To Boost Or Not To Boost?

By now you’ve probably heard or realized that spending a lot of time posting organically to your Facebook page and trying to generate “likes” is no longer going to help spread your organic reach onto customers’ Facebook pages.

Facebook defines organic reach as “how many people you can reach for free on Facebook by posting to your Business Page.” It used to be that businesses could post on their Facebook Business Page and assume that people who had liked their page would see those posts on their own news feed.

But then, Facebook started changing their algorithms. Now, only a fraction of people who have liked your Business Page will see what you post.

A study from Edgerank Checker found that between February 2012 and March 2014, organic reach for the average Facebook Page dropped from 16% to 6.5%.   Research from Social@Ogilvy, showed an even lower number and that organic reach could be as low as 2%.

So what is a business to do? Pay to reach people on Facebook and “Boost” a post?  Well, yes to the first part, no to the second.

Yes, you should pay to advertise on Facebook. It is one of the best advertising platforms out there and delivers incredible return on investment for your marketing dollars.

But don’t do it by boosting a post. In fact, this article, “Don’t Touch That Facebook Boost Post Button” states emphatically, “Boost Post is a waste of your money. If you’re using it often, you might be throwing hundreds or even thousands of dollars away.”  This is why we, at Vici, don’t boost posts for our clients, we use targeted display and video news feed ads through the Facebook Power Editor.

Here are the limitations of just doing a boosted post:

• You can’t do Lead Ads or Local Awareness Ads
• You can’t do Custom Audience Matching or Lookalike Audience
• You can’t link to specific pages on your website
• With a Boosted post, Facebook only optimizes for “Likes” not clicks to your website (so you’re paying Facebook to get you more “Likes” even though most people liking your page won’t see what you organically post!)
• You can’t extend your reach onto the Facebook Audience Network (link)

That last bullet point is a big one! The detailed targeting of Facebook is what makes it so effective. A study by Shopify found that Power Editor ads have a 94% higher click through rate than just “Boosting” a post from your Facebook page.

Want more info about how we do Facebook targeting. Contact us!