In the world of digital marketing, Facebook and Instagram have established themselves as go-to platforms for businesses looking to expand their online presence. While these platforms offer a variety of tools to promote businesses, the “Boost” button is often chosen by small businesses and entrepreneurs as a quick and easy way to reach a larger audience. However, as convenient as it may seem, the Boost button isn’t always the best choice for achieving your marketing goals. In this article, we’ll discuss why the Facebook and Instagram Boost Button isn’t as effective as running actual ads.
- Limited Targeting Options
One of the primary drawbacks of using the Boost button is the limited targeting options it provides. When you create a traditional Facebook or Instagram ad, you have access to a wide range of parameters that allow you to fine-tune your audience targeting. You can select demographics, interests, behaviors, and even retarget website visitors. With the Boost button, these options are considerably simplified, making it challenging to reach a highly relevant audience.
Running actual ads lets you harness the full power of Facebook’s Ad Manager, which includes custom audiences and lookalike audiences, enabling you to reach the people most likely to be interested in your products or services.
- Ad Placement Control
The Boost button provides limited control over ad placement. Facebook and Instagram decide where your boosted post will appear, which can result in your content being displayed in locations that may not be as effective for your goals. Running actual ads allows you to specify ad placements, ensuring your content appears where it will have the most impact, such as in the Instagram feed, Facebook Stories, or on specific websites through the Audience Network.
- Advanced Ad Objectives
The Boost button is primarily designed for increasing engagement on your content, such as likes, comments, and shares. While engagement is important, businesses often have broader objectives, such as driving website traffic, generating leads, or increasing sales. Actual ads allow you to choose from a wider range of objectives, including website conversions, lead generation, and app installations. This flexibility enables you to align your ad campaigns with your specific business goals.
- A/B Testing and Optimization
Effective advertising involves testing different ad variations to identify what works best for your target audience. With the Boost button, A/B testing and optimization options are limited. When you run actual ads, you can conduct experiments with different ad copy, images, and targeting strategies, fine-tuning your campaigns to maximize their effectiveness.
- Budget Allocation
The Boost button’s budget allocation is relatively simplistic, as it doesn’t offer much control over how your budget is distributed. Running actual ads gives you greater control over your budget allocation, allowing you to set daily or lifetime budgets and allocate your resources to different campaigns, ad sets, or ad creative.
- Ad Scheduling
Ad scheduling, which allows you to display your ads at specific times and days, is a powerful feature for optimizing ad performance. The Boost button doesn’t offer this feature, making it challenging to reach your target audience when they are most active. Running actual ads provides you with the option to schedule your ads, ensuring they appear when your audience is most engaged.
Conclusion
While the Facebook and Instagram Boost button may seem like a quick and easy way to promote your content, it falls short in several key areas when compared to running actual ads. The limitations in audience targeting, ad placement control, advanced ad objectives, A/B testing, budget allocation, and ad scheduling make it clear that running actual ads is a more effective approach for achieving your marketing goals.
For businesses looking to maximize their return on investment and tailor their ad campaigns to specific objectives, the choice between the Boost button and actual ads should be clear. By investing the time and effort into creating and managing proper ads through Facebook’s Ad Manager, businesses can unlock the full potential of these powerful social media platforms.
