Jewelry ECOMM Tech

Moving Beyond “Boosted” Posts March 23, 2020 (0 comments)

Ah, the “boost” button! It sits under each of your Facebook posts. Jewelers everywhere have used the Boost button to promote their product pieces and promotions for years. It seems like an easy way to get your posts in front of more people. But, I’m here to convince you to stop using the Boost button. It’s not sufficient. It’s ok as a quick solution for jewelers. But make no mistake about it - that’s all it’s meant to be. A quick solution. But it’s not the best one. By using the Boost button on your posts, you’re missing out on tons of features and functionality that the Ads Manager could have provided. In this article, I’ll outline 9 key reasons you should resist using Facebook’s boost button and take a few extra moments setting up all those posts in Ads Manager instead. The extra time and care it takes will be worth it.

1. Create Multiple Ad Sets for a Single Campaign

When you Boost a post, you’re having Facebook create a quick campaign campaign that includes a single ad set and ad. That’s why you can always go back and see your boosted post in your Ads Manager. You’re simply skipping the process of going into Ads Manager from the start. Now, your ad set consists of determining things like targeting, optimization, and placement. But, what if you want to try out different audiences and see which groups are responding best to your posts? You can’t do this by just boosting the post. It must be done in Ads Manager.

2. Create Multiple Ads for a Single Campaign

The Boost button is built around a single post. You make a post, you click Boost, and that’s it. However, split testing ads - the strategy of testing different copy, creative, and ad types - are an extremely important part of testing which ads are performing best.  What works better? Should you target your website visitors or target fresh audiences based on interest? Which placements work best? What copy and creative should you use? You can’t figure this stuff out by boosting your post. Switch to Ads Manager.

3. Optimization Flexibility

When you boost a post, Facebook streamlines the process and makes assumptions about what you’re trying to achieve. They look at the type of post and give you a few optimization options. But you may not want to optimize the way Facebook suggests. And you can’t optimize differently without choosing a different campaign objective. When you create a campaign in Ads Manager, you have a clean slate. Select from 11 different objectives, which will help determine how your ads are delivered.

4. Campaign Budget Optimization

Facebook’s Campaign Budget Optimization enables you to set your ad budget at the campaign level, and Facebook distributes that budget between your ad sets to get you the best results. When you boost your post, you only create a single ad set, so you’d have no way to use Campaign Budget Optimization.

5. Dynamic Ads (Retargeting)

Dynamic ads allow e-commerce advertisers to upload a product feed and create an ad template so that users are dynamically shown an ad based on their browsing behavior.  You’ve probably seen this - you go to a website to view a product, and then you’re seeing that store advertise that product to you on Facebook as if they read your mind. This is something that can’t be done with a boosted post.

6. Full Customization of Placements

By default - whether you’re boosting a post or using Ads Manager -  Facebook will display your ad in all their available locations (placements). In Ads Manager, you can turn this off and select only the combination of placements you prefer - from which there are tons. But simply boosting posts, these options are limited. 

7. Conversion Window Selection

Does a typical person convert within a day of seeing your ad? Perhaps so for low-priced products. However, jewelers sell expensive luxury products. The buying cycle is longer.  If you simply boost, Facebook is going to put all your conversions together when optimizing to find the ideal audience. But, Ads Manager lets you choose the conversion window to optimize for.

8. Cost Control

Facebook ads are distributed based on an auction format. Facebook is going to bid what they need to bid to reach your audience. Their only constraint is the budget that you set. Ads Manager (not boosted posts) will give you way more control over your ad budgeting and spending. You can set a cost cap, bid cap, or average cost to control how Facebook spends your money.

9. Customize Creative by Placement

All the various locations you display your ad in may have different size requirements. The image sizes for News feeds, Instagram, stories, Messenger, and more are different, and each allows varying amounts of text. Facebook will crop and resize your images, and they’ll cut your copy automatically to fit each placement. Or, you can customize your text and creative by placement in Ads Manager.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]