Beyond Boosting: Why Creating an Ad Campaign Yields Better Results than Post Boosting

Most of us have seen the Facebook pop-up “This post is doing better than 95% of recent posts. Promote it to reach a wider audience.” While social media platforms offer businesses a range of advertising options to reach their target audience, one question I hear from clients often is, “Should we also be boosting posts on social media channels?” We’ve seen ads within social media campaigns perform better than boosting posts, and generate better results for your paid media efforts. A well run social ad campaign offers you more control, and customization post boosting can.

Why it works better:

Targeting Precision

Boosting a post allows you to choose interests, age, and gender for your ad targeting, but it lacks the depth and precision of ad campaign targeting. When creating an ad campaign, you gain access to advanced targeting options including demographics, behaviors, custom audience segments, lookalike audiences, and overlapping audience types. These targeting options allow you to narrow down your audience and deliver your ads to the most relevant individuals who are likely to engage and convert.

Ad Format Flexibility

While boosting offers a straightforward way to amplify existing content, it limits your creative options. With ad campaigns, you have the freedom to choose from various ad formats such as image ads, video ads, carousel ads, and interactive ads, while also being able to change these over time, an option not available when boosted posts.  You’ll also have access to different placements, or places your ad will be seen like the Facebook feed, Instagram stories, Facebook search results, and much more. Each ad format has unique strengths and can be tailored to suit specific campaign objectives. This versatility allows you to experiment and find the most engaging format for your target audience.

Creative Control

Boosted posts are designed to optimize engagement on a particular piece of content, but they provide limited control over the ad’s messaging. For example, once you boost your post you will not able to change or edit the copy and creative associated with it. In contrast, creating an ad campaign allows you to craft customized ad copy that aligns with your specific marketing goals, and change that content over time. You can tailor your message to highlight unique selling points, incorporate compelling calls-to-action, include multiple headlines and descriptions to each ad for more diversity, and create a consistent brand voice across multiple ads within your campaign that aligns with your overall digital strategy. 

Get The Most Out Of Your Budget

Boosting a post often involves a fixed budget for a predefined period. On the other hand, ad campaigns give you more control over budget allocation and optimization. You can set daily or lifetime budgets, choose bidding strategies that align with your objectives (e.g., cost per click or impressions), and adjust budgets based on real-time performance data. This flexibility allows you to optimize your spending and focus on the best-performing ads.

Better Reporting

While boosted posts provide limited insights, ad campaigns offer in-depth tracking and reporting capabilities. Meta provides detailed performance metrics such as impressions, clicks, CTR, conversions, and cost per click. This data allows you to measure your ad campaigns’ effectiveness and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns.

While boosting posts may seem like a quick and easy solution, creating an ad campaign offers you a handful of advantages that you won’t see from boosting your content. Knowing the difference between these two advertising options will ensure you’re using them to their fullest potential.