Boosted Posts or Facebook Ads - What’s better for your business?

If you regularly post on social media, you might have come across the ‘Boost’ button, on your posts. But is this really comparable to running Facebook ad campaigns? We break down the set-up options available to you…

What is a boosted post?

With boosted ads, you choose a post that has already been published on your page and promote it with a wider audience. When you create a boosted post, you’ll be prompted to choose a target audience, a budget and duration. For this reason, boosting a post is considered one of the simplest ways to advertise your business. Boosted posts are still considered ads and will show as ‘sponsored’ in someone’s news feed.

What are Facebook Ads?

Facebook Ads have advanced targeting options such as interests, behaviours, placement, custom audiences and other options that aren’t available when you boost a post from your page. Facebook Ads are managed on three levels – campaign, ad set and ads - each with their own features that can be tweaked and customised to suit your budget and target audience.

So, what’s the difference?

Boosted ads have the advantage of piggy-backing of a well-performing social media post to reach more people to which your audience might be more open. However, your targeting capabilities are more limited, and there’s fewer insights – not very useful for a marketing strategy!

With Facebook Ads, you have more control over who sees your ads and can use advanced targeting options to reach the right audience. One of the biggest advantages of Facebook Ads is the ability to create remarketing audiences. Remarketing allows you to retarget visitors to your website who left without converting. In our office we call that the “lowest hanging fruit” in digital marketing!

Not only that, but Ads manager contains just about every reporting metric under the sun (374 – to be exact!). Track conversions, clicks, costs and measure Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) to monitor your ad performance and optimise your campaigns more effectively.

Calls to Action

What action do you want your customers to take? Using Facebook Ads allows you to choose 22 more options, such as ‘Apply Now’, ‘Get Offer’, ‘Get Quote’ and ‘Order Now’. 

Ad Objectives

What do you want your ad to achieve? Boosted ads shares five objective types with Ads Manager, such as Engagement and Website Visits, but Ads Manager will also help you show ads for Reach, Clicks, Sales and Instant Forms.  

Placement

Where do you want your ads to appear? You can choose basic Facebook and Instagram feed placements when boosting a post. On Facebook Ads, you can select up to 15 more options, including stories and in-stream videos. 

Audience

Who do you want to show your ads to (or not show to)? Will you target a cold audience or warm audience? Both boosting and ads manager let you target gender, age, location, demographics. If you want additional targeting like interests, behaviours or remarketing then you’ll need to look at Facebook Ads. 

Ad Copy

What will your ad say? If you want to use the same caption that was posted on social media, then boosting posts is the way to go. If want to say something else – you’ll need Ads Manager! 

Ultimately what you should use boils down to what you want your ads to achieve. Both options are a good way to get your business in front of people who would otherwise be unfamiliar with your brand. If your objective is to reach more people or engage with your audience, then boosted posts are an easy way to do this. But if your goal is to get more meaningful business i.e., leads, sales, store visits or app installs then you need to run Facebook Ads or you will be likely wasting money.

To recap

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