Boosted post VS ad? What is better for your marketing strategy? Let’s figure it now!

Before you start advertising on Facebook, you need to decide where to put your efforts and what type of ads you want to focus on.

Some eCommerce entrepreneurs think that a Facebook ad is the most powerful marketing tool and prefer using it. Others concentrate on boosting their own posts and get amazing results. At the same time, others have both tools in their arsenal and successfully use them for their marketing strategies.

The question is, which way of advertising is better? Or they’re both great?

Let’s sort things out!

What is a boosted post?

In simple terms, a boosted post is any post on your Facebook page that you can turn into an ad to show to a wider circle of people. The main difference between a boosted post and a Facebook ad is that the former isn’t made in Ads Manager and it doesn’t have all the customization features.

That’s it.

Your boosted post will be shown in the Facebook News Feed as an average ad and will help you reach a wider audience.

How to create a boosted post?

Actually, creating a boosted post is a piece of cake.

You just need to have a Facebook page full of different posts and a page role that allows you to advertise. As a rule, this might be the role of admin, moderator, editor, advertiser, or jobs manager.

Once all conditions are met, look through your Facebook posts, choose the post you want to boost and click the Boost Post button.

You’ll see the following window where you’ll need to fill in all the details for your ad such as your target audience, budget, payment method and the ad duration.

Facebook will automatically use the pictures and text from your post, but you’ll need to make sure that your post includes a valid image. Otherwise, you’ll see a grey screen as on the screenshot above. In this case, you’ll need to change an image and check if it doesn’t violate any Facebook rules.

Once all the details are filled in and everything is ok, click on the Boost button. Your post will be shown to other Facebook users and, with a little luck, will convert some of them into your buyers!

What is a Facebook ad?

Let’s take a look at Facebook ads now.

Facebook ads are special ads that you can create through the Facebook Ads Manager tool.

The difference between boosted posts and Facebook ads is that the latter have more advanced customization solutions. For example, you can design ads that fit your goals, add call-to-action buttons to them and choose different ad placements to reach more users.

As a rule, Facebook ads help you get more traffic, conversion, and lead generations, whereas boosted ads are perfect for getting more clicks and engagement.

How to create Facebook ads?

All Facebook ad campaigns are made through the Facebook Ads Manager tool. It will help you select the main parameters of your ads such as your objectives and the audience you want to target and, besides that, it will help you manage your ads.

When creating Facebook ads you will need to choose:

• The format of your ads (carousel, slideshow, video, etc.)
• The audience you want to target (age, location, interests, etc.)
• The amount of money you want to spend on advertising (daily budget)
• The duration of your ad campaign (how long your ads will be shown to your audience)
• The currency you will use to pay for your ads

The formats available to you will depend on the objective you set for your ad. So, if you create an ad for the first time in your life, we recommend you to experiment with different types of goals and ad formats and choose those that you like the most.

After you create your first ads, you’ll start seeing your results.

It will help you understand how people respond to your ads and if your efforts will pay off at all.

Boosted post vs ad: which is better for your business?

To be honest, there is no clear answer to this question. Facebook ads and boosted posts have their pros and cons and everything depends on you and your goals.

Our experience has shown that boosted posts certainly win if you want to get a maximum reach. Making a boosted post is a quick, easy and cheap way of attracting new users to your Facebook page. As a rule, boosted posts have a lower cost per click than Facebook ads.

However, these posts have a limited number of options in terms of customization. You can’t choose between different ad types and placements, and you have fewer opportunities for analytics.

As for Facebook ads, they have a higher click-through rate and make people take more actions. These ads are more difficult and expensive to create, but they have more customization and analytics options.

As you can see, we have a tie: both advertising opportunities have their pros and cons, and they will work differently for every individual case. Facebook marketing is about exploring and experimenting, so it’s up to you to decide which way of promotion you should use.

Now you know the difference between the main advertising methods Facebook offers: boosted post vs ad. Each of them has its own pros and cons, so it’s up to you to choose the way you’ll use to promote your eCommerce store.