The short answer to this question is no – provided you have the ability to run Facebook ads from within the Facebook Ad Manager platform instead. Facebook Boost Posts have a specific objective and do not align with business outcomes. There are other far more effective Facebook ads to run than a Boost post.
You are probably already running Facebook ads or perhaps you are thinking about it. After all, it seems so many businesses are jumping on board with Facebook ads, and rightly so.
However, many new Facebook advertisers begin with the infamous Boost Post due to its ease of access and simplicity right from the page interface. If this is you, you may be wondering if Boosted Posts work, or if they are worth it at all.
In this post, I will outline the following:
- Why if all you are doing is boosting posts to advertise on Facebook you are wasting your money (at least most of it) and completely missing the enormous value Facebook ads could be delivering to your business
- Other Facebook campaign objectives that are far more effective for achieving business outcomes (i.e. leads, sales, awareness, video views, etc.)
- What specifically Boosted Posts target in Facebook and why other campaign objectives are far better for growing your business
- Whenyou should boost posts
Make no mistake, the Facebook ad platform is the secret weapon for many businesses that know how to use it correctly to market their products or services to their target audience – from beauty salons, restaurants to senior care facilities, real estate agents, real estate investors and brokerages, lawyers, dentists, massage therapists, e-commerce, point-of-care diagnostics, electricians and plumbers, and more.
There’s no other advertising platform quite like Facebook, and definitely not one that delivers the value that Facebook does in terms of its precise targeting.
Bar none, the Facebook ad platform offers more psycho-demographic information about people than any other advertising platform, including interests, behaviors, likes or dislikes, household income, age, gender, religious or political beliefs, married or single, whether they have children in the home or in college and more. The unique targeting options afforded YOU as the advertiser are almost endless.
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The abundance of information and targeting options for advertisers that can be used for advertising from within Facebook can be overwhelming for anyone that doesn’t work at a digital agency. Facebook knows this which is why it created the Boost Post option from the page interface as the below screenshot from my company page.
It is very easy to spend advertising and marketing money with Boosted Posts on Facebook, but this is also a great way to waste your ad dollars and not get the results that you COULD be achieving.
If you are only using Boosted Posts, you are not leveraging the full power of what Facebook has to offer.
Facebook made advertising simple from the page interface (compared to setting up campaigns from within the ad manager or Power Editor) and reduced the majority of advertising options it has to offer.
However, this limitation in options is by design.
Did you know that Facebook provides more than 17different marketing objectives, none of which you will find if you are boosting posts and advertising from the page interface (a related post here on the Facebook ads vs Boost Post, and which is better)? Below is a screenshot of the campaign objectives that Facebook offers advertisers that are NOT running ads from the page interface via Boost Post.
Facebook wants to make advertising as accessible and easy to implement as possible for the largest population of advertisers and page admins. If you as a new advertiser with minimal experience were presented right away with having to choose from 17 different marketing objectives, the majority of you would run away as fast as you could – that is too intimidating!
Here are three detailed reasons why you need to pause your boosted posts spend and consider taking your Facebook ads to the next level.
Three Reasons Boosted Posts Are Not A Good Option
Reason One
There are far more effective options available to you as an advertiser. Boosted posts are just one of twenty different marketing objectives Facebook offers advertisers. Many of its other marketing objectives will help you achieve business outcomes that Boosted Posts will not, such as leads, sales, brand awareness, increasing video views, and more. Consider these Facebook marketing objectives and associated goals as an example:
- Video Views: focused on getting you more views of your video
- Traffic(in the past this was referred to as Clicks To Website): focused on driving people to a website landing page
- Conversions(i.e. Lead Ads): designed to capture lead information (e.g. emails) from people right within Facebook
- Brand Awareness: get your ad in front of more people that are more likely to pay attention to your brand
This was just a handful of the marketing objectives available inside Facebook for your business beyond the infamous Boosted Post.
If you are operating from your page’s interface to boost your page’s posts versus from the ad manager or Power Editor, these other marketing options are not available to you.
Here’s an organic post from my page with the Boost Post button option.
When you click on the Boost Post button from a page post, this is typically what you see (I do have Custom Audiences listed below that you won’t have):
There are no other marketing objectives presented to you – no video views, no increased brand awareness, or sending people to your website.
Facebook Ad Tests Highlight Why Other Marketing Objectives Are More Effective
At our agency, we test everything to understand what is most effective. We ran a test to compare Facebook KPIs (i.e. key performance indicators) with four different Facebook campaign objectives:
- Traffic
- Boost Post (Post engagement)
- Brand Awareness
We kept all other variables consistent (i.e. ad spend, target audience, geographic targeting, ad creative) and only changed the marketing objective within Facebook. In the table below are the results of our ad tests in Facebook. The KPIs we compared for the ad test were:
- Reach: the number of unique individuals the ad was served to
- Impressions: the number of times the ad was shown to someone
- Link clicks: clicks to the website
- Post engagement: people clicking “like,” sharing, or commenting
- CPC: cost per click
- CPE: cost per engagement
Highlighted in green are the cells that had the highest number for that KPI.
As you can see from the test, the KPIs vary greatly by marketing objective. The key point is, you need to choose your marketing objective for your ads carefully depending on what business objective you are trying to achieve.
