The “Boost” button on Facebook & Instagram posts is infamously referred to as the “take my money” button, and for good reason. On first sight, it may appear as if “boosting” your posts is a good idea, but believe us, it isn’t. ‘Boosting’ posts is something that is not only ineffective, but also lacks a variety of features in comparison to running a traditional social ad using the Meta Ad Manager. In the end, boosting a post will be nowhere near as beneficial as running a traditional paid social ad.
Here is why you should never use the “boost” button on Facebook or Instagram:
1.The Boost Button Lacks The Features for Optimizing Conversions
In the digital game, “conversions” mean everything. A conversion is any type of end-goal item that you can set as the entire purpose of running your ads. This may be sales, leads, store visits, follows, chats, website visits, or comments. When it comes to running ads, every dollar spent should have a purpose. That purpose is a conversion. As an advertiser, your goal is to create as many conversions as possible for the advertising dollars spent. Hitting the ‘boost’ button is not conversion orientated and is usually just a way to blast your ad with absolutely no purpose. The Meta Pixel is what creates and tracks your conversion items, and also optimizes your ad targets for them. If you are using the boost button, you’re not utilizing the endless features the Meta Pixel algorithm provides. And if you aren’t optimizing for conversions, you’re wasting your money.
2.The Boost Button Lacks Targeting Options
Targeting options are extremely essential when running and type of digital ads. The more targeted your ads are, the better they will perform. In the traditional Meta Ad Manager, you have the largest group of targeting options that the platforms provide. Within the “boost” settings, your options are extremely limited. Therefore, your ad targets will not even have the capability to be as targeted as you would like them to be, which also means your ads will perform much worse in comparison.
3.The Boost Button Doesn’t Offer Scalability
One of the prime reasons for running any type of digital ads is scalability with your conversion items. What this means, is that conversions don’t really mean anything on a small scale, unless you can bring them to a larger scale. For example, if you sell a product that costs $100 and you get a purchase for $10 in ad spend, then you have a 900% return on your ad spend (ROAS). However, this doesn’t mean anything if you’re only spending $10, but it does if you’re gradually increasing your spend to thousands of dollars. The increasing of your ad spend systematically to increase conversions is what is called scaling. Because the boost button sets hard end dates, this disables you from scaling your spend over time.
4.The Boost Button Doesn’t Allow For Custom Audiences
Custom audiences are one of the best features of Meta advertising. Custom audiences can be things like lookalikes, retargeting audiences, and email subscribers. You can have the ability to display ads to people who have been on your website, people who have interacted with any of your Facebook or Instagram accounts, or even anyone on your email list. This is something that is not directly possible by using the boost button on Facebook or Instagram. Typically, the best audiences you can send ads to are custom audiences, and with the boost button, this isn’t entirely possible.
5.The Boost Button Lacks The Ability to A/B Test
A/B testing is paramount to the success of your digital ad campaigns. A/B testing is the process of testing one variable against another. This variable could be your ad targets, sections of your ad targets, custom audiences, ad copy, and even ad creatives. Ultimately, you would want to test a series of variables to see which one(s) perform better than the others and expand off of that winning variable. With the boost button, you do not have the ability to do this.
