Stop Boosting Your Posts! Promote them properly with Ads Manager!
Anyone running a Business Page on Facebook or Instagram would have seen a 'Boost' (Facebook) or 'promote' (Instagram) at the bottom of your posts.
Where pressing these buttons can be a great way of improving reach and traffic on those posts, if you compare to the capabilities and how in-depth creating a campaign from Ads Manager can be - you will soon see that they are very basic and only really a drop in the ocean of how powerful Facebook & Instagram can be.
In this week's blog, we will go over how boosting a boost works, how to move over to using Ad Manager for your promotions, and how this will be more beneficial in the long run.
How Does Boosting Work?
Clicking 'Boost' or 'Promote' will allow you to boost that specific post to a greater audience. You are limited to having that one Campaign promoting that one post to one audience. This type of paid advertising can be great for giving your post a quick engagement boost, as this is how Facebook/Instagram optimise boosted posts.
For this example, we are going to go through clicking 'promote' on one of our latest Instagram posts to show the different options.
So Firstly, find the post you want to boost/promote to a new audience. Once you have selected the one you want (if you a business page), click promote at the bottom of the image.
Once you have clicked 'promote', the first option is to decide where you want to send your traffic.
Your Profile - Use this option if you want the Call-To-Action on your promotion to be "Visit Instagram Profile". Interested people will then be sent to your profile, where they can view more of your content.
Your Website - This will send people to your website via the Instagram in-app browser. The Call-To-Action can be altered to ones such as 'Learn More' or 'Shop Now.'
Your Direct Messages - This prompts users to send you direct messages; the CTA at the bottom of the promotion would be 'Send Message' that, once clicked, will send them to your direct messages.
There are a few variables on deciding which to select. If you have an online store and want to direct users to purchase the particular item within your post - then the 'your website' option would be best. If you aim to generate engagement solely, follows etc., then sending them to your profile would be best for that situation. Sending users to your Direct Messages would be best suited for companies that offer a bespoke service; users can then message you directly about that.
It would be best if you took some time here to decide where you want your audience to go and how you want them to interact with you.
Now we have the destination set, the next parameter to decide on is who you want to view your content. Instagram preselect the 'automatic' option; with this option, Facebook/Instagram match and create an audience based on people they think are similar to your existing audience. If you want general engagement, then leaving this on automatic would generate the best results.
If you want to hit a specific type of person, you can manually select your audience based on their location, interests, age and gender. This can be more beneficial than leaving Facebook/Instagram to decide on your best audience if you are after a specific customer or engagement from a specific demographic.
The final parameter to decide is how long you want the promotion to run and how much you want to spend per day.
As you move the two scrollers up and down, you will see how the estimated reach alters. As is evident, the more you spend, and for longer you spend that amount, the more people you will reach.
Boosted Vs Ad Manager
To compare the two is hard as with Boosting a post you can target a new audience and reach the primary goal of using Ads of improving reach. However, when you look at the options, the two give you - the use of Ads Manager wins hands down.
Some advantages to using Ads Manager are:
Not limited to one audience per Campaign
Can target users based on device (Desktop, Mobile etc)
No time limit; with the boosted post, the promotion runs for a set time; with Ads Manager, you can run it for as long as you want.
How to Use Ads Manager?
On the face of it, Ads Manager can look more complicated - but essentially, it is very similar to when you click 'Boost' or 'Promote', just with more options.
This is what the Ads Manager interface looks like. When you have campaigns running, they will be displayed on this page with the different data shown under the relevant heading. To begin creating a new campaign - click the green 'create' button.
This will bring up the following pop up:
Here is where you select your campaign goal. This effects how Facebook optimises your Ads and affects where/what the end goal is for the user.
Once you have selected the Campaign Objective, you come onto the Ad Set page, this is where you edit the Audience, Placement and Budget of your Ad Campaign and looks like this:
This is where the Ads Manager starts to show its worth when compared to boosting a post. You can alter where you want your Ad to be placed (Facebook Post, Instagram Story etc), which isn't possible when boosting a post. As you make changes to your Audience, Placements and Budget, you will see the right-hand column alter to show you the estimated daily results of your selection.
Once everything is selected and confirmed on your Ad Set Level, the next page takes you to the Ad Content and would look like the below image:
Here, you can choose whether you want to use an existing post or create a new one. Once you have decided whether to use an existing or create a new one, you can select your Call-To-Action. On the right-hand side, the Ads Manager shows you how your content will appear for each of the different Placements.
Once you are happy with what the content will look like, it's time to click 'publish' in the bottom right. Your Campaign is then sent to be reviewed by Facebook (this is of course, to safeguard Facebook/Instagram from dodgy advertisements). Before running any ads, I would recommend going over your industry's policies to prevent any issues from arising. Facebook offer a training course style platform for this.
Final Thoughts
So we have gone over the two different ways of using paid promotions on your posts. Even though Ads Manager may look a little more complicated and in-depth, for low-level campaigns, it doesn't differ too much in complication from clicking 'boost' but allows a lot more control. You have more choice over the objective, where you want your Ad to be, and your audiences.
For high-level campaigns making use of features such as the Facebook Pixel' and 'Dynamic Ads' and also the substantial audience capabilities, Ads Manager does get more complicated, but that's where we can come in to assist with our expertise to ensure your business is making use of the capabilities.
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For more information on how we can help you reach new audiences, engaging current customers and retarget customers that haven't yet committed to purchasing - get in contact below!
mac@mac-marketing.com