ad hoc Boost every now and then.

Learn more about Facebook Ads targeting