“I can boost this post to reach an extra 5,000 people?” Dont.
You run a Facebook or Instagram business account and put up your new post, It reached 500 people organically and now you are being met with messages saying that you should “boost” your post to reach more people, I understand that it is tempting and in some cases it is actually worth while, but in this blog post I want to explain the reasons that you should be promoting your posts through business manager rather than use the default “boost” button you find on your post.
The biggest difference between promoting a post and boosting it are the options you are met with in regards to targeting and bidding, these restrict your post a lot when it comes to reaching the right audience for your business or even generating the correct KPI’s or Leads.
When you choose to promote your business through Facebook’s Ad Manager you have full control of the ad you are creating and can choose different content styles and even create new content directing through ad manager with all new animations and design options that you can use to customize and build out completley unique and eye catching adverts than the standard image and copy that your competitiors might use.
Limitations found when boosting a post:
- Limited to interests targeting, and not advanced demographic and behavioral options
- Broad fans plus “friends of fans” targeting
- No placement or device targeting (Desktop vs. Mobile vs. Column)
- Limited duration of ad flights; there’s no ongoing option
- Can’t use custom audience or conversion tracking features
When running a business you should always have a strategy when it comes to social and most businesses create a funnel to market their business which always leads to an end goal or certain KPI’s that they want to achieve, in order to do this correctly boosting a post simply wont help unless you are looking for reach. When using Facebooks Ad Manager you can do much more to help achieve these goals like targeting specific interests or behaviors online.
Facebook Ads allow you to achieve the goals of your lower funnel such as:
- Driving in-store traffic? Consider redeemable Facebook “Offers.”
- Looking to acquire new leads? Conversion pixel-tracked link posts or native lead forms will do the trick.
- Starting a 1-to-1 conversation? You can run ads right to Messenger and engage prospects with a chat bot.
- Marketing an event? There’s an ad type for that too.
- Want in store visits? You can track them now too.
Conclusion:
While Boosting a post is far easier and quicker to do to reach new users, you could dedicated 10-20 mins to create an ad that will generate you much better results for your business than high numbers of reach that in the long run may be useless in terms of revenue and sales. Using the correct targeting will allow you to monitor your ads and keep track of which are working and which are not, you can easily disable ads you find to be under performing while focusing on your ads that are doing well. This will allow you to monitor your ad spend much better and keep track of your expenses on marketing with the (ROAS) Return on ad spend value found in Ads manager.