Facebook Boosted Post vs Ad: What is the Difference?

“Your post “xxx” is performing better than 95% of posts on that Page. Boost it for $20 to reach up to 5,000 more people”

Seen that popup on your Facebook recently, its so tempting right? The opportunity for 5,000 more people to see your post, your page, imagine how much you could grow your business with just $20!!! STOP…I know its tempting and with some recent Facebook changes I think boosted posts are fine, but read on to learn more about how you can use it effectively.

So what is the difference between a Facebook Boosted Post vs Ad?

A boosted post allows you to get a particular post seen by as many people as possible with the intention of more eyes or engagement.

A Facebook Ad however is a much more complex system that allows you to to choose your intention whether that is page likes, website click throughs, engagement (comments, likes or shares), customer purchases, customer signups and more.

Put simply the Facebook boost option is a simplified version of the Facebook Ads Manager, but both can play an important part of your overall strategy. Your Facebook audience will not know if your post is a boosted post or an Ads Manager setup, only you and your page administrators can see this information.

Boosted Post

I will start by saying you should never boost a post if you have never setup your Facebook Ads Manager. The key reason for this is that the Facebook Ads Manager allows you to setup your custom audience and really drill down on who you are looking to target. Not all of these audience options are available when you use the boost option. However once your target audience is setup you can use the “boost” button and choose from this already setup audience.

The boost button allows you to reach a wider audience, however I would only boost a post that I know was already successful with my existing audience. That is they are clicking on the links or engaging with the content through likes or comments.

With a Boosted Post you have 3 objective options

These 3 objective options are fairly new (somewhere in the last couple of months) and I think they help to make the boost option a good system, I would previously have never recommended the boost button to anyone.

You need to consider why you are boosting this post, and if for example your reason is to get more page likes, then you will want to head over to the more elaborate Facebook Ads Manager.

Ads Manager

The Facebook Ads Manager allows you to create and manage your Facebook Adverts based on your marketing objective or goal.

Facebook Adverts allow you to create a post with a specific goal in mind, for example

• More likes
• Clicks to your website/blog
• Sales conversions
• Offer claims
• Localised awareness

When you tell Facebook exactly what you want, it will show it to the people within your target audience who are more likely to do that based on their previous track record with Facebook.

Facebook Boosted Post vs Ad: Which should you use?

With the recent changes to Facebook Boosted Post I think they can successfully form part of your overall marketing strategy, in previous times the option to add a button or even make 1 objective claim was not there which is why I would never have recommended it.

In saying that however I would still recommend people use and understand the Facebook Ads Manager first. Ensure you setup your target audience, setup your pixels and understand how the Ads Manager works. Then as a time saving factor you can use your custom audience setup to ‘boost’ a post that is already performing well with your audience.

Hope this helps to clear up the difference.
Nat

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