I’m sure you’ve heard in the past you shouldn’t use the boost button on Facebook. And in the past that was true.
But Facebook has made changes to how this works and some situations make the Boost button a valuable tool.
The advantage is that it’s fast and easy to use, you just need to know when it’s the right option to use.
I’m going to give you three situations where we use the boost button.
There is one thing you need to know before you start boosting your posts.
You need to make sure you’re talking to the correct audience.
When you’re setting up your boost you’re going to get the option to choose who you want to see your post. You want to be speaking to the right people so make sure you create an audience you want to use and try it out.
You can create it and save it so it’s easy to use over and over again.
Boost situation 1:
When you’re first getting started with Facebook ads, many times people feel overwhelmed with the complexity of the ads manager.
Using the boost post option lets you get ads up and running simply. This way you can get your feet wet and see how powerful Facebook is without getting overwhelmed with all the choices.
Also when you’re more experienced you may find yourself using the boost post option when you need to test something quickly. When you’re using smaller budgets the boost post option can get you similar results to the ads manager.
Boost Situation 2: Testing Your Audience
When you’re first getting started or when you are expanding your audience, many times the boost post option is the fast and inexpensive way to get results.
You can create the audience in ads manager, or while you’re boosting your post, and save it so you can reuse it easily.
You create a post with a message that your core audience will relate to and boost it to this audience. Your only goal is will they respond. For $60 you can reach several thousand people and see what happens.
Recently I’ve been working with a company that is launching a Game Day Experience package to Iowa Hawkeye fans.
When we started they had never even advertised on Facebook. Finding fans of a college sports team is easy, but the question was will they really respond?
To find out we set up a post talking about looking forward to the Hawkeye’s playing again this year and we asked what they were looking forward to the most.
Over 4000 people were reached and 679 of them responded in some way, either a comment, share or reaction. That is a great response. We know that our audience is filled with Hawkeye fans for only a $60 investment
Boost Situation 3: Testing Your Message
Once you know you are talking to the right people, you need to see if they respond to your message.
Doing this is simple: You create a post with the message you want to get out and see how the audience you tested response.
Again, this time you’re only trying to get a response. You’re not trying to sell anything yet. If you do sell something then that’s great, but it’s not your primary goal.
Using my last example, if you had 679 responses when you put out your message then things are looking good. If you get 6 responses you know you have work to do.
Normally, if you get 40 or more you’re on the right track.
This is where it can take some testing.
You put out a message and run it for 4 days and invest $50. If it works, add more money and see what happens. If not then create another message and see what kind of results you get.
You’re going to be investing money, but you’re getting valuable information every day and getting closer and closer to moving people to the next step. Best of all, it’s not taking lots of your time.
Final Thoughts
You can use the boost post option to test on an ongoing basis if you like.
However, while boosting is a powerful tool… it has its limits. Once you start spending $25 a day on one ad you’re going to want to use the ads manager. The ads manager is a bit more complex, but it gives you more control over your ads and more options to use.
Knowing when to boost and when to use ads manager is one more step to your success with Facebook ads.
Brian
P.S. Have you gotten your copy of my book “The Facebook Formula”? If not go to www.gosocialexperts.com/book1. It’s packed full of information that can make the difference if you or Facebook make money from your efforts.