Facebook advertising is extremely popular these days. Both big brands and local companies advertise on Facebook, regardless of their budgets. Instead of wondering if it’s worth promoting posts on Facebook, let’s investigate why it is and how to do it well.
Marketers are faced with a dilemma – whether to make use of the “boost post” feature (around which hundreds of questionable myths have arisen) or to promote posts via Ads Manager.
We will examine the characteristics, similarities, and differences of these two methods and let you choose the one that is most suitable for your particular situation.
To begin with, the Boost Post feature was introduced in 2012 and has not evolved since then. This option, accessed through a simplified advertising panel, permits you to promote a selected post without too much trouble.
What actually happens when you click on the “Boost Post” button? Facebook creates a simple advertisement campaign aimed at increasing engagement for the promoted post.
This is where the problem, or challenge, begins – because with the Boost Port feature, you have less control over how the ads appear. The options in Ads Manager are much more extensive.
In your Facebook Page feed, you will find a “Boost post” button under each published post.
During the next step, you will be redirected to a simplified dashboard to complete your post campaign.
This is where you can set up the goal (or let Facebook do it for you), audience, basic placements, call to action, budget, and duration of your campaign.
However, you will quickly realize that the three goals available in the basic panel: traffic to the page, activity under the post, and initiating a conversation start to limit you. Your competition are therefore probably doing something better if you can see their extensive and diverse ads on your wall.
Promoting a post (as suggested by Facebook) will never be as effective as launching a post promotion campaign.
You need to do so via Ads Manager.
We recently discussed how to create and optimize campaigns in FB Ads Manager.
After creating a campaign, you need to proceed with creating an ad set, and then you need to move onto Ads. From there, select a post on your Facebook page that you want to promote.
Promoted Posts give you more control over your budget and provide you with a better overview of your campaigns and ad sets.
Sponsored posts can be set up via Ads Manager and on a profile by clicking the “Boost post” button. Some people recommend against the second method because by setting the ad directly on the Facebook Page you cannot take full advantage of all possible options.
While this is true, most of the important variables such as the target group, budget, duration of the advertisement, and more recently even advertisement placement can be set directly from there, thus taking Ads Manager out of the equation.
We recommend referring to Ads Manager if you wish to set certain options to be unavailable. For example, you can disable placement if you believe the ad is not suitable for a certain default setting.
In the end, boosted posts may never be as effective as ads that are created and optimized in Ads Manager. In the latter case, a larger budget, greater creativity, and more time will have to be dedicated. However, this method allows for the possibility of optimization that decreases the cost per click, allows for remarketing or choice of several advertising targets, as well as selecting display times and devices.
On the other hand, there are thousands of people who do not wish to or cannot afford such an extensive campaign. They decide then to simply boost posts, without investing much time in the process of analysis.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but promoting posts offers you more opportunities to optimize your campaigns. The best solution is the one that works best for you, so perhaps you should test all of the options out?
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