Want to learn the difference between boosting a post or posting an ad on Facebook?
If yes, then you are at the right place.
Facebook is an excellent platform for digital marketing, more specifically, social media marketing. It has over 2.8 billion monthly active users, making it the biggest social media platform. Marketing on such a popular platform is important for any brand or business.
Unfortunately, there are many people, including marketers, who do not understand the difference between boosting a post and advertising on Facebook.
Which is why we decided to spread the knowledge to help you better understand. In order to understand the difference, you must first understand what the two are.
What Is Advertising on Facebook?
Advertising on Facebook is simply using Facebook Ads as a digital marketing tool to promote your brand, or business, and its products or services on Facebook. You can use Facebook Ads Manager to manage and promote ads on Facebook.
Facebook ads are almost indistinguishable from regular posts you might see on your feed. They can be identified by the text on top that reads “Sponsored”. While this is the visual difference, Facebook ads offer much more than typical posts in terms of analytics options.
Brands and businesses posting Facebook ads can track user engagement with their ads to define goals for their marketing campaigns. Like any marketing campaign, Facebook ads also offer targeting options in the form of demographics like age, gender, location and user behavior like their interests and preferences.
Unlike typical posts, Facebook ads also offer more formatting options that allow for better visual representations, these include:
- Canvas ads
- Carousel ads
- Slideshow ads
- And more
These formats allow for better campaigns because you can redirect users, gather leads and, of course, promote products. Moreover, these ads can incorporate call to action (CTA) buttons for improved marketing and sales.
What Is Boosting a Post?
Boosting a post is a digital marketing technique that allows brands, or businesses, to take ordinary Facebook posts and pay for them to reach wider audiences. This will allow more engagement from relevant users because your boosted posts get greater visibility on Facebook.
Most people agree that boosted posts are considered ads as well because they come under the same category of paying to promote content. Moreover, boosting posts involves targeting these posts through the Facebook Ads Manager, just like you would target ads on Facebook.
So…
What Is the Difference Between Boosting a Post and Advertising on Facebook?
While Facebook ads offer great analytic options, boosted posts have one main advantage over ads – you get free market research results before boosting posts. Since ordinary posts are free on Facebook, you can pick and choose the best performers to be promoted, or boosted, to relevant audiences.
Apart from this, Facebook ads take the lead on almost every marketing aspect when comparing the two but this does not mean that boosting posts is not advantageous. You need to look at the different advantages they both bring in results.
Boosting posts results in increased presence and reach on Facebook through more engagement, likes, comments, shares and general brand awareness. Facebook ads result in a more immediate and larger impact and result directly on your campaign goals like app installs, lead generation and sales.
Conclusion
The best strategy for your brand or business is to spread your Facebook marketing budget on both, boosting and ads, depending on your campaign’s long and short-term goals. You can use boosted posts to develop your reach and followers and Facebook ads to convert them.
If you want to learn more about boosting a post, Facebook ads or learn how to properly utilize Facebook Advertising as a digital marketing tool, please visit our website today.
