With over 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is still one of the most important social media platforms for businesses looking to reach new audiences and drive engagement. One way to extend your reach on Facebook is by “boosting” posts and pages using Facebook’s built-in advertising tools.
But is boosting Facebook pages actually worth it? Here we’ll examine the pros and cons of Facebook page promotions to help you decide if it’s a good strategy for your business.
The Benefits of Boosting a Facebook Page
There are several potential advantages to boosting Facebook pages:
- Increased reach – Boosting allows you to get your page and posts seen by more people beyond just your current followers.
- Targeted audience – You can target boosts by location, demographics, interests, and behaviors to reach your ideal customers.
- More engagement – Boosted posts typically drive more reactions, comments, and shares.
- New followers – Well-targeted boosts can help you gain more relevant followers organically.
- Brand awareness – Boosts make it possible to get your brand and messaging in front of larger audiences.
- Lead generation – You can drive traffic to your site, offers, or contact forms using boosted posts.
- Sales – Ultimately boosts can help drive online and offline sales through increased awareness and traffic.
The ability to reach highly targeted audiences with relevant messaging is a major advantage of Facebook boosts over general organic reach. Even a small budget can go a long way thanks to Facebook’s detailed targeting options.
Potential Drawbacks of Boosting
While boosting pages and posts can be beneficial, there are also some potential downsides to consider:
- Cost – While less expensive than other paid ads, boosting still requires an advertising budget.
- Limited organic reach – Relying too heavily on boosts may cause your organic reach to suffer over time.
- Poor targeting – Boosts won’t perform well if you don’t target them properly.
- Low relevance – Audiences may ignore or hide your boosted content if it’s not relevant to them.
- Ad fatigue – People may get tired of seeing your boosted posts in their feeds.
- Low engagement – Just because people see your boosted post doesn’t mean they will interact with it.
- No long-term impact – The effects of boosting tend to be short-lived once you stop paying.
The main takeaway is that boosting only works if you target your audiences carefully and share content that provides value. Irrelevant or promotional-focused boosts often lead to poor results and wasted ad spend.
Tips for Effective Facebook Page Boosts
Here are some tips to help make the most of your Facebook page and post boosting campaigns:
- Set clear objectives – Define what you want to achieve with your boosts like reach, engagement, conversions, etc.
- Target tightly – Use precise demographic, interest, and behavioral targeting to reach people most likely to care about your content.
- Highlight benefits – Craft compelling copy and creative focused on the benefits the audience will receive.
- Use video – Video posts typically have the best engagement and performance when boosted.
- Mix it up – Test different types of content like links, images, carousels, and Stories.
- Watch your metrics – Analyze results closely and adjust targeting, creatives, etc. as needed.
- Find lookalikes – Use engaged audiences from good performing boosts to find new potential customers.
- Split test – Test different images, copy, calls-to-action, etc. to see what resonates best.
Optimizing your boosts for relevance and monitoring performance closely are key to making the most of your Facebook advertising investment.
What Types of Content Should You Boost?
Not all Facebook page content merits boosting. Here are some of the best types of posts to consider promoting:
- Special offers and promotions
- New product or service launches
- Contests and giveaways
- Events and webinars
- Behind-the-scenes and how-to videos
- User-generated content featuring your brand
- Industry or trend focused articles and infographics
- Holiday-related content
- Quotes and inspirational messages
- Polls and surveys
Posts that provide exclusive value, interact with followers, promote limited-time offers, or tap into what’s currently popular tend to perform best. Straightforward promotional posts typically don’t gain much traction unless the offer is extremely appealing.
How Much Should You Spend on Boosting?
Facebook advertising costs vary significantly based on factors like your objectives, target audience size and competition, and current bidding levels. Here are some general benchmarks for Facebook boosting budgets:
- Small business pages – $5-$50 per day
- Medium business pages – $50-$500 per day
- Large brand pages – $500-$5000+ per day
Monitor your cost per relevant result closely when first starting out. This includes metrics like cost per page like, link click, conversion, etc. depending on your goals. Analyze the results across different audience segments and creative approaches. Gradually increase your budget as needed to improve performance and scale your reach.
How Long Should You Boost Posts?
The ideal Facebook post boost duration depends on your objectives:
- 1-3 days: Increase reach and engagement
- 5-7 days: Drive conversions and traffic
- 10-14 days: Grow awareness and followers
It takes time for Facebook’s algorithm to optimize your ads for delivery and performance. You’ll typically get the lowest cost per result running boosts for at least 5 days. Maximize your reach potential by letting posts run the full 14 days possible.
For special short-term promotions, 1-3 day boosts are reasonable. But anything less limits potential impact. Schedule your boost timing strategically around holidays, company announcements, promotions, and other events when audiences are highly engaged.
Should You Use the Automatic Boost Option?
Facebook offers an option to automatically boost new page posts for a set budget and duration. Here are the pros and cons of using this option:
Pros
- Saves time – Don’t have to manually boost posts.
- All content gets a chance – Every post gets promoted without picking favorites.
- Flexibility – Can adjust budget up or down at any time.
- Ongoing visibility – Maintains steady promotion of your page rather than one-off boosts.
Cons
- Overspending risk – Budget gets used even on lower quality posts.
- Poor performance – Bad posts still get boosted.
- Limits customization – Can’t tailor objective, audience, or schedule per boost.
