Facebook boosts still confuse a lot of business owners. Are boosts the same as Facebook ads? Are they ads at all? Where can they appear? Which one is the right one for my business: boost or ad campaign? These are just some of the questions that we are asked on a regular basis.
Today we decided to look with more detail into what is a Facebook boost and what are the differences between a boost and an ad campaign.
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 ad campaign. Here’s why:
- 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 the boost will always be also displayed on your Page as a regular post.
While creating a Facebook ad campaign, you have the freedom to choose, whether to pick a published post and use it as an ad, or to use 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.
- Settings and easiness to create. A boost is not created in the Ads Manager, it’s created directly on your Facebook business page and the process takes just a few steps: you decide on the audience, maximum budget, for how long it will run and you are good to go.
A Facebook ad campaign needs to be created in 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 ad campaign can be a quite confusing process, while everybody can make a boost with just a few clicks.
- The objectives. The purpose behind boosting a post is to get more engagement with it and to show it to the broader audience.
When creating a Facebook ad 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’s choice, the settings of the campaign will also change.
- The placement. Boosts appear on Facebook’s timeline and can also and additionally be shown on Instagram’s feed.
A Facebook ad campaign has a number of placements to choose from: Facebook side ads, Facebook Messenger and Marketplace, Instagram Stories, etc.
So, what should you choose? If you want a quick and easy way to grow your audience and to increase the visibility of your content, a boost is the best way to go. If you have some other business goals for Facebook advertising, or want to reach out to a specific audience with a specific message, but you don’t want to show it to the general public on your page, you need to choose a Facebook ad campaign.
Happy advertising!
For more information, bespoke strategies and efficient digital marketing solutions, just contact the Clarity’s girls through info@yourdigitalclarity.com or visit our website at www.yourdigitalclarity.com.
