One of the most common misconceptions I encounter when talking to small business owners about Facebook Advertising is that they think it’s the same thing as boosting/sponsoring a post on Facebook.
“Facebook Advertising? Yeah I do it all the time!” says Dave the plumber, who pays £15 for a photo of a blocked drain to reach several hundred people in his postcode. Whilst you are technically advertising on Facebook, Dave, you’re not using Facebook Advertising (which is the name of the advertising platform Facebook own).
Below is an infographic (which I made for our company Facebook page last year) illustrating the differences between Facebook Advertising and boosted posts on Facebook.
Facebook Advertising features:
- A vast range of objective options (probably more than 14 now) including website traffic, lead generation, app installs and social media engagement; helping you aim the advertising at whatever best suits your brand.
- Choose what you pay for, such as amount of people reached, amount of clicks and more.
- Detailed demographic targeting, helping you pinpoint the ideal audience for you advertising.
- Adverts appear beyond Facebook, including apps/websites like Instagram, Tinder, news websites and much more.
Facebook Sponsored/Boosted Posts features:
- 2 marketing objective options: post engagement or messages.
- Only appears on Facebook.
Overall Facebook Advertising offers far more “bang for buck”, whereas simply sponsoring/boosting a post doesn’t usually see good results. Facebook Advertising will generally provide much better reach than boosting a Facebook post, with some of our clients seeing 25 times the reach they were achieving through “boosting”.
I hope you found this useful. If you have your own question about marketing please ask it below:
Thanks everyone who purchased the book earlier this month, your ongoing support means the world to me!
I’m already working on another book concept. I’m taking my time with this and am interviewing people within the industries I’m writing about to get their insight, rather than it being all my own opinion.
Anyway, that’s just a little teaser of what I’m up to.
At the moment I’m struggling to find motivation in writing full articles like I was before creating the last book, but I’ll continue doing blog posts and answering Q&As regularly. Underneath each blog post I might add a little section like I’m doing here, so you can get an idea of progress with the new book, and whatever else I’m up to.
SIR THORNEY 