- Reduced control – Harder to monitor and optimize specific boost campaigns.
Automatic boosting works best for pages that publish consistently high-value content optimized for their target audience. Niche pages that share very targeted updates tend to see the most benefit. For maximum control, manual boosting for individual posts is preferable for many larger brand pages.
Boosting Facebook Pages vs. Boosting Posts
You have the option to boost either individual Facebook posts or your entire Facebook page. Here’s how the two boosting approaches compare:
| Boosting Posts | Boosting Pages |
|---|---|
|
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Boosting both posts and pages together provides the most comprehensive promotional strategy. Use post boosts to engage your existing audience and page boosts to extend your reach to new potential followers.
Using the Facebook Ad Creation in Ads Manager
While you can boost posts directly from your Facebook Page, creating ads through Ads Manager gives you more customization options. Key benefits of using Ads Manager include:
- More objective options – Brand awareness, reach, conversions, etc.
- Advanced audience targeting tools
- Split testing of ad images and copy
- Retargeting options
- Improved reporting and optimization
Newer Pages with smaller existing audiences tend to benefit most from the enhanced targeting and optimization features in Ads Manager. But the platform is powerful enough for both new and established businesses. Just take the time to learn best practices for creating effective ads.
Top Ad Types to Boost Brand Awareness
If your primary goal with Facebook boosting is increasing overall brand awareness and reach, these tend to be the most effective ad formats to leverage in Ads Manager:
Collection Ads
These image carousels let you feature multiple products/services, videos, offers, etc. in one ad unit. They keep audiences engaged as they click through to see all your content.
Video Ads
Whether boosting existing videos or creating new ones, video ads garner high attention and recall thanks to motion and audio.
Carousel Ads
Like image Collection ads, Carousels allow you to include up to 10 images or videos and customizable captions. They work well to showcase product lines, services, events, etc.
Instant Experience Ads
These immersive, scrollable ads use interactive elements to deliver a robust brand experience within the Facebook feed.
Slideshow Ads
Combine up to 10 images into a cinemagraph-style slideshow video ad to capture audience attention as they watch your story unfold.
Testing different ad approaches will reveal what resonates best with your target audiences and objectives. Be sure to analyze the view length, CPM, impressions, reach, and overall conversion metrics for each.
Top Ad Types for Boosting Conversion Rates
If your main goal is to boost conversions, clicks, leads, app installs or sales, consider leveraging these popular direct-response focused ad types:
Single Image/Video Ads
Simple static image or video ads can work extremely well, especially if you follow best practices for high-converting copy and creatives.
Lead Form Ads
Include an instant lead generation form directly in your ads to capture contact information from interested prospects.
Catalog Sales Ads
Dynamic ads that showcase specific products from your Facebook Product Catalog to relevant shoppers.
Messenger Ads
Ads that drive users to click into a Messenger conversation with your Page to learn more or ask questions.
App Install Ads
Optimize ads to generate more downloads for your mobile app with strong copies and visuals.
Analyze the cost per result, relevance, reach and ROI over time for each ad type. Combine awareness-focused formats with conversion-driven ones for balanced ongoing promotion.
Best Practices for Measuring Facebook Ad Performance
Here are some top tips for monitoring and measuring the impact of your boosted Facebook page and post ads:
- Track detailed cost metrics like CPM, CPC, and CPA over time.
- Review relevance scores and negative feedback signals.
- Check impressions, reach and frequency for awareness ads.
- Monitor clicks, conversions, leads for direct response ads.
- Analyze results by audience segment and ad creative.
- Compare performance across days of week and times of day.
- Build custom Facebook Analytics dashboards.
- Set up Google Analytics tracking for goal completions.
- Watch for trends across multiple reporting periods.
- Optimize underperforming elements based on the data.
Continuously monitoring performance metrics and optimizing based on the insights is crucial for getting the most value from boosting your Facebook presence.
Top Facebook Insights Metrics to Track
Want to gauge the overall impact of your Facebook marketing efforts? Keep an eye on these key Facebook Insights metrics for your Page:
Likes and Followers
Monitor follower growth over time, engagement rates, and demographic data. Aim for relevant followers over total vanity numbers.
Reach and Impressions
See how many people you’re reaching with content and how often it’s being shown to them.
Engagement by Type
Analyze engagement for different post types and formats like reactions, comments, shares, clicks, etc.
Traffic Sources
Review how people are finding your Page such as organic, direct, referrals, social.
Posts and Engagement
Track how frequently you post and which types of content get the most reach and response.
Video Metrics
For video content, analyze views, completion rates, minutes watched, and conversions.
Regularly monitoring these metrics will reveal how your Facebook presence and efforts are developing over time. Use the data to shape your ongoing content and promotion strategies.
Conclusion
Facebook page and post boosting can deliver significant benefits for expanding your reach and conversions when executed strategically with relevant, high-value content. But to achieve success, you must monitor performance meticulously, optimize frequently, target ads precisely, and boost content that provides authentic value.
Invest time upfront in building your ideal audience and testing different ad types and content styles. Develop your boosting skills steadily over time. With smart targeting and creativeoptimization, a relatively small ad spend can make a big measurable impact.
Just be sure to avoid some of the common boosting mistakes like irrelevant content, broad targeting, and improper tracking. With the right promotional strategy personalized to your business, boosting your Facebook presence can be well worth the moderate investment required.