Facebook has over 2.91 billion active users, so the chances are your current and would-be customers are probably using Facebook. If you want to connect with customers and showcase your products and services you should maintain your presence on social media, specifically Facebook.

Facebook has two available advertising methods – you can boost a post or use Facebook Ads Manager to run a campaign. The method you use ultimately depends on what you hope to achieve with the advert. Do you want to advertise to your current fans, or do you want to increase your reach?

Give yourself a boost

A sponsored or boosted Facebook post is when you pay to promote a post so that it appears in a user’s news feed and thus increases audience engagement.

Boosting a post on Facebook is easy: You first need to ensure you have a Facebook business page and your allocated role allows you to advertise. Then you find the post you want to boost on your timeline and tap boost post. Simple. You can boost an old post or create a new post, and instead of opting to publish, you simply select boost. There are some restrictions about what posts you can promote, so if the boost post text doesn’t appear, you may need to do some troubleshooting.

The customisation is limited, but you are able to define your advertising objective, select an audience, set a budget, and decide on the duration that the post will be boosted. You can also change the duration and budget throughout the post’s boost period.

By boosting a post you will increase your visibility as the post will appear higher in a user’s news feed. It’s an excellent way to drive traffic to your Facebook page or website, and increase customer engagement.

Getting more advanced

If you feel your objective is to reach a wider or more specific audience, or perhaps you want to achieve a different call to action, you will need to use Facebook’s Ads Manager. This is a self-service tool that you can use to create, edit, and analyse any ad campaign you have running on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.

Creating an ad on Facebook Ads Manager is a bit more complicated than boosting a post. Firstly, you can’t quickly create it from your business page; you will need to go into Facebook Ads Manager. Facebook offers two options to help you through this – a guided creation and a quick creation. Guided creation is a step-by-step guide for beginners, while quick creation has all your ad settings in one window.

Ads Manager offers more advanced customisation solutions that can be overwhelming at first.

• Objectives. To help you reach your desired goals, you are asked to define your advertising objectives. There are 11 different objectives to choose from, including increasing website traffic, getting more people to install your app, and increasing video views.
• Devices. You can choose which devices to display ads on – desktop, mobile or both.
• Placement. You can be specific about where on the page you want your advert placed and on which app:
  • Facebook news feed, video feed, right column, marketplace, stories
  • Instagram feed, explore or stories
  • Messenger inbox or stories
• Customise your Audience. If you want to reach a particular demographic or target users based on their behaviour, interests, or location, you now have the option.
• Scheduling and Budgets. You can select a daily or lifetime budget (total amount spent over the duration of your campaign). As well as campaign and ad set budgets if you have several adverts running simultaneously. You have the option of starting your campaign immediately or selecting a future start and end date if you want to target certain holidays or events.
• Creating the Ad. Ads Manager will recommend advert styles based on your chosen advertising objective. They might suggest you design a carousel ad with multiple images or a Links ad with a call-to-action button to get your audience to act.
• Reports. You have access to Ads Reporting, the built-in analysis tool, so you can see how well your advert is performing.

There are pros and cons to both advertising options. Your success ultimately lies in deciding on the best social media strategy for your business. If you know your target market and tailor your marketing strategy with their interests and behaviours in mind, you should have a favourable result.

Remember, no one likes to be bombarded with advertising, so the trick is to be strategic with your advert’s messaging, frequency and delivery method. Chat to our knowledgeable team at Radical Cloud Solutions if you need a hand with your social media marketing.