Not sure what the difference is between a boosted post and a Facebook Ad? Don’t worry! We’re going to take you through it now.
A boosted post is referred to as the most basic level of advertising that you can do on Facebook. It includes creating a budget for your post to get a greater reach. Facebook Ads are more advanced in comparison to boosts. Facebook ads allow you to tailor your ads to a much more defined target audience. But when you stop running the ad, it’s removed from Facebook, whereas a boosted post will remain on your page.
The main difference between the two is: a boosted post is great for page likes, comments, and shares or overall brand awareness. Facebook ads are great for more targeted goals, like app installs, website conversions, video views, shop orders, lead generation and more (although ads can also be great for page likes and brand awareness – confusing much?).
Boosted Posts
Whilst a boosted post might not be advanced as a Facebook Ad, there are still many benefits of using them. Some benefits include:
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Make up for declining organic reach: The organic reach on Facebook is continuously declining, specifically from businesses. Facebook wants to fill newsfeeds with follower’s friends and families rather than brands and using boosting is a great way to overcome that obstacle.
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Reach a wider, targeted audience: You will be able to reach a much wider audience as you aren’t limited to people who already subscribe to your page. You can also set parameters for the types of people who will see your post. E.g. you can narrow your boost to target one very specific demographic, like 20 to 30-year-old women in Australia.
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Easy to use: This is a great option for users that aren’t so tech-savvy but who want to make their page known. You can boost any post, from a photo or a short message to a video or link.Control: You’ll have the option to manage your post once it goes live. So, you might cut your planned run short, or choose to boost another post instead.
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Access to analytics: Thanks to Facebook Insights, you’ll get a detailed summary of the performance of your boosted posts. From there, you’ll see a breakdown of all your posts analytics — including boosted ones — like reach, clicks, reactions, comments, and shares. You’ll also have the opportunity to boost your other posts.
Facebook Ads
As we’ve said, Facebook Ads is more advanced than a boosted post… But what can you do with a Facebook Ad?
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Choose ad placements: You get the ability to choose where you want your ad placed, whether it is in Facebook news feed, side ads, messenger ads, Instagram stories, instant articles and audience network. You’ll also be able to decide if you want the ad on Instagram as well (even if you don’t have an Insta page).
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Use specific ad objectives: Choosing an objective early on will help you align your campaign with your goals. This can be easily achieved as Facebook Ads Manager prompts you to choose objectives like store traffic, web clicks, conversions, and lead generation. You can also create and manage ads through the Ads Manager mobile app.
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Maintain creative control: The extras like call-to-action buttons, carousel ads and more are features that will drive the audience to take action, and are tools that aren’t all available when doing a boosted post.
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Use advanced targeting controls: With Facebook Ads, you can use more advanced tools to create overlapping audience types, lookalike audiences and more, whereas boosted posts are limited to interest age and gender for ad targeting. You can also create specific audiences for multiple ads, under the one campaign.
The nutshell
Facebook advertising can be confusing, but it does work. Whether to boost or advertise is decided on a case-by-case basis, and while over-simplifying it does not do either justice, we’re going to try anyway! So your take-away “in a nutshell” statement is: Boost a post for more post engagement. Ad for everything else!
Happy Facebooking!