Local businesses often have misconceptions about digital advertising. One area where there’s much confusion is boosted social posts. Your customers may think they’re engaging in targeted ad campaigns with this action, but they aren’t.
When you have an initial conversation with prospective advertisers and ask them about their current digital campaigns, they may describe boosting social posts. If you can explain the reality of how these work versus true digital advertising, they’ll realize how working with you will be so much more valuable.
The Truth About Boosted Social Posts
Companies have the option to boost their posts on many social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, LinkedIn and TikTok. Users see this as an option if they are admin on the account. It applies to posts that the profile has already published organically.
The objective of boosting a post is to reach a wider audience than those who already follow a brand. How they work on each platform differs, but they usually include steps like these:
- Selecting a goal: The goals would usually be to get website visitors, leads or profile visits. They may differ from the campaign objectives when setting up a social media ad campaign.
- Choosing a call to action (CTA): Not all social media sites add this to the post. For those that do, CTAs may include things like Book Now, Learn More, Shop Now or Sign Up.
- Building an audience: Boosters can go with an automatic option, which tells the platform to target audiences like current followers. You may also have options to define an audience by geography or get more specific by manually adding information.
- Setting a budget and duration: In this step, the user enters the amount to spend and how many days to boost the post.
What’s the Difference Between Boosted Social Posts and Digital Advertising?
A boosted post on social is a type of paid advertising, but actual digital advertising is much more strategic.
Much of the time, a boost is simply a reaction someone makes when they see the offer. Maybe the post is performing well, and they think, sure, why not?
Building a digital advertising campaign starts with a specific goal or challenge the company faces. From there, you consider their audience, the market, budget and time frame to construct a campaign that uses multiple tactics to achieve the objective.
Refined targeting and unique creative assets work together to get the ad in front of the right people with the most relevant message. It’s simply not possible to do this with boosted posts. You can, however, do this exceptionally well with display, video, geofencing, OTT/CTV, social media ads, streaming audio, email marketing, radio and SEM (search engine marketing).
Simply put, boosting a post has little strategy behind it, and the only thing you can guarantee is that it will appear in more people’s feeds. A multichannel, well-designed campaign will usually deliver better results aligned with a specific goal.
The Pros and Cons of Boosted Social Posts
Basically, the pro of boosting a social post is that it’s easy — it’s just a few clicks. The cons are a much longer list.
Goals Aren’t Conversion Focused
Ad objectives are limited and involve behaviors that don’t necessarily convert to buyer intent. Is someone visiting the company’s profile or engaging with it really an indication that this person could become a customer? Probably not.
Typically, more choices are available when setting up a social media ad. However, social media posts aren’t always the best bottom-funnel tactics unless there’s a form-fill element, and that’s not an option for boosted posts.
Other digital advertising tactics work better for converting on immediate buyer intent, including email marketing, SEM and even radio! Check out our guide for aligning tactics to the sales funnel.
Limited Ad Placement Options
Boosting a post also gives you few choices for placement. For example, Facebook and Instagram only let you boost in Instagram, Facebook mobile feeds or Facebook desktop feeds. Other platforms have similar restrictions. Customers doing this may have little awareness of these limitations, so educating them on this will be an immense help.
Boosted Posts Can Have Excessive Fees
In February 2024, iPhone users began getting hit with 30% service fees if they boosted content within the Facebook or Instagram iOS apps. Thus, the convenience factor of executing it on mobile is no longer available to everyone. To avoid the expense, iPhone users must boost posts on Facebook.com or Instagram.com.
Advising Your Customers on Using Boosted Posts
You don’t have to tell advertisers to stop boosting posts. They may have experienced some appealing results, like more website traffic or followers. However, you should make sure they understand the limitations of boosting. If they think it’s the same as digital advertising, you can set the record straight constructively.
Social media ads may not even be the best option for them. When boosting or creating ads, they need an active profile with lots of content and engagement. A company with a few images and 10 posts probably shouldn’t waste money on either.
Your job is to listen to their advertising needs and integrate that into what you know about tactics and the market. Then, you can propose a campaign that will deliver the results they expect. After working with you, they’ll realize it’s a much better investment to leverage your expertise than to throw some dollars into an activity with little planning behind it.
Get more insights on recommending the right tactics by advertiser goal by using our digital ad mix tool.
