Why you should never boost a post on Facebook
Facebook is an amazing tool for engaging with customers and running marketing campaigns to boost sales. There are many tools that can help your posts reach a bigger audience although boosting your post is not one of them. If you have been using the ‘boost your post’ feature on the social network then you have been wasting your money – and here is why.
Engagement is all you get
Boosting your posts is all about receiving likes, shares and comments. Receiving more engagement with your posts on the surface may seem like a good thing but that doesn’t necessarily translate into people clicking onto your business website and purchasing your goods and services.
Boosting posts only allows you to achieve success in one marketing objective and this is engagement. Although, there are nine other marketing objectives you can access when creating an ad including ‘send people to your website’ and ‘get installs of your app’.
Limited demographic
Most people who boost Facebook posts don’t realise there is an option to choose the demographic you want to reach. When boosting posts Facebook will offer you three demographic options with ‘people who like your page’ the default selected option. Obviously, if your boosted post is only visible to the people who like your page you’re potentially missing out on new customers.
Top Tip: The other two options are ‘people who like your page and their friends’ and ‘people you choose through targeting’. The vast majority of people never click the third option even though it provides the best return on investment on a boosted post.
You can’t customise when the post is seen
The only delivery option available to you when you boost a Facebook posts is when you’d like it to end. This is a useful option to save you from receiving an unexpected bill at the end of the month if you forget to manually end the campaign. What it doesn’t allow you to do is to target Facebook users at specific times. For example, if you’re the owner of a restaurant who wants to promote a lunchtime special at 11 am when people are deciding where to go for lunch, then simply boosting a post will not allow you to target these customers.
Good to know: Selecting a specific time for your ads to be promoted on Facebook can be done through the site’s power editor. This will allow you to access Facebook’s scheduling tool where you can select exact times for your ad.
To install power editor:
1 Open Google Chrome and go to your ads manager
2 Click Power Editor on the left side of the navigation
3 Once Power Editor has installed open it
4 Click on the Download to Power Editor button at the top.
No headlines
Have you noticed Facebook ads that have standout headlines? Of course, you have, that’s why the post has a headline, to grab your attention. Boosting a post will not allow you to add an eye-catching headline which can be done by crafting individual ad posts on Facebook.