We’ve recently shared some insights on how social media marketing can be a huge benefit to promoting your small business. We’ve also discussed how allocating a budget for advertising, including paid social, can further heighten that exposure. Now we want to explore advertising on Facebook specifically. With over 2.989 billion monthly active user, as of April 2023, ranking #1 as the most active social media platform in the world, capitalizing off of a small percentage of users can positively impact your bottom line.
Facebook Ads allow for targeted reach based on interests. With this knowledge, you are able to run ads to reach your target market and educate them on your products and services. There are two ways you can run Facebook advertising, by boosting posts or implementing Facebook ads. What's the difference between a boosted post vs ad? Let's discuss.
By embracing these methods, small businesses can thrive in a competitive market and build lasting relationships with their customers. Although they both appear in users' News Feeds, they serve different purposes and have distinct features. Facebook ads offer a range of targeting and formatting options, while boosted posts are regular posts that you pay to reach a wider audience.
Understanding the Basics: Facebook Ads vs Boosted Posts
Facebook Ads
Facebook ads give us the opportunity to reach a highly targeted audience based on their interests and likelihood to be interested in the products and services we offer. They also allow businesses to tailor marketing messages to reach specific audiences. They offer a range of content formats to personalize and enhance the user experience. From carousel ads, to slideshow ads, canvas ads, and more.
Appearance: While appearing directly in users' News Feeds, these ads carry a "Sponsored Content" note. However, they are often styled to resemble regular posts, blending in with other content
Features: Facebook ads offer analytics, allowing you to track engagement and set clear campaign goals. The specific targeting options let businesses reach audiences by age, gender, location, interests, behavior, and more
Budgets and Goals Best Suited: Facebook ads are ideal for businesses with a moderate to high budget who aim for immediate impact, lead captures, app installations, and direct sales conversions
Boosted Posts
Boosted posts are regular Facebook posts that a business pays to be shown to a wider or more targeted audience. These are individual or existing posts on your Facebook page that you put some advertising dollars behind to increase its visibility and engagement by your audience.
Appearance: They look like any other post in the News Feed but are marked as "Sponsored" to indicate that they are paid content.
Purpose: Boosted posts increase visibility and engagement with existing content, making them useful for improving social media presence and brand awareness. They are also great for increasing your impression on your current followers and audience.
Budgets and Goals Best Suited: Boosted posts are suitable for businesses with a lower budget, looking to increase engagement with existing content, boost likes, and enhance overall social presence without direct sales conversion as the primary goal. Boosted posts are great to use if you are running a contest, making an announcement, or just want extra eyes on a piece of content.
Pros and Cons of Facebook Ads vs Boosted Posts
In assessing the goals you intend to reach with your advertising campaigns, your target audience, and budget, consider starting your ads roll-out with boosted posts. This is especially true for smaller budgets. Then seek professional guidance, as needed to align your choices with your financial plan and marketing objectives.
Facebook Ads:
Pros:
Customization: Allows for various ad formats, targeting options, and analytics
Reach: Provide you with precise reach to specific audiences, including non-followers
Flexibility: Enable detailed campaign tailoring
Cons:
Costs: Generally higher due to complex options
Complexity: Requires more understanding of ad creation and targeting
Boosted Posts:
Pros:
Simplicity: Easier to use, leveraging existing content
Reach: Extends reach to a wider, potentially already engaged audience
Costs: Usually less expensive
Data: Gives you in-real-time or an aggregated view of your ad performance to use as benchmarks for more detailed and targeted Facebook ads
Cons:
Limited Customization: Fewer options for specific targeting
Broad Appeal: May not be as effective for niche or highly specific campaigns
Navigating Facebook's Targeting Tools
While setting up and implementing Facebook ads can be complicated, it gives you the ability to reach specific segments of your audience. Through the Ad Manager, you can tailor each advertising campaign to individuals based on age, gender, location, interests, and more. This granular targeting ensures that ads are shown to those who are most likely to engage with the content. For small business owners, this means a more efficient use of advertising dollars by reaching the right people at the right time.
Implementing a robust Facebook advertising strategy requires training, practicing implementing different kinds of ads, conducting A/B tests, and rinsing and repeating based on what you’ve learned from your audience insights. Here are some things to consider:
Age Targeting: You can choose to show your ads to users within a specific age range. For example, if you're selling a product for young adults, you might target ages 18 to 24.
Location Targeting: Ads can be shown to people in a particular city, state, or country. This is useful for local businesses or promotions specific to a region.
Interest Targeting: If you're selling fitness products, you might target users who have expressed an interest in health, fitness, or specific sports.
Behavior Targeting: This allows you to reach users based on their online behavior, such as past purchases or device usage. If you sell eco-friendly products, you might target those who have shown an interest in sustainability.
Custom Audience Targeting: By uploading a list of email addresses, you can target specific customers or leads with your ads, ensuring they see your latest offers or products.
Lookalike Audience Targeting: Facebook can analyze your existing customer base and create an audience that shares similar characteristics. This can help you reach new people likely to be interested in your business.
Event Targeting: If you're hosting an event, you can target users who have expressed interest in similar events or themes.
Connection Targeting: This allows you to reach people who have a specific kind of connection to your Page, app, or event. You could target friends of people who already like your Facebook Page.
Retargeting: If someone has visited your website but didn't make a purchase, you can use retargeting to show them an ad for the exact product they were looking at.
Occupation and Education Targeting: You can target users based on their job title, industry, or education level. If you offer professional development courses, you might target users in specific industries or with specific job titles
Language Targeting: If your business caters to different language speakers, you can tailor your ads to be shown to users who speak a particular language.
Additional Consideration for Implementing an Advertising Strategy
In putting your holistic advertising and marketing strategy together it’s important to explore multiple options, platforms, leverage existing insights and analytics to stay on tasks and reach your goals faster.
Identify Your Goals: Determine what you want to achieve. Whether it's brand awareness, more website visits, or sales, your goal will shape your strategy.
Choose the Right Option: Decide between Facebook ads or boosted posts based on your goals and budget. Ads offer more customization, while boosted posts are great for increasing engagement.
Set Your Target Audience: Utilize the targeting options to reach the right people. This could be based on age, location, interests, or a combination of factors.
Create Engaging Content: Whether it's an ad or a boosted post, make sure the content is relevant and engaging to your audience.
Determine Your Budget: Set a budget that aligns with your business goals. Remember, you can start small and adjust as needed.
Monitor Performance: Regularly check how your ads or posts are performing. Facebook offers tools to analyze engagement, reach, clicks, and more.
Adjust as Needed: Don't be afraid to make changes. If something's not working, tweak your strategy. This could mean changing your targeting, increasing your budget, or trying a different ad format. As you monitor your ads performance, be flexible in your ability to pivot as needed to get the most return from your advertising investment.
Key Takeaways
Implementing an effective advertising strategy requires proper planning, defining your goals, what will be deemed a success, and knowing your budget. With smaller budgets, leveraging social media ad platforms, specifically Facebook's Ads Manager is a great entry into the world of social media advertising. Facebook advertising allows for two approaches, boosted post vs ads.
While boosted posts allow for ease in execution and can be more budget friendly, ads allow for more detailed targeting. Using specific targeting tools like age, location, interest, behavior, custom audience, and others, businesses like yours can better reach the right audience.
Whether you opt for boosted post vs ad, you should monitor each ad performance to ensure you are seeing the results you are looking for. Should your ads not be delivering, using your ads tracker and monitoring tools to gauge performance will put you in a better position to pivot and make updates to your boosted post or Facebook ads campaigns.