In our last article, we explored ways businesses can expand their organic reach. If you’ve tried those and you still want to reach a larger audience, you need to turn to paid options: Facebook advertising and post boosting.
Before boosting a post or creating an ad, it is important to determine what your goal is. Are you looking to increase your brand awareness, boost website traffic, promote content, get page likes? Your goals for the campaign greatly influence the type of campaign you choose.
You also need to come up with a budget. When setting up Facebook advertising or post boosting, you will tell them what you want to spend, and they will tailor a plan around that.
FACEBOOK ADVERTISING
One paid option to get exposure on Facebook is with Facebook Ads. There are seemingly endless options for advertising options, so try not to feel overwhelmed. Facebook does an excellent job of detailing all the options for ad objectives and formats.
First, you choose the objective of your ad. Choose from Brand Awareness, Reach, Lead Generation, Increase Brand Consideration, Get Product Conversions, Messages, or Dynamic Ads. If you’re not totally sure what they all mean, you can click on each one to get a description, examples, and more.
Next, decide on the ad format. Your choices are Images, Carousel, Collection, Instant Experience, Video and Slideshow, Catalogs, and Stories. Again, detailed descriptions of each format is available to help you choose the right option.
From there, you’ll need to figure out your audience. You can choose to target specific audiences, such as by age, location, interests, etc. Or you can choose a broader audience, where Facebook picks for you.
Finally, you will choose your ad placement. Facebook recommends using the “Automatic Placement” option, which allows their system to put ads where it makes the most sense and so you can get the most from your budget. You can also opt to choose your ad placements instead.
Ad Placement Areas
News feed: your audience sees your ad while scrolling through their news feed, on both mobile and desktop
Instagram feed: ad appears on the Instagram feed, both mobile and desktop.
Facebook Marketplace: ad appears on the Marketplace home page, both mobile and desktop.
Facebook Video feed: ad is mixed in with organic videos and news feed, both mobile and desktop.
Facebook right column: ad appears in the right column, desktop only, no mobile.
Messenger Inbox: your ad is on the home tab of Messenger.
FACEBOOK POST BOOSTING
Slightly less overwhelming is the Facebook Post Boost option. There are far fewer options with post boosting, but you can still get a big impact and have your post seen by a large audience.
Benefits of Facebook Post Boosting
Targeted Audiences: When boosting posts, you can reach a larger audience, and also choose a targeted audience. For example, target your ads to college students ages 18-24, or women over the age of 50. Create parameters based on users’ locations, age, gender, interests, etc.
Budget: You can choose any dollar amount for your campaign. The only restriction is it has to be at least $1 per day. You can boost ads for as little as $7 per week. Of course, the more money you spend, the better results you’ll receive. Before you commit to boosting your post, you can determine how many people you’d like to reach and how much it will cost to do so.
Time: The duration of your campaign is completely up to you. Run for a specific period of time, even just one day. Or choose to turn off the campaign indefinitely and you can manually turn it off.
Flexibility: Your post boost campaign will start almost immediately after it’s reviewed by Facebook, and you can make changes to it at any time. You can boost any kind of post- images, videos, links to your website, etc.
ANALYTICS
Facebook offers really powerful analytics to help you track your ads and boosts. You have access to all the clicks, reactions, comments, and shares your posts and ads receive. Use these tools to see what’s working, what’s not, and plan accordingly for the next campaign.
If you want to reach a larger audience on Facebook, Facebook advertising and post boosting is your answer. The experts at Blindspot are ready to help you build a successful campaign if you’re not ready to do it on your own. Get in touch today!