Boosted Posts or Ads Manager - What Should Your Facebook Ad Strategy Be?

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By the BlackDog Social Media Team

If you’re looking to diversify your advertising portfolio while maximizing your budget, social media is an ideal choice. No matter what you’re marketing or who you’re marketing to, it’s more likely than not that your audience is active on social media. Each month, more than two billion people worldwide are actively engaging on Facebook. That’s more than half of the population in the United States and more than the entire population of China. These people are in every age group and are on Facebook every day. In fact, on average, people are scrolling their Facebook feeds several times a day.

When you break it down, the numbers show that it’s not just Millennials and Gen Z. The highest percentage of Facebook users are those between the ages of 30-49 at 78%, followed by 50–64 year-olds at 65%, and 65-year olds and over at 41%. It’s clear that Facebook has the one thing that marketers are looking for—a colossal, actively engaged audience who is hungry for content on a regular basis.

Social media offers other valuable benefits, not the least of which is its affordability. If you’re going to advertise on Facebook, there are numerous ways to do it. But although some of the options are easier and less expensive than others, it’s truly a case of you get what you pay for.

Facebook gives you flexible marketing capabilities and the ability to customize your campaigns. Based on your goals, there are numerous possibilities to reach and connect with consumers. You can run ad campaigns in a variety of ways. Here’s a look at the two ways marketers utilize Facebook to advertise:

What’s a boosted post?

If you’ve ever posted on your company’s Facebook feed, you’ve likely seen that button encouraging you to boost your post. And if you clicked it, you know that boosting a post gives you the ability to do just that—give your post a little boost and extend its reach by promoting it to audiences who may or may not already see it. If you’ve never boosted a post, here are a few details about what it entails:

  • Boosted posts allow you to promote a post that you’ve already put on your timeline
  • Basic targeting options include age, interest or location
  • You select a budget
  • You choose how long you want the post to run (duration)

While boosting posts is a simple way to promote your brand, its targeting is highly limited. Here’s why: you can only target to one audience from the following three categories:

  • People who have already liked your page
  • Friends of people who have already liked your page
  • People you choose through a few targeting options (such as age and gender)

With a boosted post, you also have very little control over when and where your post will appear. So you may not be reaching your ideal customer while they’re engaging—this is especially ineffective if you’re running a special promotion or advertising an event. Boosting also prevents you from including a call to action button on your ads, which means your leads have nowhere to go, you can’t send people straight to your website, or encourage them to shop or make purchases; the trail goes cold.

What’s Ads Manager?

At the end of the day, your social media advertising has to accomplish what it’s designed to do—and that’s reach the right people and call them to action. Whether you’re selling a tour of banana plantations in St. Lucia, a sunset cruise in Key West or enticing paranormal fans to explore a haunted city, your ad should elicit a response. And with Facebook’s Ads Manager, you have much more control and flexibility to do just that.

Customize your target audience

With Ads Manager, you’re not limited to a few options when it comes to your target markets; instead, there are nearly infinite ways to pinpoint who you want to reach including:

  • Location
  • Behavior
  • Interests
  • Connections
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Languages
  • Site visitors
  • Major life events
  • Parental status
  • Marital status

You can also target “lookalike” audiences—which are people who are similar to your existing customers. It’s like cloning all your best customers! And, you can create highly detailed and layered targeting—drilling down to the very deepest level of demographics to help weed out those who are less likely to respond.

Ads Manager’s powerful capabilities

With Ads Manager you’re in the driver’s seat with every detail of your ad, including where and when it will be seen, its content, the goals of the campaign and so much more—powerful options that a simple boosted post cannot accomplish. Check this out:

You control your creative

  • With Ads Manager you can create totally customized ads that aren’t already existing posts on your forward facing Facebook page
  • Use unique videos, bold images, and compelling copy to speak directly to your target audience
  • Create a unique call to action that leads them to your website, to sign up, to shop, to book a trip
  • Create multiple ads with different creative for different target segments

Define a campaign goal beyond post engagement

Ads Manager offers many options for your campaign goal including clicks, video views, conversions, store visits, lead generation, traffic, engagement and many more options that a boosted post cannot provide.

Detailed and layered audience targeting

  • Drill down your targeting to the most specific details
  • Layer multiple types of targeting to create an exact audience
  • Retarget an audience and serve them another ad that fits their preferences
  • Exclude people who have purchased recently

Manage placements and schedules

  • You decide where your ad will show including feed, the marketplace, messenger, etc.
  • You choose when your ads show to users based on their time zone and the specific timeframe of your ad’s duration. For example: only between 11am and 7pm, etc.

Advertise on Instagram at the same time

  • With Ads Manager you have the option to run your ad on Instagram simultaneously, and choose between Instagram feeds or Instagram stories. This is the only way to advertise on Instagram.

The real boost comes from Ads Manager!

More than 91% of marketers have invested in Facebook advertising this year. And to maximize their budgets, the most successful ones use Ads Manager. When you consider the fact that you have the ability to zero in on your target audience, design totally customized ads and run them when, where and how you want, the choice is infinitely clear. Ads Manager gives you the power and control you need to make the most out of every ad and every dollar, totally outshining boosted posts. Entice, engage and excite your audience with Ads Manager—then enjoy the return on your investment!

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