Case Study – Boosted Post vs Facebook Advert

“Your post “xxx” is performing better than 95% of posts on that Page. Boost it for $26 to reach up to 5,000 more people”

I completely understand why people like to boost posts and I have been unable to deter some of my clients from hitting that magic “Boost” button:

1. It’s easy – literally just hit that magic button
2. It sounds cheap – $26 and 5,000 people will see your post

Boosted posts can be effective, but you need to stop and look at your goals.

I’m going to show you a case study of a client who hit boost (against my advice) and what we did to get better results through Facebook Advertising.

What Are You Trying to achieve?

If a new client asks me to “Boost” their post (usually on a Friday night when they have seen that message from Facebook) my first question is what are you trying to achieve?

If the response is “its 5,000 more people” then what do you want these 5,000 people to do?

“come and like our page” or “buy xx online”, well does your post say that message?

9 times out of 10 the answer is no.

Your Facebook Posts are there to add value to your existing audience. The tone, copy, imagery may not be your best advert to attract new clients/customers.

Imagine throwing your logo in the middle of the newspaper with no context, how do you think it would perform?

Facebook Adverts

Facebook Adverts allow you to create a post with a specific goal in mind.

• More Likes
• Click to your website/blog
• Convert through your sales page
• Offer claims
• Localised awareness.

You need to be clear on what you are trying to achieve – what is your goal?

Case Study

To put this case study into context this client sells high priced items (around $1K – $1.5K).

Our goal was to sell.

The same custom audience was used in both the boosted post and Facebook Advert.

Boosted Post

The post included a new release product, a great photo and link to the website.
Results suggested from Facebook: reach 5,000 people for $30

Actual results:
Spend: $30
Reach: 3,817
Post shares 16
Post comments: 4
Link clicks: 30
Page likes: 16
Cost per engagement .19c (however engagement was never defined)
Sales: $0

The Facebook Advert

We created a photo carousel with ‘Shop Now’ buttons under each photo, we selected 4 of the most popular products and promoted the free delivery (always available).

Actual Results:
Spend: $30
Reach: 4,762
Post shares: 0
Post comments: 9
Link clicks: 89
Page Likes: 25
Cost per engagement: .33c (defined by click to the website)
Sales: $4,300

The Results

Our goal was to sell and overall the Facebook Advert did that. 3 times the amount of people visited the website from looking at the post/advert.

Our goal was clear and the customer had a clear call to action “shop now”.

Now I am not against boosted posts and I think they definitely have their place. Take a look at how much of your audience actually see your posts, you can “Boost” your posts so that more of your audience sees it…but that’s a blog post for another day.

Learn More About Facebook Ads

If you want to learn more about Facebook Adverts, I can highly recommend the course Facebook Ads Base Camp as I have done the course personally and learnt so much, Rebecca starts at the very beginning in simple and easy to understand video tutorials. Rebecca also invites you to a private FB Group where she assist with queries while you are learning and you have the opportunity to talk to other small business owners on the same journey.

Do you need help with your Facebooks Ads?

Why not contact one of our Social Media Managers or Facebook Ads Consultants on the Digital Mums Directory to help with your Facebook Ads or simply someone to manage it all for you, we also have some awesome Virtual Assistants.

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