Paid advertising on Facebook: boost button vs. ad manager

Just like Google, advertising on Facebook is extremely simple and beneficial for your brand or company. However, if you don’t have the knowledge and tools, you can end up spending your budget without getting good results. Facebook has two ways of doing paid advertising, the first and most time-consuming is through the ad manager tool. The second and newest option is through the boost button. The blue boost button, which is found both on Facebook and Instagram, has generated multiple controversies and negative comments since its launch. To the point that several experts recommend not to use it. That is why today we have decided to clarify the doubts and concerns that can generate the boost button compared to Facebook Ad Manager.

What is the Facebook Ads Manager?

In case you are new to the topic, Facebook allows you to run ads through an Ad Manager tool. If you are familiar with Google Ads, Facebook Ads will be much easier for you. Through a Facebook Ad you can give your campaign a specific objective, such as: visits to your website, lead generation, brand awareness and so on. At the same time, the ad manager tool allows you to spread your campaign in the location you want, i.e.: in the feed, right column, marketplace, stories, among others. The best part, if you go a little deeper into its settings, you will be able to direct your ad to the target audience you want. Either by selecting the age, interests, level of studies, etc. To use it, you only need to find the option “Manage my ads” or “Create ads” in the Facebook menu. In case you can’t find it, you can access it by clicking here.

Advantages of creating advertising campaigns with Ad Manager

The ad manager is an extremely useful and advanced tool, with it you will be able to design campaigns that convert, thanks to its wide range of possibilities and advantages such as:

1. Access to detailed targeting  

As mentioned above, you can set up the target audience you want to reach, selecting their interests, connections, demographics, geographic location and more. This way you can multiply the effectiveness of your ads and conversions. However, to do this, you must define and structure your digital planning as well. Also, once you set up your audience, you can multiply the reach of the ad through the “similar audiences” option.

2. Trial and error

In any advertising campaign, its success is aligned with trial and error. Only in this way is it possible to end up selecting the winning version.  This tool can carry out this tactic in a simple way, thanks to A/B testing or incrementality testing. In other words, you can select an ad or segmentation after testing which one has the best results.

3. Control the effectiveness of your ads

The Ad Manager can access graphs, maps and diverse data that will allow you to know the effectiveness of your ads. Such as reach, impressions, cost per click, engagement or conversion rate. Likewise, thanks to the fact that it is a very powerful tool, it includes a diagnosis of the problems that the ad may have, as well as several recommendations to improve its effectiveness.

What is the blue boost button?

Now that you know what the Ad Manager tool is, there is also the boost button as Facebook’s second tool for paid advertising. Although the Ads Manager is quite a handy tool to use, Facebook has sought to further facilitate access to paid advertising through this button. The purpose is to promote a post that is already on your Facebook or Instagram profile, so apart from appearing in your newsfeed, it will show as an ad to other public that is not following you.

How to use the boost button on Instagram and Facebook?

To use this button, you just have to select one of your posts and press the button. This way of advertising is much simpler than with the ad manager, since you only have to provide three pieces of information, which are:

1. Audience: you must select who you want to reach, that is a target audience made up of the people you could connect with.
2. Budget: in this case you must indicate the exact amount you want to invest during the whole period in which the campaign is in circulation.
3. Time: once you have your target audience and budget defined, you must establish how long you want to keep the ad on.

The ad will then enter an approval period, which generally takes no more than three hours. When the ad is approved, the audience you have selected will see it in their newsfeed. Note: you must keep in mind that the boost button applies only to one publication and one type of ad, so it is not possible to make changes or larger campaigns with it.

Why is the blue boost button so criticized?

It is quite likely that at some point you have heard criticisms or complaints about the promote button on Facebook and Instagram. So much so that many people and experts recommend not to use it.  Mostly the boost button is branded as one of the worst ways to advertise, since its targeting options are very limited, but this is because it is simply a tool for “boosting” a post.  On the other hand, with this button it is not possible to choose the ads location, so in some cases you can see your posts being promoted in the stories, which happens very often on Instagram. Although the ad manager provides a wider campaign set up, it is not wrong to use the boost button, depending on the objective of the strategy and how your publication is designed.

When to use the Ad Manager or the Boost Button?

As we mentioned before, when you use paid advertising on Facebook, it is important to define your strategy or digital planning in a specific way, since this will depend on what is the best option for you. For example, if what you want is to multiply engagement in your networks or boost brand recognition, promoting a post is an excellent way to have greater reach and thus increase your audience. On the other hand, if you want to create advanced ads, with specific and strategic objectives, the ad manager is undoubtedly the best option. In this way, combining both advertising options, you can enhance your digital strategy and get very good results. In case you still have doubts, you can contact us through Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. At Factor Engagement we have SEM services through which you can achieve your goals with the help of specialists in the area. To arrange a meeting and receive more details, just click here.