Don’t Push the Boost Button on Facebook–It’s a Trap!

Jamie Jean Schneider Domm

Digital Strategist for the North American Division. ​​​​​​​

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​In other words, don’t be like Bob and push that button, because you could be limiting your options, wasting your ad dollars, and curtailing your desired results.  

​It’s tempting. It’s easy. You can push that blue boost button right from your phone, and you imagine that you’re expanding the reach of your post beyond your wildest dreams. Well, you’re not really. Let me explain. 

If you’re new to social advertising, boosting a Facebook post is appealing because it’s easy to access and simple to set up. But if you’re on a limited budget and looking to maximize your results within a target audience, boosted posts are not the way to go.  

This blog post will discuss why you may end up wasting your precious ad dollars when you boost, the enormous value Facebook Ads offers your ministry through other, more effective campaign objectives and targeting, and the rare situations in which it’s okay to push that boost button.

The Facebook Ads platform is king when it comes to social advertising, and it can be your secret weapon for delivering your message effectively to your target audience. Whether you’re a tiny ministry or a for-profit Fortune 500 company, Facebook’s advertising platform delivers unrivaled value (as of May 2019) in terms of precise targeting, customizable advertising, and affordable buys for any budget. It offers more psycho-demographic information about your audience than any other advertising platform, including but not limited to: interests, behaviors, household income, age, gender, religious or political beliefs, relationship status, occupation, age of children in the home, etc. The possibilities are almost endless. However, the boosting interface (remember that blue boost button?) strips these targeting options down to a minimum and limits your ability to combine and exclude targeting filters.  
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While boosted posts make advertising easy for the newbie, most of the boost advertising options are purposefully limited. You will not be able to leverage the full power of Facebook Ads targeting with optimized results. Facebook Ads manager offers more than 17 marketing objectives that are not available in the boosting interface. Choosing the right objective for a highly targeted audience produces a winning combination that will stretch your ad dollars while maximizing results. Conversely, boosted posts frequently cast the net too wide for small budgets to create impact among a desired demographic. 

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To summarize, here are the three reasons to avoided pushing the boost button:

1. There are more effective and specific campaign objectives you can select within Facebook Ads manager.
   Instead of the infamous boosted post, there are a variety of marketing objectives in Facebook Ad manager that will help you achieve your goals, such as capturing lead information within the Facebook app, registrations, increased brand awareness, increased video views, website landing page views, messages, and more. Boosting from your page's interface does not allow you to select these objectives.
   
   Key performance indicators (performance results) vary greatly between the different objective types. Each marketing objective optimizes ads in different ways to obtain specific results. Therefore, we recommend that you A/B test the same ads with different objectives to determine what works best for your goals.
   
   
2. Audience targeting options are reduced in the boosting interface.
   Facebook Ads manager offers hundreds of targeting options and countless combinations to narrow down your audience based on location, demographic, behavior, interests, and connections. Facebook boost has upgraded recently to include more of these options, but the Facebook Ads manager still allows greater customization for detailed targeting. When you boost, you cannot split test different creative content (images, copy, or video) to see what is most effective, nor can you change bidding options, ad positioning, or timing of ads. You can’t retarget audiences or target newer placements like Messenger Ads or Mobile Audience Network, and you lose the ability to customize the campaign name along with a variety of the other advertising features. The Facebook boost button only allows you to promote posts which are visible on your page’s timeline—restricting your ability to launch campaigns to a targeted audience while excluding your existing fans. To learn more about these features, download our Crash Course in Tracking, Analytics, and Advertising.
   
   
3. Boosted posts are primarily focused on vanity metrics like engagement that won’t increase your bottom line.
   When you boost a post, Facebook by default targets users who tend to engage (like, react, comment, view, share, click links) with ANYTHING in their newsfeed; they don’t necessarily take meaningful action. It is common to scroll through your newsfeed and like multiple posts without being able to recall any of the messages you interacted with. 59% of links are shared on Facebook without the person reading the article or content. People are more willing to like, react, comment, or share than take the time to read and digest the content. This is not necessarily bad, but quality engagement is more likely to have the kind of impact that results in increased sales/donations, registrations, conversions, meaningful reach, and brand awareness. The campaign objectives discussed above (see #1) are more effective for growing your ministry and increasing outcomes. You want to attract people’s attention and build a relationship through a more in-depth interaction. You want your audience to remember your content. 

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When is it a good idea to click the boost button?

1. If you want to increase your visibility within the organic news feed (natural non-paid posts) and/or to communicate to your most engaged fans, the social butterflies who are always engaging with your content. Now these fans are most likely to engage even without your organization investing in an ad. However, they can be a powerful and low-cost reach vehicle for building up some organic traffic (through their shares, likes, and comments showing up in their friends’ news feeds) as part of a comprehensive awareness campaign. It can also be a way to communicate special offers, news, and events to your most loyal fans as well as get traction on your posts quickly. However, it should not be the only ad you purchase. These types of ads can also be managed from the Facebook Ads manager.
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2. When you’re feeling generous and want to help Facebook generate more revenue without requiring any meaningful return on investment (ROI) for your advertising dollars. Mark Zuckerburg has lost a significant amount of his wealth in recent market fluctuations, and I am sure he would appreciate your contribution.  

 
To achieve good results with your social advertising campaigns, you must embrace good advertising practices. That means doing social advertising the right way: through Facebook Business or Ads manager. It is a very user-friendly tool, and the results will make the learning curve worth it. As Christians, this is also embraces good stewardship. We should take the time to learn how to use the tools at our disposal in a way that optimizes the funds we have been blessed with to do God’s work. 

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To view all of Facebook’s targeting options, check out this useful infographic from Wordstream. 

Download the Facebook Targeting Infographic (Wordstream)
File Size:	1403 kb
File Type:	pdf

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