One of the biggest mistakes I see Facebook Page owners making is overusing the Boost Posts button on your Page.
Facebook makes it so quick and easy to use plus they give you little incentive notifications like “This post is doing better than 90% of your other posts, you should boost it”.
The problem with Boosted Posts
Boosted Posts from your Timeline are automatically optimized for Page Post Engagement.
Which means the ad is shown to people who are more likely to click Like, comment or share your post.
So while you can target your Fans and the Friends of your Fans or using the interest targeting, you shouldn’t do that.
Because if someone who isn’t your Fan clicks Like on your post, they will never see you again and you have just paid $0.50 (or whatever they are charging) for a meaningless Post like. It’s a waste of money.
The other issue with Boosted posts is that they may not be driving the cheapest traffic to your website. When you look at the results, you can see in this example that there were 29 Link Clicks and $52.38 spent. That translates into $1.81/link click which is more expensive than I usually pay.
But there are still good reasons to use the Boost Post option (more on that later).
Use the Ads Manager Instead
If you have a different true objective for your Facebook Ad, such as getting people over to your website, use the Ads Manager on Facebook to set up a better ad.
When You Should Use Boosted Posts
Boosted Posts are perfect for re-engagement of your current Fans.
The boosted post has a place in your marketing strategy but it’s best for re-connecting to your current audience.
Do Your Own Testing
I know many of my clients do use Boosted posts in different ways and they work quite well. As with almost every piece of advice I ever give, you need to test what works for you.
Make sure you are customizing your Facebook Reports so that you see the right stats to compare your results. You can see that some of my Boosted Posts did better in terms of cost per website click than some of my other ads (but again, I always boost only to my Fans who are my warm audience)
Facebook Ads are extremely powerful but the Boosted Post should not always be your first (or only) choice. In fact most of the time, you should probably be using a Website Click ad or Website Conversion ad with better targeting that you get through the Ads Manager.
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Gotta disagree with you on this. I live and breath off Boosted posts on my bounce house business page and I rarely Boost them to people that Like my page.
I target people on certain towns, gender, age, etc. They get lots of engagement and rentals. So I see immediate results on this. I will about once per week Boost just to those that Like the page to re-engage them and it gets some results as well. But targeting those that haven’t Liked my page typically results in sales and more people Liking my page.. I never use the Ads Manager. For a small biz spending maybe $100 per month it’s easier to just boost.
I agree with Scott. I use booted posts to find new customers by targeting near by cities , age etc. If you’ve a promotion or certain product that appeals to a certain age it works well for retail business. I don’t know how many time a customer has said when buying a product “Oh i saw your post on facebook”. I also agree that fb ads manager is much better for driving traffic to a website. Using both can be effective.
I knew you’ve had good results with them, Scott 🙂 So I’m definitely glad to hear your perspective and that’s why I say Test for yourself. So what I would totally curious to find out is if you did try a Website Click ad where it was optimized to show the ad to people who are more likely to click on the website – would you get even better results? Have you tried it? I’d love to know!
Great points as always, Andrea!
Sounds like Scott could contribute to a possible case study for a future article!
Always good to know what other people are experiencing Brian! Thanks for sharing!
Love these blog, I love to promote my business on Facebook, and here I’ve found many creative idea to be done. Appreciate for your work Andre 🙂
Andrea– love your post here on boosted posts. For folks who are beyond the very beginner stages, we absolutely recommend using targeting in the form of saved target audiences. Unless you’ve got a $100,000 monthly ad budget, best to give Facebook a general clue as to who to target, instead of seeking post engagement from just anyone.
Doesn’t take any extra effort to create a set of audiences to reuse frequently, especially if you use the “dollar a day” approach to make sure you get the most from your money. What do you think?
Nice post Andrea thanks, you don’t talk about the page likes you can yield from randoms Facebook targets for you when you have the option after to invite them to like you page, on my ads, pic attached, I hyper targeted my audience for post likes with a boosted post then retargeted them and have gained 700+ new engaged page likes for the amount shown) Thoughts? jay
Pic attached
We mostly run boosted posts– perhaps 80% of the time, since only 20% of the time are we going for a conversion. I’ve written for years about why boosted posts are a BAD IDEA. But in the last year, things have changed. And we’ve tested this over a couple thousand campaigns and over $50 million in Facebook ads for validation on companies large and small.
Here is the old thinking: http://www.socialfresh.com/facebook-boost-button/
Thanks for your take on this Dennis! So I have done smaller scale testing than you probably have but almost every time I do it, I get better results with a Website Click ad if that’s my true goal rather than a Boosted post. I drive more website traffic at a cheaper price than the Boosted post.
Yes, that can be a good side effect for sure. And if you have done your testing then it can be a good strategy. I think the problem comes when many people don’t know how to do testing and just blindly use the boosted post for each type of ad without comparing their results properly. And from your test it looks like things are working well for you so that’s great!
Hi Andrea– if the goal is immediate conversion, then DEFINITELY use “website click” as the objective. If using mid-funnel engagement content that ties into a sequence, then boost the post. Have you see the research that Digital Marketer has put out on this? I think they’ve got the best examples of killer Facebook ad practices– superior to what we’ve shown.
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