If your goal was to drive people to a landing page on your website, the Traffic objective (formerly referred to as, Clicks To Website objective) provided the lowest CPC and highest link clicks by a significant margin compared to the other objectives of this test. Traffic (formerly known as, Clicks To Website) also had the second-highest Reach (i.e. the number of unique individuals that saw the ad) and the second-highest number of impressions. However, this result makes sense – Traffic was doing what Facebook designed it to do, which is to drive people to your website efficiently. If you used Boost Post your KPIs are very different as shown in the table.
Each marketing objective optimizes for specific metrics.
Reason Two
Boosted Posts are focused on engagement (these are vanity metrics) and targeted specifically to the 16% of users likely to engage with an ad (source: our company’s Facebook account manager). This is fine if that is what you are after, but engagement is not going to lead to increased sales, conversions, greater reach, or brand awarenesscompared with other more effective campaign objectives which are more effective marketing objectives if you are trying to grow your business (a related article here on Facebook engagement and does it matter).
Each of Facebook’s marketing objectives is designed for a specific goal and boosted posts are focused solely on post engagement. And engagement is not a good objective to pursue when you are focused on business outcomes such as growing revenue.
Our company’s Facebook account manager had this to say about Boosted Posts:
You are targeting engagement heavy users and this does not correlate with purchase intent, brand recognition, etc. Instead, it is solely focused on those who tend to react or “like” anything.
Yikes! Do you want to spend most of your ad dollars with an objective where people “like” anything?
Reason Three
When you boost a post from your page interface, the targeting options are further restricted (versus running ads from the ad manager or Power Editor) as you cannot test different styles of creative (images, copy, or video) or bidding types.
From within Ad Manager or Power Editor, you have the options to test creative, change bidding options, and a whole host of advertising features that are not available from boosting posts from the page interface.
So…
Is It Better To Boost A Post Or Create An Ad?
It is better to run an ad from within the Facebook Ad Manager with a campaign objective that aligns with your business goals and objectives. Boost Posts are extremely limiting in effectiveness and do not align to business outcomes such as increased brand awareness, conversions, and leads.
What Are Boosted Posts Good For Then And Who Sees Them?
There are a couple of good reasons to use a Boost Post.
Boost Posts can be an effective way to test creativity before spending more on a legit Facebook ad campaign. For as little as $1 per day, you can run a boosted post and see what creative gets better reactions. With that said, Facebook makes it very easy to do legit, statistically relevant split tests at the campaign level or ad set level so using a Boost Post perhaps is redundant.
The best case for running boosted posts is to increase your visibility within the organic news feed and to communicate something to your fans. The people who see your boosted posts are most likely going to be your most engaging fans – the social butterflies – those people that are always “liking” and engaging with posts regardless.
However, remember that growing your fans is not a worthy investment either – I wrote a detailed post about why spending ad dollars on growing your Facebook fans is a waste.
In conclusion, if you’re mostly running boosted posts as your Facebook ad strategy, it’s time to take your Facebook ad game to the next level and look at the other highly effective Facebook campaign objectives. Boosted posts produce vanity metrics that are not going to add value to your bottom line.
I would love to get your questions or comments below.
I'm an expert in digital advertising and Facebook marketing, having worked extensively with businesses across various industries to optimize their online presence and achieve measurable results. My expertise is grounded in hands-on experience, data-driven insights, and a deep understanding of the evolving landscape of social media advertising.
Now, let's delve into the key concepts discussed in the article:
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Facebook Boost Posts vs. Ad Manager:
- The article emphasizes the distinction between boosting posts and using the Facebook Ad Manager platform. Boosted Posts are viewed as a simplified option directly accessible from the Facebook page interface, but the article argues that this simplicity comes at the cost of limiting advertising options.
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Campaign Objectives:
- The article outlines that Boosted Posts have a specific objective, mainly focused on engagement metrics, and may not align with broader business outcomes such as leads, sales, or brand awareness. It introduces the idea that there are over 17 different marketing objectives available within Facebook Ad Manager, each designed to serve specific business goals.
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Effectiveness of Boosted Posts:
- The author presents evidence based on their agency's test comparing key performance indicators (KPIs) for different Facebook campaign objectives. The test includes objectives like Traffic, Boost Post (Post engagement), and Brand Awareness, highlighting variations in metrics such as reach, impressions, link clicks, cost per click (CPC), and cost per engagement (CPE).
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Targeting and Engagement Metrics:
- The article argues that Boosted Posts primarily target the 16% of users likely to engage with an ad, emphasizing that engagement-focused metrics (likes, shares, comments) are considered "vanity metrics." The author suggests that engagement does not necessarily translate into increased sales, conversions, or brand awareness, which are more crucial for business growth.
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Limitations of Boosted Posts:
- Three key reasons are provided to discourage reliance on Boosted Posts: a. Availability of More Effective Options: The article contends that other marketing objectives within Facebook Ad Manager offer more effective ways to achieve business outcomes. b. Engagement Focus: Boosted Posts are criticized for being focused on engagement-heavy users, which may not correlate with purchase intent or brand recognition. c. Restricted Targeting Options: When boosting posts from the page interface, the article claims that targeting options are further restricted compared to running ads from Ad Manager or Power Editor.
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Recommendations:
- The article suggests that running ads from within Facebook Ad Manager with a campaign objective aligned with business goals is more effective than relying on Boosted Posts. It acknowledges that Boosted Posts can be useful for testing creativity on a small budget but argues that running legitimate split tests within the Ad Manager is a more robust alternative.
In conclusion, the article advises businesses to elevate their Facebook advertising strategy beyond Boosted Posts, emphasizing the importance of selecting the right campaign objectives to achieve meaningful business outcomes.
