Should You Boost Facebook Posts or Use Ads Manager?

If I cast my mind back a year or two and somebody said to me, “Hey, should I boost my posts?” then my answer would have categorically been no.

This is because, at that time, the options that you had available to you when boosting posts were extremely  limited.  You could only boost posts to fans of your page at one point.  And the only objective that you could leverage was engagement.

However –  recently Facebook have done a lot of work on the Boost Post feature. 

My recommendation to clients who work with us in our agency is that they shouldn’t use Boosted Posts and they should use Ads Manager and Business Manager to set up  what I call proper advertising campaigns that have a structure and a well-thought-out process and a strategy behind them. 

All of that said, I certainly think for people that are just starting out or just want to get some more attention and get their brand out there a bit more, boosting posts is actually now a more considered option. 

In today’s blog I will share what it takes to boost a post and the options that you have available in a Boosted Post, and then I’m going to compare that to what you can do in Ads Manager. 

To give you some additional  background into why I prefer Ads Manager, I’m also going to talk about the different objectives that you have available on both platforms and, more specifically – the one that’s missing, which is the most important one, in my opinion. 

Follow along with me as I walk you through this process in real time in this YouTube video.

How To Boost a Post on Facebook in 2022

Here is a recent post from my Facebook page.

If you click on the Boost post button you’ll be entered  into the Boost Post interface. 

Now, this is very, very different to what it was 18 months or two years ago, so there’s lots more options available to you now. But there are a number of limitations with Boosted posts. 

Let’s explore that further by going through the process of boosting a post.

The first thing you can see when you go to Boost a Post is the goal. 

When you think about it, Boosting a Post is essentially the same as creating an ad – you’re just using a pre-made post as your creative content for your ad and then you pay money to get it out there in front of more people. 

As you’ll see here, the default setting for your “ad” goal is automatic. 

This means that Facebook will choose the most relevant goal based on your settings. Now, I don’t know how powerful that really is because I haven’t tested it, but I’m not sure that that’s the option that I would go for initially, simply because you do have other options available to you. 

If you click the “Change” button in the Goals section, then you have a number of different results that you can choose from for your ad. 

• Get more website visitors will show your ads to people who are most likely to click on a link and then visit your website
  
• Get more messages will show your ad to people who are likely to send you a message through Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Instagram DMs
  
• Get more engagement is going to show your ad to people that are likely to comment, react with a thumbs up or a heart or another emoji, or those who are more likely to share your content with other people
  
• Get more leads is where you can use a form to collect leads from Facebook specifically.
  
• Get more calls shows your ads to people that are most likely to pick up the phone and call your business, which is probably better for local businesses with a storefront. 

Creating an Ad in Facebook Ads Manager

To do this, pop over into Ads Manager and create a new campaign. 

The first thing you have to do is to choose the campaign objective. 

Once you’re in, you’ll see that the options are grouped by the three marketing funnel stages: awareness, consideration, and conversion. 

Awareness is really about getting your brand out there and making people aware that your brand exists. 

Consideration is the second phase in the customer funnel. 

Once you have people’s attention, you then want to start encouraging them to consider whether or not your brand is a viable option for them. At this stage, your audience might be thinking about whether or not you can provide a service that they can benefit from, or if you carry products that they can use.

Conversion is where you’re going to make offers to people and say, “Right, you can opt in for my lead magnet so that I can get you onto my email list and market to you”. Or, “You can visit my shop and buy some products” and even, “Buy my course or sign up for my coaching program.” 

This is a very standard funnel type approach with awareness at the top of the funnel, consideration in the middle of the funnel, and then conversions at the bottom of the funnel. 

Now, let’s compare the differences in goals between boosting a post and creating an ad in Facebook Ads manager. 

• If you look at “Get more website visitors” in the Boosted Post (left) that is going to be the same as leveraging the “Traffic” objective in Facebook Ads Manager (right).
  
• “Get more messages” in the Boosted Post (left) will be the same as using the “Messages” objective in Facebook Ads Manager (right), which is how you can show your ads to people that are going to engage with you in Messenger or those other messaging platforms.
  
• “Get more engagement” in the Boosted Post (left) is going to be the same as the “Engagement” objective in Facebook Ads Manager (right) so you can get more page likes and all of the engagement options I mentioned earlier.
  
• “Get more leads” in the Boosted Post (left) is going to use the “Lead Generation” objective in Facebook Ads Manager (right).
  
• And then, the final one, “Get more calls” in the Boosted Post (left) could use a couple of projectors but “Traffic” in Facebook Ads Manager (right) is one of the more straightforward ones you’ll use. . 

Notice that all of the options that are available through Boosting a Post in 2022 focus on the consideration phase of your marketing funnel. 

You don’t have an option to do anything in the conversion phase and most people that I speak to about boosting posts will tell a similar story:

“Hey, I’ve Boosted Posts before but I didn’t get the results I was looking for. And I don’t think Facebook Ads are for me – I’m not convinced that Facebook Ads work.” 

The reason for this is that they’re usually trying to Boost their posts to get sales. 

They want people to buy something and boosting a post doesn’t give you the ability to target the right audience of people who are most likely to buy a product. Instead, it allows you to target people who are in the consideration phase. This is precisely why, personally, I’m not a huge fan of Boosting posts. 

We don’t Boost any posts for our clients in our agency and I don’t ever Boost posts personally, when I’m looking to promote my own content. 

Instead, I use Business Manager and Ads Manager because I just have more control and more options available to me to be sure that I can really optimise my ads for the right objective while also showing my ads to the right people. 

If you’ve not watched the YouTube video that supports this blog post, then be sure to check it out because at this point I dive deeper into some specific scenarios, and then talk more about how Facebook uses behaviours associated with your user profile to determine whether you are shown ads based on specific objectives!

<embed the YouTube video here>

So The Big Question… To Boost or Not To Boost?

I think there is a place for boosting posts.

If you want to get more attention on your content, or to reach more people, and you’re not looking for conversion or sales-oriented achievements specifically, and are just after general awareness for your brand, then Boosted Posts might be the way to go.

I think there is a place for boosting posts if you are not yet at an advanced stage with your marketing or somebody that uses Facebook Ads quite regularly. 

The biggest problem with boosting posts is that you don’t have access to any objectives regarding conversions specifically – and this is important for most businesses because your goal is to drive sales.  If sales or conversions is your goal, then Ads Manager is where you’ll want to be working.

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If you’re an entrepreneur, coach, course creator, or consultant and you’re looking for an agency to work with that can help you optimise your results with your Facebook ads and grow your business, then you can apply to work with us. 

Till next time! 
– Danny