With over 2.9 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world. For businesses and marketers, Facebook can provide a powerful platform to reach new customers and drive traffic. One way to extend the reach of Facebook posts is to pay to “boost” them using Facebook’s advertising tools. But is paying to boost Facebook posts worth it? Here is an in-depth look at the pros and cons of paying to promote posts on Facebook.
The potential benefits of boosted posts
There are several reasons why paying to boost posts on Facebook can be an effective marketing strategy:
- Increased reach – Boosting allows you to get your posts in front of many more people beyond just your current Page followers.
- Targeted audience – You can choose to boost your post to specific demographics, interests, and behaviors to reach your ideal customers.
- More engagement – Boosted posts often generate higher engagement in terms of reactions, comments, and shares.
- Brand awareness – Promoted posts can expose your brand to new audiences who may not have seen it otherwise.
- Lead generation – The call-to-action button on boosted posts lets you drive traffic to your site to capture leads.
- Affordable – For most small businesses, the cost of boosting posts presents an accessible way to advertise on Facebook without a big budget.
In essence, boosted posts allow you to amplify your organic reach and engagement on Facebook for a relatively low cost. The increased visibility can help you gain new followers, leads, and customers.
Factors to consider
However, simply paying to boost posts does not guarantee success. There are several factors to consider:
- Targeting – Narrowly defining your target audience for the boosted post is key to getting results. Broad targeting yields poor results.
- Messaging – The post content itself needs to resonate with your goals and audience for boosting to work.
- Design – More visually appealing posts tend to get better engagement. Creative visuals are important.
- Objectives – What do you want to achieve with the boosted post? Are you focused on reach, engagement, conversions?
- Quality over quantity – Well-performing organic posts tend to also perform better when boosted.
- Budget – You need to test different boost amounts to gauge impact and optimize spend.
Success with boosted posts requires thoughtful targeting, compelling content, strategic objectives, and the right budget allocation. Simply boosting a post without those elements is unlikely to deliver results.
The pros of boosted posts
Here is a more detailed overview of some of the major benefits that boosted Facebook posts can offer:
Increased reach
One of the primary reasons to boost Facebook posts is to increase their reach. When you boost a post, you choose how much you want to spend to promote it more widely. Facebook then pushes that post out to more news feeds beyond your current followers. A well-targeted boosted post can reach thousands of additional users. This expands your potential audience and helps get your content and brand in front of more people within your target market.
Improved engagement
In addition to increased reach, boosted posts often generate higher engagement as well. People are more inclined to react, comment, and share a post that appears in their feed as an Ad rather than just as organic content. The social proof of a boosted post can pique interest. This higher engagement in turn signals to Facebook’s algorithm that the post is resonating, leading to more organic reach too. More reactions and shares mean your post catches more user attention.
Brand awareness
For companies and organizations trying to build brand recognition, boosted posts allow you to get your brand and messaging viewed by the right demographics. Even if someone does not directly engage, simply exposing your brand name to new audiences can increase familiarity. This helps establish your brand identity and makes future marketing efforts more effective once people recognize you.
Lead generation
Boosted posts also provide an opportunity to drive traffic to your website. Using the call-to-action button, you can send visitors to targeted landing pages to capture leads and convert visitors. This gives you a way to turn the exposure from boosted posts into tangible results. The visitor data also provides insight into your audience and creative performance.
Cost-effective promotion
Compared to other paid advertising channels, boosting posts on Facebook can be relatively affordable, especially for small businesses. For most brands, investing a small amount behind well-performing organic posts provides an efficient and low-cost way to increase visibility and reach more potential customers. With Facebook’s detailed targeting options, you can zero in on exactly who you want to see your posts.
The potential cons
While boosting Facebook posts can provide advantages, there are also some potential downsides to keep in mind:
Diminishing returns
The more you boost the same post over and over, the lower your incremental reach and engagement typically becomes. There are diminishing returns from repeatedly boosting the same content. You may see initial success but then reach plateaus. To maximize results, you need a steady stream of new creative and posts.
Loss of organic interaction
Some research suggests that accounts that rely heavily on boosted posts actually see lower engagement on their organic content over time. So constantly pushing boosted posts can undermine your non-promoted engagement. This makes it very difficult to maintain reach when you stop paying.
Ad fatigue
Too many boosted posts in users’ feeds, especially repetitive creative, leads to ad fatigue. People will start ignoring your posts if they see too many. Very high boosting frequency often backfires for this reason.
High cost for uncertain results
While boosted posts can be affordable, in aggregate the costs add up. And despite best targeting efforts, results are never guaranteed. You may not achieve the desired reach or return on ad spend. Testing and optimizing take time and skill.
Prioritizing paid over organic
If you become too reliant on boosted posts for reach, you may neglect creating compelling organic content. But organic posts are critical for maintaining reach long-term. Over-indexing into paid reach can lead to lower organic visibility.
