Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, offers one of the largest opportunities for businesses looking to advertise online. Its two main social networks have billions of daily users across the globe, with interests in virtually every niche.
Unfortunately, many of the more advanced advertising tools and features on these platforms require a strong background in digital marketing paired with solid graphic design skills in order to generate a strong return on your ad spend (ROAS).
This of course can be managed by working with a talented digital advertising agency (sorry, shameless plug), however not every business is ready to take the dive into the wider world of paid ads without a strong test case.
This is one of the ways that the “boosted post” feature on this platform comes in as an accessible means of advertising with better than expected results.
What are boosted posts on Meta?
Boosted posts aren’t unique to Meta – they also exist on other platforms such as LinkedIn.
A boosted post is a sponsored post that appears in the feeds of people not necessarily familiar with your brand. It allows you to take content you’ve already created for your audience and fans, and share it with other similar users.
Because you can post pretty much anything you want on your page, from a graphic, a blog post, a new product, or a link to a landing page, boosted posts are versatile can be used for anything from generating awareness of your brand, products, or services, to even driving leads and sales through your offers.
Why should I boost my Meta posts?
The same reason any business advertises – it gets eyes on your products or services, especially those who would be interested in them but not familiar with your brand.
This distinction is key as established businesses can often coast on brand name alone.
Think Coca-Cola or Nike – neither of them need to do more than show their logo.
However, for smaller businesses or those just started out, we need to work a little harder to get people to notice us.
Boosted posts in this case are a relatively cost-effective way of making people in our target audience aware of us (often it costs no more than $50 to start getting results).
Also, because we can pick locations and interests of our audience, we can tailor our boosted posts to only reach those most likely to be looking for what we are offering.
Are boosted posts just for branding?
It’s true that boosted posts are a strong ad format for branding and awareness (as is all of social media for that matter). You can catch people during their leisure time and showcase who you are and what you offer, planting that first seed or touchpoint on their road to become a customer of yours.
However, because you can also include a link in your boosted posts, you can use this format to send them to your landing pages. If your destination is well optimized with a strong offer, you can expect engagement and even conversions on your site too!
How do I set up a boosted post on Meta?
Boosted posts are by far the simplest form of advertising to set up on Meta.
To set one up, you go to your post of interest and hit the big blue “Boost post” button.
Specify a goal:
If you’re not sure, leave it to Automatic. Otherwise, select the one that best fits what you’re hoping to get – more engagement on Meta, or more action on your website.
You select a few targeting criteria (such as interests, locations, and other demographic markers).
Some thoughts for targeting:
- If you have a local business, only select your city or nearby ones. Otherwise, if you’re an online business, a wider net is fine – like the whole country.
- When selecting audience, think about who your customers are. If you sell school supplies, try to target people with kids. If you sell model trains, consider hobbyists. If you serve B2B clients, target those in your industry.
For more thoughts on targeting, we previously put together some thoughts on search targeting on Google Ads that might be useful here too.
Next, you set a budget and a deadline.
We recommend starting with a 7 day boost and no more than $40-$50 bucks for your first one (until you’ve reviewed your results).
And that’s it! Your post is boosted.
What sort of results can I expect from a boosted post?
Based on our extensive experience managing social media ads (on both Facebook and Instagram), here are some of our observations:
- You get more mileage for your ad dollars. Boosted posts tend to get more views and clicks for less than traditional advertising on the platform.
- The engagement tends to be slightly better than traditional advertising too – with more engaged time on site (if sending to a landing page), and slightly higher conversion rates (for leads).
What are the drawbacks of boosted posts?
Now, boosted posts are great, but don’t go replacing your entire ad strategy just yet. Here are some considerations too:
- You need to have great content to boost – that can include a graphic, a writeup, etc. whereas for regular ads you can probably coast on your product image and little else.
- Because they are meant for quick boosts, every boost isn’t in itself a long-term ad solution. You will want to keep boosting new content and regular intervals, meaning more content to create.
- Because they are short-term too, you can’t optimize for the long run. With traditional ads, you can tweak them as you go and watch the algorithm powering them to get better over time.
To boost or not to boost?
In an ideal world, boosted posts should be part of any business’s ad strategy and portfolio, working alongside a mix of organic content and regular paid ads. Their entry buy-in is more affordable than regular paid advertising, and the results are often stronger than expected.
Boosted posts also work as a great entry-point into paid advertising too if you’re not currently running any ads, and can help you understand how the platform works as well as testing the waters for your market.
