Boosted Posts vs Facebook Ads in 2020

If you’re new to Facebook Ads, you’re forgiven for thinking that boosted posts and Facebook Ads are the same thing. Spoiler alert: They’re not. Today, I’m looking at the difference between Facebook Ads and boosted posts in 2020, as well as whether you should be running boosted posts for your business.

 

 

 

The difference between boosted posts and Facebook Ads in 2020

Many business owners make their first foray into running Facebook Ads via the good old boosted post. Many even assume that boosted posts are the exact same thing as Facebook Ads. But, let me tell you, there are some huge differences between Facebook Ads and boosted posts.

Today, I'm going to run through some of the big differences between Facebook ads and boosted posts in 2020.

What is a Facebook boosted post?

A Facebook boosted post is simply a post on your business Facebook Page that has been boosted, which means you've put a little money behind it to reach more people than it would organically. It's similar to a Facebook Ad in that it's a paid ad, but there are some key differences.

How do you boost a post on Facebook?

To create a boosted post, all you have to do is visit your Facebook Page and click the bright blue “Boost Post” button below the post of your choice. Simply choose your budget, choose your targeting and hit “Boost”.

Boosting a post is very simple. Boosted posts are designed for business owners who find Facebook Ads Manager overwhelming, confusing or complicated, but this comes at the cost of the powerful features that are available to you in Ads Manager. The features that let you choose exactly who you want to target, where you want your ads to show and what the goal of your campaign is, so that Facebook can actually help you get more of your desired result.

Difference between boosted posts and Facebook ads #1: Optimisation

When you're setting up your Boosted Post, Facebook only gives you the option of optimising your post for engagement, traffic or messages. “Engagement” means you want it to get more comments, likes and shares, whereas “traffic” means you want it to get more clicks through to your website. “Messages” means you want more people to message your page.

At first glance, that sounds good, right? I mean, why wouldn't you want people clicking on your post, engaging with it or sending you a message, right? But, the issue here is that the people who are liking your post aren't necessarily buying from you.

Even the people clicking to your website aren't necessarily buying from you. They might not even be letting the page load before exiting out of it. Setting up proper Facebook Ads via Facebook Ads Manager allows you to optimise your Facebook Ads for traffic or engagement, just like a boosted post, but it also allows you to optimise for conversions (e.g. purchases or leads, or whatever you define as a conversion).

Difference between boosted posts and Facebook ads #2: Targeting

Whilst targeting options for boosted posts have improved, they're still not as powerful as the Facebook Ads Manager targeting options. For example, when you're setting up a boosted post, you could choose to target people who have visited your website. However, when you're setting up an ad set within Facebook Ads Manager, you could choose to retarget people who have visited your website, who are also female and who are also aged between 25 and 45, and living in Australia.

You can overlap, exclude and narrow down your audiences in Ads Manager, which is something you can't do in your boosted posts.

Difference between boosted posts and Facebook ads #3: Placements

When you're boosting a post, it's going to show up in people's Facebook news feeds and (if you tick the box) their Instagram news feeds. Whereas, in Facebook Ads Manager, you have the option of showing ads in other placements, such as Instagram Stories, Facebook Messenger, Audience Network, etc. There are so many different placements available.

You also have the ability to choose whether to show the ads on desktop, mobile, or both. You can choose whether you only want people to view them when they're connected to WiFi, and you also can narrow it down by device.

Difference between boosted posts and Facebook ads #4: Creative

Creative is the part that the viewer sees. So, the image or the video, the copy, the headline, the call to action button, etc. When you're boosting a post, the only part of the ad creative you can change is adding a call to action button. This is the button that you often see on ads saying “learn more” or “shop now” or “download”, etc.

When you're setting up a Facebook Ad from scratch inside Ads Manager, you have full control over the creative. You can test and edit different images (like one of these stunning Facebook Ad templates), videos, copy, headlines, buttons – everything. It's super easy to duplicate an ad and simply edit one small part of it to test which works best.

 

So, given all of these differences, should you use boosted posts in 2020?

While I'm a big believer that you should invest the time in learning how to run Facebook Ads properly, boosted posts still do have their uses. They're a great way of building up social proof on an existing Facebook post, which can make running Facebook ads to the same post cheaper in the future.

They are also a good way to start becoming familiar with some of the Facebook Ads terminology and reporting.

If you're afraid of setting foot inside Facebook Ads Manager, don't stress. I've created a free Facebook Ads training webinar for people just like you. Click here to register.

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