3 Reasons To Stop Hitting Facebook’s ‘Boost Post’ Button

“Your post is performing 85% better than all of the other posts on your page! Boost your post to reach more people.”
 
Ever seen this overly cheery message from Facebook below a particularly well-performing page post? It sounds like a win-win situation: increase the number of people who see your business with a small amount of money and easy set-up.
 
However, simple doesn’t always mean better.
 
We know; Ads Manager can seem intimidating at first to those new to social media marketing. With so many bells and whistles for creating and managing ads, it’s hard to know where to start. By comparison, that “boost post” button looks pretty inviting.
 
Don’t fall for it. Sure, boosting a post will provide you with some increased results, but these are superficial and far less valuable to you than those achieved in Ads Manager.
 
Here are three reasons to stop hitting Facebook’s boost post when it comes to promoting your business page:

Limited objectives

Facebook offers advertisers 11 detailed objectives in Ads Manager, giving us plenty of options for reaching our end goals. Landing page views, video views, lead generation, brand awareness, reach… the list goes on. 

However, with boosted posts, this list is slashed down to only two possible objectives: post engagements and website visits. The ability to customize your advertising objective to fit your own unique needs is severely limited. 

Even if your goal is to generate some engagements or drive more link clicks from a post, chances are you could be doing it more efficiently in Ads Manager.

Limited targeting

It doesn’t matter how beautiful or clever your Facebook ad is if it isn’t getting seen by the right people. Ads Manager gives you all the tools you need to create an audience full of your ideal consumer. 

You can target people based on their behaviors and demographics, people who have engaged with your page in the past, people who are similar to those who already like your page and also utilize overlapping targeting.

With a boosted post, however, all of these targeting options are taken off the table. Instead, you have one of three options: boost the post to people who already like your page, boost it to the friends of people who like your page, or boost it to a group of people you select from basic interest options.

On the surface, this sounds like a fast, straightforward option for running an ad. However, you’ll never be able to optimally reach your ideal audience with these limited targeting options.

Limited placement

One of the perks of advertising on Facebook is the ability to pick multiple platforms on which your ads will be delivered (or not delivered). In addition to the parent platform, marketers in Facebook Ads Manager can also choose to have their ads delivered on Instagram, Audience Network and in the Messenger app.

Why is this important? Because every brand’s audience behaves a little differently, and that affects which platforms they’re likely to use most frequently. 

With boosted posts, your only control over placement is checking or unchecking the box for Instagram. You’re not able to tell Facebook to exclude Audience Network placement or certain Facebook locations. You can’t set a post to only show on a mobile device as opposed to desktop.

It’s just one more tool out of your toolbox for promoting your brand.

In addition to these three major downsides, boosted posts also eliminate the opportunity to properly test your ads against each other, control budget and bidding amounts, and run ads that haven’t been published to your page.

Therefore, in the battle of boosted posts versus Ads Manager, we’re calling a winner. It’s clear that Ads Manager, while more complicated, is far superior when it comes to having a successful social marketing strategy.

If you need help utilizing all the tools Ads Manager offers, we’re here to help!