Facebook Boosted Posts and Ads are two opportunities to pay to expand your reach, but do you know which option is better for your business? This is a question we hear often, and the answer is not as black and white as we’d prefer. Since we have experience with both, we’re here to share our two cents to help you decide which is best for your business and budget.
Why does Facebook offer paid advertising?
As you may already know, Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world, which means it’s a pretty crowded place to try to reach the masses with organic posts alone. It is robust and driven by complex and continually changing algorithms that help businesses reach users. Rest assured, we are not opening the algorithm can of worms (snore, unless you’re a nerd like us), but this complexity is the foundation of why paid advertising on Facebook is a great tool if you want to expand beyond organic (i.e. free) reach. Facebook constantly collects data and adjusts to help advertisers reach the right people at the right time and for the right budget.
Benefits of Facebook Boosted Posts
Boosted Posts on Facebook are just that, they are regular posts that you spend money on to increase the reach. They appear in the news feed just like an organic post, but they can reach beyond your existing followers (or at least the percentage of followers currently seeing your posts, but again, another can of worms). The other difference is that the word “sponsored” will be noted to indicate that you paid for the placement. What are benefits of Boosted Posts?
Affordability
If you don’t have several hundred dollars in your marketing budget, you can still expand your reach. Since you’ll first post the content to your page and allow momentum to happen organically, you’ll automatically reach a segment of your audience for free. When the organic reach has slowed down, adding a boost will help reach more of your existing followers, their friends, and Facebook users outside of your network based on targeting.
Ease of Use
Facebook Boosted posts require very little additional knowledge. If you know how to create a post on your page, you’re almost there. To boost a post, you’ll answer a few questions about who you want to reach, your budget, and your advertising dates. It’s user friendly and only takes a couple of extra minutes. In addition, a business manager account is not required – just whip out your credit card, fill in the specifics of your targeting, and press “Boost Post Now!”
Quick Delivery
It takes very little time to boost a post, and Facebook’s review process is also rapid. This means that your message will start reaching your audience shortly after setting up your boosted post.
Overall, we recommend boosted posts to achieve short term goals on a limited budget. Boosting a post will make sure that you reach a wider audience than only posting organically, but boosted posts still have their limitations when it comes to reach and targeting.
So, let’s talk about Facebook Ads…
Benefits of Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads are more complex than Boosted Posts; however, they offer the opportunity to do one thing every business wants: drive sales (a general placeholder term for more customers, more donations, more purchases, more fill in the blank). Facebook ads appear in several places across Facebook and Instagram platforms – news feeds, stories, video feeds, right column, marketplace, and more. What are the benefits of Facebook Ads?
Expanded Messaging
Using your business manager profile, your Facebook Ads manager allows you to create several types of ads beyond a general post. You can use multiple graphics in multiple sizes and pair them with a variety of headlines, descriptions, and call to action buttons. These capabilities allow a more fine-tuned campaign to generate leads, drive traffic to your website, and gain new customers.
Enhanced Targeting
Facebook Ads have targeting capabilities that go beyond demographics including targeting based on lifestyle characteristics, life events, behaviors, and hobbies. In addition, they allow you to match criteria of those who engage with you to create “lookalike” audiences.
Detailed Metrics
Who doesn’t love data? With your business manager account, you can dig into the data using the robust reporting tool. You can view data about the age, gender, location, and type of device. You can also drill down to learn which type of content drives conversions. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but we assume you’re catching our drift. The bottom line is that this information about your consumers is valuable, and it will be important to optimizing future ad campaigns and other marketing efforts.
Ads sound pretty fantastic, right? They also come with a higher investment – Facebook doesn’t give us all this additional and higher-quality metrics for a nice, low price. Instead, like Google advertising, you need to be competitive and pay-to-play. If you have more than a few hundred to invest over a longer period of time, or simply have more specific goals or data you’d like to collect, we recommend Facebook ads to reach a more targeted audience and capitalize on increased leads and conversions for your business.
So, which is better – Facebook Ads or Boosted Posts? You’ve probably figured out by now that each has its place. Every business is unique and requires an individualized formula for marketing success. Regardless of industry, Facebook Boosted Posts and Facebook Ads can both be helpful if you’re looking to expand your reach with paid advertising.
Need help with you digital marketing? Tulip Tree is here to create effective and efficient campaigns that use optimal copy and graphics custom to your business for online marketing. Branch out and give us a call: (507) 218-8401
