- Meta Ads
- method
- budget
Boosted posts on Facebook: what the button does, what it leaves out, and when to avoid it
The Boost button promotes a post in two clicks. What it allows, what it leaves out, and why it suits badly when you are looking for customers.
Published on · Joh · 6 min read
Under every post on your Facebook page there is a Boost button. Two clicks, a budget, a duration, and the post is shown to more people. It is simple, and that is what makes it tempting.
Boosting is not advertising in the sense an advertiser means. Let us see what that changes.
What the Boost button does
It takes a post already live and shows it to more people, against a budget you set. You choose an amount, a duration, an audience from a short list, and off it goes.
Its appeal is obvious: it needs no skill. Its flaw is less obvious, and it lies in what it does not allow.
What it leaves out
The ads manager, Meta's full tool, asks you to decide things that the Boost button decides for you or does not offer.
The real objective. In the ads manager you tell Meta precisely what you want and what it should optimise for: a contact, a sale, a message. The Boost button offers a handful of simplified objectives, without that level of control.
The audience. The choice is narrower, and so is how finely you can read the results.
The placements. Where the ad appears is largely decided for you.
The reporting. You see how many people saw and reacted to the post. You see almost nothing of what matters to a business: how many contacts, at what cost, of what quality.
Meta does exactly what it is asked to optimise for, and with the Boost button it is mostly asked to show the post. To bring in contacts you have to ask it for something else, and more precisely.
When the button is enough
There are cases where it is perfectly fine.
- Announcing an opening, an event, a promotion limited to your area, when the aim is for as many people as possible to know
- Giving a post that is already good a push, to get it seen beyond your followers
- Testing very simply how a piece of content is received before investing in a real campaign
In those cases you are after visibility, not contacts. And the result is measured roughly, which is enough.
When to be wary
As soon as the aim is to generate enquiries, get quotes signed or sell, the Boost button becomes a poor tool. Three reasons.
You cannot tell Meta precisely what you want. You cannot qualify or measure what happens afterwards. And you are paying for visibility on a message that was not written to convert: a page post is made to be read, not to trigger a contact.
It is the most common case among small businesses and tradespeople: the money is spent with very limited reporting, and the conclusion is that "Facebook does not work", when the tool used was not the ads manager.
The middle way
You do not have to choose between the button and a full campaign. The ads manager lets you reuse an existing post, keeping its likes and comments, but with complete control over the objective, the audience and the tracking.
For a business it is often the right way to turn a post that did well into an ad that pays.
How much a boosted post costs
The button does not bill for a post: it bills for display, within the amount and duration you set. The price therefore depends entirely on what you decide to spend.
The real question is the useful budget. A budget that is too small gives no readable result, whatever the tool. I set out how to estimate it here.
Further reading: What Meta Ads budget to plan and Why your Facebook ads are not working.
Boosted posts before, with nothing to show for it? . We look at what you did and what it could have brought in.