Digital marketing is becoming the most popular way to market your business. It’s important, and will become even more crucial, to hop on this bandwagon to make sure you are keeping up with times. You wouldn’t allow your equipment, services or products to become outdated. You should be treating your marketing tactics the same way.

Social media advertising is a very popular marketing tactic right now and we don’t predict this to change anytime soon. If anything, this trend will continue to grow and gain momentum. In order to choose the best way to advertise, you first have to understand your options. There are two different ways to advertise on Facebook:

Post Boosting

This is the quick and easy way to get the word out about whatever you are promoting. It’s also the most simple way. Post boosting allows you to set a budget, timeframe and choose an audience based on geographical and personal demographics. Boosted posts will show up in your chosen audiences timelines as an ad.

Ads

Ads includes the same benefits as boosting, and then some. You still set your budget, timeframe and audience based on geographical and personal demographics, however ads have to be created via Ads Manager. By using ads manager, you have a plethora of bother customization features available such as:

Ad Placement

Choose whether you also want your ad to be shown on Instagram in addition to desktop and mobile feeds, in side ads, messenger ads or stories.


More Specific Objectives

Boosted posts focus solely on post clicks and engagements. With an ad, you can choose other objectives such as clicks to your website, send a message, download documents, sign up or phone calls.

Creative Control

Boosted posts only allow text and an image with minimal text on it. Ads offer different creative layouts such as video ads, slideshows, carousal ads and different call to action buttons.

Advance Targeting

Boosted posts allow you to target an audience via interests, age, gender and location. Ads allows you to target audiences including all these and more specific routes such as creating lookalike audiences and people who have visited your page/website prior.

Now that you understand the differences, how do you know when to boost versus when to run an ad? More times than not, ads are the way to go. However, boosting is still great for:

  • Events
  • Announcements
  • Sharing user generated content

Boosting will allow for you to get the word about something out quickly and affectively. However, if you want to contribute to your branding, creating customers and sales and focus on longevity, ads are most definitely the best option due to the customization options and ability to target and re-target customers.

Have you tested the waters with social media marketing? Sound off on your experiences, trial and errors in the comments. If you have any questions or would like assistance in your social media marketing, reach out to us today to get started!