Why the 'Boost Post' Button on Facebook is a Waste of Money
Facebook ads are the bread and butter of marketing for a lot of small businesses, especially those who can’t afford to hire a marketing consultant. The good news is that social media ads can be extremely effective and cheap…but the bad news is that most people are throwing their time and money away by not understanding the basics of Facebook advertising. Spoiler alert: clicking the ‘Boost Post’ button for your ad and walking away is almost always a waste of your valuable resources. Here’s why.
To begin, Facebook wants to make life as easy as possible for consumers and advertisers. They want to provide quick results on both sides, and while at the beginning their ad options were confusing, their developers have done a great job at simplifying the ad-buying experience. Ads Manager has gotten multiple facelifts, but for those who want the easiest solution, each Facebook post comes with a bright blue ‘Boost Post’ button. When clicked, it instantly redirects to a screen that lets you choose - or not choose - the audience, budget, and goal. In less than 30 seconds, you can start advertising on Facebook.
The problem is that making advertising this easy is not necessarily a good thing. It doesn’t allow businesses to step back and ask the big questions behind marketing: WHO is our audience and WHY would they purchase from us?
It’s easy to throw $10-20 at a Facebook post, see some positive feedback, and call it successful. But here’s why you should never just click the ‘Boost Post’ button:
Your audience choices are fairly limited. Yes, you can use some simple tools to build your audience, but the real power is in Ads Manger, where you can target based on very specific demographics, interests, and behaviors.
This is not a long-term strategy. Are you tracking website visitors? Are you getting people to sign up for a newsletter list or another asset that you own (versus the social media giant)? Are you actually gaining anything from the increased interactions on your page?
A lot of the Boost Post settings are automatic - beware of this. You need to be in charge of choosing the ad’s goal, tracking, call-to-action, and everything in between. It’s just too easy to let Facebook decide for you and, at the end of the day, Facebook (like EVERY company) is looking out for their own best interests, not yours.
While there are some exceptions, it is hard to track your results - and this honestly happens only on rare occasions. Facebook does provide insights directly under each boosted post, but these can be superficial and surface-level at best, showing you only the good news. If you are not comparing data from one post to the other and experimenting with audience, creative, and copy, you are not really learning from your successes and failures - and therefore, you are just throwing money away.
The real key is to learn about the ins and outs of Facebook Ads Manager, create a comprehensive marketing strategy that goes beyond social media ads, and only use the ‘Boost Post’ button if it fits into your plans - not the other way around. Of course, if/when you have the budget, hiring someone to manage this for you can be a game-changer, but until then, here are some great resources to start diving in:
As always, if you have any questions about Facebook advertising - even really specific ones! - drop me an email or comment below and I’d love to help.
