Ah, the Facebook Boost button… One of my favorite marketing tools and also one of the most misunderstood.
If you are in charge of a small business Facebook page, you have likely received the notification telling you that a post is performing well and you should start boosting that Facebook post to reach more people.
Boosting posts was something that was introduced by Facebook to make their advertising platform easier to use for people that don’t have the time to learn all of the ins and outs of the ads platform. Instead of creating unique ads to distribute, you could use your normal posts that are performing well and show them to a larger audience.
We think that boosting a Facebook post is a great strategy, especially for small businesses, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some cons to that strategy.
So what does it mean to boost a Facebook post, what is the best way to do it, and what are the other pros and cons so you can make an informed decision if it’s the best way for you to advertise on Facebook?
What does it mean to boost a Facebook Post?
As we alluded to above, boosting a Facebook post is Facebook’s entry-level way to use paid advertising on their platform. Instead of going through the process of creating a full paid ad strategy with unique images and copy, you can instead simply use the posts that you are already creating as advertisements.
If you are wondering “where do I go to start boosting a Facebook post?” The answer is quite simple. All you need to do is look for the blue button that sits beneath any one of your current posts and click it.
From there, just follow the steps that Facebook gives you.
But hold on just a second before you just go and start boosting things… We have some advice.
How do I boost a Facebook post correctly?
It is one thing to boost a Facebook post. It is another thing altogether to do it correctly.
If you want an in-depth summary of best practices for boosting a Facebook post the right way, we have an entire blog dedicated that is guaranteed to take your boosts to the next level in only a few minutes, but in summary, make sure you do the following things:
- Select the right objective: Whatever your goal is for your advertisement, make sure your objective is correct.
- Create your own audience: Facebook is going to give you some automatic options. Don’t use them. Make sure you are creating your own audiences via your ideal customer profile.
- Turn off automatic placements: Only put your ad on platforms that it is designed and formatted for.
- Manage your budget: Make sure you are using the correct ratio between your budget and the length you want to run your ad for.
Now that you are familiar with Facebook boosts and the best ways to use them, here are the pros and cons that you have been oh so patiently waiting for.
The Pros and Cons of Boosting a Facebook Post
What are the pros of boosting a Facebook post?
- Quick and easy: Want to get one of your posts to a bigger audience fast? Boosting a post is a great way to do that! If your post is related to some current event or something that is very timely for something going on in the world, boosting a post will allow you to get that message out very quickly. Also, by using posts that already exist, you take out the need to make unique creative and copy, which will save you some time too.
- Cost: Boosting a Facebook post is very inexpensive. It is very easy to spend $5-$10 boosting post for a few days to see if you can get something to go viral. In comparison, Facebook sets up fairly large daily minimums for their larger campaigns that could cost you at least $5 per day you run the ads. Boosting a post will let you get a little more bang for your buck.
- Easy to read analytics: One thing that is necessary to ensure the success of your Facebook Ads is to look back and see what worked well. You could do this by going into your Facebook Ads Manager, but that can be confusing and hard to read. When you boost a Facebook post, you get access to a simpler analytics system that only shows you the information that you need. This makes it much easier to improve your ads going forward.
What are the cons of boosting a Facebook post?
- Limited targeting: While boosting a Facebook post will allow you to do some very high level targeting, you will not have the depth or targeting you get with Facebook’s full advertising platform. While this might not be a big deal all the time, it will become an issue if your post only really resonates with a certain market.
- Long-term strategy: Like we talked about in the pros section, boosting a Facebook post is great for short-term punch, however, boosting posts is not a good long-term strategy. You can waste a lot of money very quickly by just boosting posts all over the place and it might not get you very far. If you are looking to invest in Facebook advertising long-term, boosting posts isn’t for you. At that point, you should invest some time into learning the Facebook Ads Manager platform for more advanced features.
- Lack of true insights: Like we mentioned before, boosting Facebook posts is great for that short-term punch, but because of this, it might be more difficult for you to truly get some insight into how your ads are performing. For example, if you run an ad for 3 days, you might not be giving facebook enough time to truly optimize it and get it in front of the best people. If you are doing things more long-term with a higher budget, you let that ad get optimized more and could see a completely different set of results. However, this is not as big of a deal if you are working with smaller, local audiences.
Facebook does a good job of pushing “Boosting” to small businesses that haven’t done any advertising before. From Facebook’s side, they are looking to collect additional revenue from businesses that would not have done any advertising otherwise.
Boosting posts is the 101 of Facebook advertising, and it makes advertising cheap and easy enough that it takes away a lot of the fear of starting to do some ads.
If you have always been curious if Facebook advertising is right for you, boosting is a great way to give it a try at a lower cost and risk for your business. If your boosts work, it is time to jump all the way in on Facebook’s ads.