Facebook boosted posts versus Facebook ad campaigns
Updated January 2022
Advertising options through Facebook can be one of the most cost-effective paid advertising platforms available to businesses. Generally, you have two options; to boost your organic post or to set up a full-blown campaign of ads using Facebook Business Manager.
More often than not, we would recommend the latter.
What is a Boosted ad?
A boosted ad is simply applying some budget to an organic post to get it in front of more eyes on Facebook.
If you have a Facebook page for your business or community group, you may have experienced one of the following:
- Once you’ve posted to Facebook organically (that is, you’ve simply put a post on your page), you will see a “Boost Post” button in the bottom right corner;
- Facebook may send you a message along the lines of, “This post is performing better than most. Would you like to Boost it?”
Boosting a Facebook post is an easy process
- Click on Boost Post in the bottom right of your organic post;
- Select an action button (for example, Learn more, Contact Us, Shop etc…);
- Select a goal (brand awareness, messages, likes etc);
- Select a previously used audience or create a new one (with limited criteria available);
- Apply a budget;
- Select the duration for the ad to run.
When is Boosting a Facebook post suitable?
- You want more people (both current followers and also non-followers) to see your post;
- You have a current post that’s doing quite well organically and you just want it to do a bit better (maybe for just a short period of time);
- You have a limited budget;
- You have limited knowledge and experience with more complex Facebook advertising options.
What is a Facebook Ad campaign?
To set up a Facebook ad campaign, you will need a Facebook Business Manager account.
The process for paid advertising on this platform is a little (well OK, a lot) more complicated and detailed than simply using Boost options.
You will create a Campaign that sets your objectives or goals. Within that campaign, you will create Ad Sets that determine who will see your ad, when, where, for how long and how much you will spend etc. Within your Ad Sets, you will create your actual Ads which could be image ads, text ads, video ads and so on. You may choose to run them on Facebook only or perhaps Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, display ads etc.
Why should I create Facebook Ad campaigns instead of Boosted ads?
Facebook ad campaigns allow you to do much more of the following:
Select an objective - more choice
An objective is a result you want to achieve from your ad. For example, that might be:
- Awareness – get more people to know your name and your product;
- Reach – get as many people as possible to see your ad;
- Traffic – get more people to click on your ad and go through to your website;
- Engagement – get more people to like, comment, share your ad;
- Watch video – get more people to watch a video you have posted, and more.
Based on the objective you select, Facebook will serve up your ad to the people who are most likely to act upon or interact with your ad in the manner that you want. This is due to the platform’s powerful algorithms.
Facebook’s algorithms know exactly how its users behave. It knows, for example:
- who is more likely to watch a video;
- who is more likely to “like” your page;
- who is more likely to comment, like or share your content;
- who is more likely to click through to your website, and so on.
So, selecting your objective is incredibly important and you need to ensure you give it due consideration. What action do you want Facebook users to take when they see your ad?
Define your audience - more choice
Sure, you can select an audience with Boost but the defining options are limited. With Business Manager, you can select, amongst many things, age, gender, location, interests, occupation and many more detailed options.
Decide where your ad will show - more choice
You have a number of options for where your ad will show, using Business Manager ad campaigns. This could include:
- Facebook feed (desktop and mobile)
- Facebook right column
- Messenger
- Audience network
- Instant articles
This allows you to optimise your ad for your specific target audience by selecting where to show your ad based on where your audience is. It also allows you to change your creatives (your images) to better suit each platform.
Specify your copy
With your Boosted post, your only option is to ad budget to the current organic post – that is, your boosted (paid) post will look exactly the same as your organic post. With a Business Manager campaign, you can A/B text copy, have different CTA's for each ad etc.
With an ads campaign, there are several components of the ad copy and content you can adjust:
- The introductory text;
- The heading;
- The sub-heading;
- The URL(s);
- The image(s);
- The video;
- Will you use a single image, a video or a carousel, etc.
In summary
As tempting as it is to react to Facebook letting you know your post is doing well and that you should consider Boosting it, we recommend you resist (although sometimes it is an appropriate action). Sure, it seems so simple and that’s the point. It is simple; both in what you have to do but more importantly, what you might get out of it.
But the Business Manager can be complex; both in planning for your campaigns, setting them up, monitoring them and adjusting them when/if required. So, make sure you do your homework and seek assistance if you're not sure.
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