With the “pay to play” game growing faster by the minute, many businesses using Facebook are being prompted to put money behind their Facebook posts. These ad suggestions by Facebook pop up all over the platform, whether it be on your news feed or even on a “Boost Post” button under your organic content. The real question is: which Facebook campaign option is better for your business? We’ll break it down for you.

Why spend money to advertise on Facebook?

If you’ve been operating a Facebook business page any time over the past year, you’ve probably noticed an intense decrease in reach for your organic posts. Not every one of your followers is seeing your content on their natural news feed, making your organic impact weaker over time. This is because Facebook has updated its algorithm to deprioritize branded content on a news feed, and force businesses to put some type of budget behind their posts.

Although some may see this as a major negative, marketers can see this as a growing opportunity to reach users who may have never interacted with the content otherwise.

What are Facebook ad campaigns?

Facebook ad campaigns are created through Facebook’s Ad Manager, allowing the marketer to organize and build an ad or ad set from the ground up. Properly structuring these campaigns can help your brand better measure results, test different audiences and identify which creative combination works best. With Facebook ad campaigns you can really get into the nitty gritty and explore these assets:

1. Create separate campaigns for each objective

2. Organize ad sets by audience

3. Bid for your objective

4. Create multiple ads to optimize creative

5. Reallocate your spending

By building a Facebook ad campaign using Facebook’s Ad Manager, your brand is telling Facebook, “We want to increase sales and see conversions using certain key information.”

What are Facebook boosted posts?

Facebook boosted posts allow a business to quickly and easily put money behind an organic post in order to grow the page’s audience. Essentially, you’re allocating ad spend to a post that already exists on your Facebook page and will be shown to a broader target audience of users. Your budget for this type of ad depends on how many users your business page wants to reach. By boosting posts, your brand is telling Facebook, “we want more engagement.”

Pro tip: Organic posts that are already performing well should be the posts boosted to new audiences. If they’ve done well with current followers, the messaging and creative must be doing something right.

So what’s the answer?

In a nutshell, it all boils down to your brand’s goals and target audiences to determine whether Facebook ad campaigns or boosted posts are right for you. Our advice: a healthy combination of the two can help you better understand what works best for your business.

Each Facebook advertising option has its place, and we’ve got the tools to help your business unlock the right campaign for you. For more information on Facebook advertising and the possibilities of your business’ digital marketing, contact our team of experts at Hardcore Advertising.