Almost every entrepreneur has done it. You have too, no doubt. Clicking that attractive blue 'Boost post' button… even if only for one euro. It's done in seconds and… you actually get nothing out of it. Paid campaigns, or ads as we call them in the marketing world, can work extremely well and give your business a real online boost. Thanks, Facebook. But then they have to be set up properly and through the right platform. No panic, we'll explain everything in detail so you stop wasting money on nice blue buttons promising you the world. Because one euro… is one euro.
Sponsored
It sits right under a post you actually find quite interesting… from an account you don't follow at all. How come? Because every company likes making money. You do too and… so does Facebook.
From a business account you can create paid online advertising with a single click, tailored to a specific audience that's ideal for you. You decide who sees your post. You choose who you target. Sounds like excellent marketing? Wait until you hear the rest.
Boosting a post
When you put a post online, Facebook immediately gives you the chance to boost your post. Is that a paid campaign? Yes, sort of, but the basic version. Boosting a post essentially means you're increasing your post's reach with money and therefore mainly focusing on generating more likes.
More Facebook users get to see your post that way, even if they don't follow you. Here too you can choose who your post is shown to. The options are limited though, ranging from gender and age to interests and behaviour. Clever and handy, that it is. But it can be better.
Ads Manager
Alongside boosting a post, as a business you can go a whole step further with online advertising. There's a completely separate interface from which you can do far more… In Facebook's Ads Manager you can build different adverts and compare them with each other. That way you quickly and easily discover which advert is most suitable for your audience and will therefore perform best. You can compare different audiences with each other too. The result? The best advert for the ideal audience.
Ads Manager also contains plenty of statistics and figures. So you know exactly what's scoring less well and what's genuinely successful.
Boosting vs Ads Manager
Concretely: you can create a paid campaign on Facebook with both. But from Ads Manager you can work in far more detail and genuinely play into your audience's strengths and weaknesses. You can go very far in building your ideal audience. Users who have already visited your website but haven't gone through to a purchase because they're hesitating… Yes, even those users can be targeted.
Facebook's Ads Manager goes much further still. What's the goal of your paid campaign? Do you want to focus on extra likes, just like with boosting posts? That's perfectly possible. But is that your only goal? Because Facebook can even go looking for new customers if you want. And of course we want that.
Experts in Facebook ads
Let's be honest, there's a lot involved. Simple it certainly isn't. To use all the options in Ads Manager fully, a certain knowledge is required that not everyone has. Setting all the possibilities and options accurately also takes far more work and therefore automatically more time. But don't let that demotivate you.
Plenty of entrepreneurs get support to set up their paid advertising campaigns from Ads Manager. And that's certainly not a bad idea, because it means your advertising budget is used far more efficiently.
Conclusion
Is advertising on social media really necessary? As far as we're concerned, yes. Social media is and remains one of the most important ways to reach as many people — and therefore potential customers — as possible. In many cases, depending on your sector and budget, Facebook adverts can genuinely give your business the boost it needs.
But if you want to use paid campaigns, you'd better get it right first time. Through Ads Manager you can achieve an incredible amount with your ads, but you have to put time into it and you need the right knowledge. Would you rather be guided by experts who know what they're doing? We can only recommend it.
