You publish a post. Facebook tells you it’s doing better than most of your others and offers to show it to thousands more people for a tenner. One tap and it’s done. It’s easy to see why so many small businesses spend their whole ad budget this way.
Boosting has its uses. It’s also the reason a lot of people conclude that Facebook ads don’t work.
What the Boost button does
A boost is an advert with most of the settings chosen for you. It takes a post you’ve already published and pays to put it in front of more people. By default it aims for likes, comments and views, because those are the easiest results for the platform to deliver.
If what you wanted was phone calls or bookings, that’s a mismatch. You’ll get a nice number of thumbs up and a quiet phone.
When boosting is fine
- You’re promoting a local event and want people nearby to see it
- You have an announcement your existing followers should know about
- You want more people in your area to recognise your name, and you’re not expecting sales from it directly
Small budget, simple aim, short run. That’s the job it’s built for.
What a proper campaign gives you
Adverts built in Meta’s Ads Manager take longer to set up and give you far more control.
You choose the goal. Tell the system you want enquiries, website visits or purchases and it will look for the people most likely to do that, which is a different crowd from the people most likely to tap like.
You choose the audience properly. You can target by location down to a radius around your premises, show ads to people who’ve already visited your website, and exclude existing customers so you’re not paying to reach them again.
You can test. Run two images or two headlines side by side and let the results tell you which one earns its keep. A boost gives you one version and no comparison.
The ad is written to be an ad. A post that worked for your followers isn’t always the right thing to show a stranger. A campaign lets you write for someone who’s never heard of you, with a clear button telling them what to do next.
You can see what it produced. With tracking set up on your website, you’ll know how many enquiries came from the ads and what each one cost. Without that, you’re judging by likes.
How to decide
Ask what you want the person to do after seeing it. If the answer is “know about this”, boost it. If the answer is “call me”, “book” or “buy”, build a campaign.
And if you’re spending regularly, even a modest amount each month, it belongs in a campaign. Regular boosting is the most expensive way to advertise, because you never find out what worked.
Before you spend anything
Check where the advert sends people. An ad pointing at a slow homepage with no obvious way to get in touch will waste money however well it’s targeted. Fix the page first.
If you’d like campaigns set up and looked after properly, that’s our paid media service. Email us and tell us what you’ve tried so far.
