Boosting posts vs Facebook ads: What’s the difference?

When it comes to advertising on Facebook there are a few different options for businesses to choose from. One of the most common questions people often have is: what is the difference between boosting posts vs Facebook ads? There are some key differences between the two and often these will align with different business goals. By the end of this blog post, you should understand everything you need to know about the two!

What are boosted posts?

A boosted post is a post on your feed/timeline that you can dedicate budget to. This is a super simple way of advertising and doesn’t require you to set up an Ads manager account. This is often what smaller businesses opt to use for their Facebook advertising! With boosted posts, there are limited features and options for your business. You can optimise towards engagement, brand awareness or page likes/followers. You only need to fill out a couple of things before you can set them live, these being:

• Your target audience
• Your budget
• Length of time you want to boost the post

Boosted posts can be great for businesses that simply want to expand brand awareness and reach new potential followers. However, if you’re looking for more comprehensive features that align with other business goals, such as driving revenue or other slightly lower-funnel objectives, you should look at implementing Facebook ads instead!

What are Facebook ads?

You don’t post Facebook ads to your feed or timeline, and instead, create them in Ads Manager. They are often described as ‘dark posts’, as when a customer visits your page they will not be visible. Instead, they’re essentially running in the background targeted only towards the audience of your choosing. Facebook ads can do everything boosted posts can do, and much, much more! With Facebook ads, there are more objectives and more features to choose from that will align with different business goals. Some key benefits that Facebook ads offer, that boosted ads don’t, are:

• More objectives: there are so many objectives you can choose from. For example, optimising towards app installs, leads, conversions, in-store traffic, and more!

• Detailed audience targeting: there are many more targeting options that allow you to reach the most relevant people for your business. For example, lookalike targeting can be utilised to reach a new audience or re-targeting towards people that have added products to cart but not purchased.

• Ad placement options: rather than simply boosting your posts to the newsfeed, there are additional ad placements such as stories, messenger and audience network.

• Multiple variations: you can create multiple variations of your ad within ad manager and allow Facebook to optimise the budget between these variations. This means you will end up spending budget on what works best!

• Budget optimisation: Facebook Ads Manager will optimise your budget to drive the most efficient performance. Whether you have multiple variations of creative/ads or multiple ad placements chosen, Facebook will optimise your budget between these different options depending on how individuals behave.

• Reporting capabilities: the ads manager platform allows you to gain insight into what creative, targeting and placements work best for your business. This allows you to take key learnings towards future campaigns to drive continued performance for your brands! Boosting your posts won’t provide the same kind of invaluable insights you get from utilising Facebook ads.

Which should I use?

If you have smaller budgets and are simply looking to increase your visibility and brand awareness, boosting posts could be a great option for you. However, if you’re looking to drive tangible results, then Facebook ads are definitely the better option. In most cases, Facebook ads will be a much more efficient use of your budget and can produce stronger results. Although they can seem more complicated and harder to get to grips with, it can absolutely be worth it. And if you have higher budgets, you may even want to utilise a mixture of both Facebook ads and boosted posts! This will allow you to drive brands awareness and visibility which is important for long-term growth, whilst also driving tangible results that can help you achieve your business goals. Boosting posts vs Facebook ads all comes down to what fits best with your marketing plan. Written by Kelly Birnie