What’s the difference between Facebook Ads and Boosting a Post?
Facebook is an increasingly popular choice for social media strategies, and for good reason. With almost 3 billion monthly active users, Facebook is perfect if you’re looking to grow your reach and increase your visibility. However, before you get carried away with the benefits of advertising on Facebook, you need to choose how you’re going to advertise on the platform and how it will enable you to reach your business goals.
Facebook offers two advertising types, Facebook Ads and Boosted Posts, both with their own uses and benefits. To make sure you choose the Facebook advertising type that’s right for you and your business, we’ve broken down everything you need to know below.
What are Facebook Ads?
Facebook Ads are set up through Ads Manager and are primarily used as part of ongoing social media strategies. With the ability to set specific business objectives, schedule ads to go live and track the progress of ads, Facebook Ads is a fantastic tool to use as part of your digital marketing strategy.
What are Boosted Posts?
Boosted Posts are effectively regular Facebook posts, which you pay to be displayed to your target audience. Most commonly used to promote one-off posts, such as product deals and brand announcements, Boosted Posts are considered to be the simplest way to advertise on Facebook.
What are the benefits of Facebook Ads vs Boosted Posts?
Advanced audience targeting
When using social media as part of your digital marketing strategy, we recommend you make the most of audience targeting capabilities.
Facebook Ads provide access to advanced audience targeting capabilities, which allow you to advertise to users based on their location, interests, behaviour and demographics. This will allow you to target users at different stages of the funnel and encourage them to continue their user journey towards conversion. Boosting posts also offers audience targeting capabilities, however it’s a much more limited experience. Whilst you will be able to target users based on their age, gender and location, you won’t achieve quite the same results as you would with Ads Manager.
Specific ad objectives
Before starting any digital marketing strategy, it’s important to outline your business objectives.
Within Facebook Ads Manager, you have the ability to set specific ad objectives, from lead generation to store traffic. This means you can tailor the set-up of your ads to meet your business objectives. Boosting a post won’t allow you to set specific objectives, however it can still be used to reach your business goals. We’d recommend using a Boosted Post for brand awareness and product promotion, as it increases the reach and visibility of your posts.
Various ad placements
Where your ads appear could have a huge impact on how they perform, so it’s worth reviewing your audience’s behaviour to determine the best placement for your ads.
Facebook Ads Manager has a wide variety of ad placement options, including Facebook Messenger and Instagram Stories. This function allows you to A/B test where your audience is most active and where your ads get the most engagement, which you can then use to optimise your future ad placements. Boosting a post also allows you to choose where your ad will appear, however with fewer ad placement options. With a Boosted Post, you’ll only have the choice between the Instagram and Facebook feed.
Which is better, Facebook Ads or Boosted Posts?
Facebook Ads and Boosted Posts are very different ways to advertise your brand on Facebook. If you’re looking to grow your Facebook following or increase the reach of specific posts, then we’d recommend using Boosted Posts. Whilst it has limited functionality, it can be a simple and effective tool to use, particularly for those new to Facebook advertising. Whereas, you can use Facebook Ads Manager for all levels of the marketing funnel. With Ads Manager you can create multiple advert sets, A/B test, and create multiple ad creatives, something you cannot do with boosted posts. If you’re looking to target users in the middle of the funnel or generate more leads to your website, then we’d suggest using Facebook Ads as part of a wider social media strategy. With advanced targeting and extensive customisation, Facebook Ads can help you achieve specific business objectives. Of course, it doesn’t have to be one or the other, and you could use both techniques to maximise your audience and results!
Find out more
If you’re interested in using Facebook as part of your digital marketing strategy, but would like further advice on which technique to use, feel free to get in touch with the team at Spindogs.
