Boosting a post is easy and convenient. Will it get the same result as taking the time to use the Facebook™ Ad Manager.
It really comes down to understanding what happens when you choose the Boost Post option
The Truth About The Difference Between ‘Boost Post’ & Establish an Ad in Facebook™ Ad Manager.
Lots of Facebook™ advertisers find the Facebook™ Ad Manager complicated and difficult to navigate – the Power Editor even more so, so they boost posts. Boosted posts are easy to set up… you just pretty much hit the BOOST POST option & you’re done. This is made even easier by reminders from Facebook™ to boost top performing or low performing posts.
Boosted posts are easy to set up… you just pretty much hit the BOOST POST option & you’re done. This is made even easier by reminders from Facebook to boost top performing or low performing posts.
What is not so widely known is that Boosted Posts on Facebook™ are set by default to the campaign objective of ‘Engagement’. In other words, the system presumes that Engagement with the post is what you wanted.
This means that Facebook™ will serve your boosted post up to users who meet your target audience criteria and who have a history of clicking LIKE, LOVE etc or commenting on posts. That is how engagement is defined. If your post is a video, it will be served to people who generally tend to engage with video content – of any nature.
Boosting a post with a link and achieving a call to action such as a link click are not the same thing.
If your post, however, is NOT intended to be targeting people who like to engage in posts, and you were actually looking for people to respond to your call to action, click to your website and/or perform a function such as to book an appointment or purchase a product, post engagement will not work for you.
In this instance you need to use a campaign objective of Traffic To Site – quite a different set of prospects are delivered your ad.
If you want to get as much exposure as possible for your brand or service – you just want people to become aware that your business offers x, y or z – then you need to optimise for REACH.
Plenty of people see an ad and acknowledge in their heads that they saw it, but don’t click like or comment and do not follow the link. If having people see your ad was your overall most important goal, then boosting a post will not be the optimum method.
In short, boosting a post is fast, but ineffective for any other purpose than Engagement.
To really understand this fully, you need to become familiar with the different segments of targeting available at campaign level in the Facebook Ad Manager:
Overall Objective – Reach: Reach as many people in your target audience as you can. Charged per thousand people reached.
Overall Objective – Traffic to Site. Get as many clicks to your website as you can from people identified in your target audience. Charged on a cost per click basis.
Overall Objective – Conversion on call to action: get as many actions as possible from the target audience, charged either per click or per thousand impressions.
If you found this useful, why not join our email list for regular updates!