The multiple Facebook advertising options still confuse quite a few business owners. Are boosts the same as Facebook ads? Are they ads at all? Where can or will they appear? Is it the same as page promotion? Which one is the right one for my business: boost or Facebook Ads campaign? These are just some of the questions that we are asked on a regular basis.
Today we decided have a more detailed look into what a Facebook boost is and what are the differences between it and an ad campaign. Follow us!
Technically a boost is still an ad, as an advertiser pays money for it and gets to choose the audience and the budget; however it is still different from a Facebook Ads campaign. Here’s why:
1. The content
For a boost, you need to choose a post from your page’s timeline that you want to show to a broader audience, so the content of said boost will also always be displayed on your page as a regular post.
While creating a Facebook Ads campaign, you have the freedom to choose, whether to pick a published post and use it as an ad, or to go with something completely different as the ‘creative product’ with text, image, video, etc, that has never been, and never will be shown on your page, unless you decide otherwise.
2. Settings and easiness to create
A boost is not created on the Ads Manager, it’s created directly on your Facebook business page, and the process has just a few steps – you decide on the audience, maximum budget, for how long it will run, and you’re good to go.
A Facebook Ads campaign needs to be created on the Ads Manager and has a rather big number of steps and settings to go through before submitting it. So, for non-professionals, creating a Facebook Ads campaign can be a rather confusing process, while everybody can make a boost with just a few clicks.
3. The objectives
The purpose behind boosting a post is to get more engagement from it and to show it to a broader audience.
When creating a Facebook Ads campaign you can choose from a number of objectives besides engagement – brand awareness, website traffic, conversions, page likes, lead generation, etc. Depending on the objective chosen, the settings of the campaign will also change.
4. The placements
Boosts appear on Facebook’s timeline, on Messenger and can additionally be shown on Instagram’s feed.
A Facebook Ads campaign has a larger number of placements to choose from – all the placements, available for boosts, the Facebook right column ads, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram Stories, etc.
- The results’ location
You can visualise the results of your boosts in the Ad Centre of your Facebook page, but you will not find there the information on Facebook Ads campaigns.
The results for all ads campaigns, all the boosts or any promotion that you’ve ever run on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Marketplace or even Facebook’s partner websites are all always displayed on the Ads Manager.
To sum it all up, if you need a ‘quick and easy’ solution, that will not overwhelm you with different options, and you are comfortable with having the promotion’s information displayed on your Facebook page, then choose the boost option.
If you want to go into detail and use the maximum number of possibilities that Facebook offers its advertisers, or if you want to run a limited promotion for a specific audience and you don’t want to show it to all of your followers, then go with a Facebook Ads campaign.
Remember that if you want to analyse the results of your paid advertising efforts on Facebook, we advise you to always check it on the Ads Manager, as only there will you get a full picture.
OK, now that we’ve seen the differences between a boost and a Facebook Ads campaign, you may be thinking: “Hang on! Aren’t there several types of boosts?! Facebook keeps suggesting me different promotions that I can do on my page without opening the Ads Manager, right?!”
Well spotted! There are indeed several types of promotions available on a Facebook page, such as promoting (boosting) a post, promoting your page, promoting your business locally, getting more visitors to the website and getting more leads.
So let’s talk about the differences between the two most used options – page promotion and post promotion (the boosts we’ve discussed before).
They both happen on your Facebook page and therefore both have the ‘boost mechanics’ previously discussed, but with different goals:
– The page promotion aims at increasing the page’s notoriety and its number of Likes and followers.
– The post promotion (boost) seeks to promote a specific post on your Facebook news feed.
And they are used for different purposes too:
– To grow the community of people that like the page, promote the page!
– To make that specific post on that product that sells so well reach more people, promote (boost) the post!
When promoting a page, you will notice that the number of your followers will grow. When promoting a post, Facebook will only show that post to more people, within an audience you determine. The interactions of users with this post, that is, the number of Likes, comments or shares obtained with it (which you can also compare with the results of other posts and promotions) will be visible directly on said publication on your page.
And one more tip – if you are doing the promotion from your smartphone, you can see what type of promotion you are doing, whether it is ‘promoting page’ or ‘promoting post’, by checking the description at the top of your app.
Facebook is a powerful advertising platform but having so many options can be a double-edged sword – from one side you get to be creative and specific about your ads creation and optimisation; from the other, it can be quite confusing for a newbie.
At Clarity we believe that as a business owner you don’t need to know all the details of social media advertising (unless you want to), but you need to feel comfortable with the basics, so that you can make better and more informed decisions, whether you adopt a do-it-yourself approach, or hire a professional (and want to understand a little bit better what is it that he is suggesting you to do).
If you are a DIY enthusiast feel free to check more articles and free content we have on Social Media. But if you’re feeling lost or overwhelmed just reach out to us to discuss your business’ Social Media strategy. Either way, we’re here for you!