Tips for success
Here are some tips to help ensure your boosted Facebook posts deliver results:
- Target tightly – Focus on specific demographics, interests, behaviors, and connections
- Highlight value – Clearly communicate the benefit you offer in your post copy
- Use visual media – Images, videos, and carousels perform best
- Rotate new creative – Don’t boost the same post repeatedly
- Find the right duration – Test post durations between 1 and 7 days
- Monitor performance – Track reach, CTR, engagement, conversions, and cost per result
- Re-target website visitors – Custom audiences help improve conversions
- Focus on quality over quantity – Prioritize great content over quantity of boosting
- Optimize for objectives – Tailor target and creative to your specific goals
When is boosting most effective?
Certain scenarios tend to see higher performance from boosted posts:
- Launching new products or services
- Promoting limited-time sales or special offers
- Driving traffic to key website pages and conversion events
- Building awareness at the top of the funnel to cold audiences
- Re-engaging past customers and website visitors
- Amplifying engagement and reach on posts seeing high organic performance
Boosting typically works best either at the very top of the funnel to tap new audiences, or further down the funnel to target those already aware and interested in your brand.
Ideal budget for boosting
When it comes to budget, Facebook boosted post pricing includes:
- Minimum bid: $1 per day
- Minimum budget: $15 for lifetime budget
- Minimum audience size: 1,000 users
Beyond those minimums, optimal budget depends on your objectives, target audience, and other factors. Here are some guidelines on budget to consider:
- Test small – Start with $15 to $25 per post to gauge performance
- Experiment with incrementally larger budgets – Compare results at different levels
- Analyze cost per result – CPL, CPC, CPM, etc. based on your goals
- Allot 10-25% of overall ad budget to boosted posts – As part of a diversified Facebook strategy
- Reinvest in top performers – Expand budget for posts with strong ROAS
- Adjust for audience size – Bigger reach requires larger budget
While there’s no universally ideal budget, the key is to test different amounts and find the sweet spot where your CPL and ROAS deliver against targets. Optimization over time helps improve performance.
Should you always boost evergreen posts?
Not necessarily. While some evergreen, high-performing posts are worth additional boosting, practice moderation. Here are some pros and cons to keep in mind:
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
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The best performing evergreen posts to boost typically:
- Offer perennial value to your audience
- Align to current strategy and keywords
- Have new targeting or objectives
- Haven’t been boosted for several months
Boosting evergreen content can generate incremental value. But balance it with new creative and make sure you’re not just blindly repromoting the same posts indefinitely without a purpose.
Length of the boost
When boosting posts on Facebook, you also need to choose how long you want the promoted post to run. Duration options include:
- 1 day
- 3 days
- 7 days
- 14 days
There are pros and cons to both shorter and longer durations:
| Shorter Duration | Longer Duration | |
|---|---|---|
| Pros |
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| Cons |
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1-3 days is best for initial testing and re-targeting. 7-14 days helps saturate reach and allows time for conversions. Evaluate performance at different durations to find the optimal balance.
How much should you spend?
Ideal spend depends heavily on your business, objectives, and audience size. But here are some benchmarks on potential boosted post ad spend for different business sizes:
| Business Size | Boosted Post Spend |
|---|---|
| Small business | $50 – $300 per month |
| Medium business | $300 – $500 per month |
| Enterprise | $500+ per month |
This represents a portion of overall Facebook ad spend. The goal is allocating budget across ad types and channels for diversification. Test to find your optimal mix.
Risk of account suspension
One risk to be aware of is the potential for account suspension if Facebook’s systems detect suspicious boosting activity. Things that can trigger suspension include:
- Sudden sharp spikes in spend
- Very rapid boosting of multiple posts
- Boosting the same posts repeatedly
- Abnormally high engagement relative to reach
- Suspicious targeting or audience building tactics
Pacing your budget build and boosting approach helps avoid red flags. Stay relatively consistent week to week. Vary your creative and targeting. Avoid anything that appears inauthentic. Have transparency into your data and performance to identify issues early.
Best practices
Some final best practices for success with Facebook boosted posts:
- Build authority and community with valuable organic content first before boosting
- Incorporate boosting as just one part of a comprehensive strategy
- Focus on quality creative that solves user needs or taps emotions
- Ensure brand familiarity before expecting conversions
- Monitor metrics beyond vanity likes/shares – focus on real business impact
- Test extensively – Creative, audiences, objectives, placements, budgets, etc.
- Align boosted post content closely to landing page or ad creative it links to
- Develop robust targeting with first and third party data
- Make messaging and value proposition highly relevant to each audience
Conclusion
When used strategically within the context of a broader marketing plan, boosted posts can be a cost-effective way to increase reach, engagement, leads, and conversions on Facebook. However, to maximize results requires thoughtful planning, execution, creative testing, and performance analysis.
Simply boosting posts without a methodical approach typically yields lackluster results and wasted ad spend. But brands that refine their targeting, creative, and objectives over time can generate a strong return from boosting their top performing organic content.