Boosted Posts vs Facebook Ads: What’s best for you?
It’s understandable that to many businesses, social media ads can be a pretty intimidating place. Boosting posts can seem like the swift and simple way forward on Facebook, but it doesn’t mean it’s the right approach for your business and goals.
We often hear from clients & prospective clients that they’ve tried paid content on Facebook via boosting posts but that it hasn’t really worked for them. It’s certainly the more accessible option, but not necessarily the right approach.
Boosted posts and Facebook ads have different benefits, so it’s important to know how and when they are best applied. We’ve broken down the benefits and limitations of each to help you understand the best uses, whilst hopefully showing you why it’s best not to give up.
Boosting Posts
Meta describes boosting a post as ‘…a post to your Page’s Timeline that you can apply money to in order to boost it to an audience of your choosing. This is the simplest way to advertise on Facebook.’
The benefits of boosting are thus pretty straightforward:
- Super easy to setup and can be achieved all on your timeline
- In comparison to other forms of advertising, it can be relatively cheap
- I quick way for your content to reach more people
However, because of its quick and easy style, it does have limitations:
- Compared to Facebook ads, you’re limited when it comes to crafting certain audiences to target
- Your post will still appear with an ‘ad’ tag, so followers will know it’s paid for rather than organically driven.
Facebook Ads
Unlike boosted posts, Facebook ads are crafted in the ads manager space. Here you’re able to build much more customisable ads and audiences.
The benefits include:
- Focusing on particular goals. Decide from a number of options including traffic, lead generation or conversions depending on your focus
- Select ad placement. Choose from a variety of placements, such as news feed, Facebook and Instagram stories, messenger ads and more.
- Be more creative with content. From video to single image ads to carousel style, embed links in your content to integrate your goals with the assets included
- Intelligent audience construction. Use a number of different advanced approaches to target your intended audience.
The issues you may find with ads include:
- The cost can be more expensive on average when compared to boosting a post
- For beginners, the ads interface can be confusing and a little difficult to navigate. Ads are also built from the ground up, rather than putting money behind existing content, meaning you need to spend more time crafting an ad before it goes live.
Which is for you?
Ultimately, both offer different benefits, and users should consider their end goal before embarking on using one or the other. If you have a quality post that you want to put in front of as many people as possible, boosting may be the way to go. If you have a more specific goal, such as driving website traffic, or targeting a more specific audience, ads would be the better option.
Think Facebook ads may be for you?
If you’re considering Facebook ads, but find it a little daunting, perhaps we could help. Want to find out more? Let’s have a chat! Get in contact with us by clicking here.
