When it comes to advertising on Social Media, there are two very different approaches. Knowing the difference between boosted posts vs ads will not only save you valuable time and money, it will also change the way you approach social media PPC entirely.

This quick guide will compare these two different kinds of social media ads, and explain which one you should be using in order to truly generate positive results in your marketing efforts.

A Tale of Two Different Ad Formats

In traditional Google PPC, it’s necessary to build out a proper campaign using the Google Ads Manager.

The same isn’t necessarily true in the world of social media. On platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, you have the option to “boost” your posts using ad spend.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but the problem is that many brands (and even some marketers) mistakenly believe that a boosted post is the same thing as “running an ad.”

Even if you are merely trying to get eyes on your profile, a boosted post is almost always going to be inferior to a proper ad campaign.

To understand why, let’s digger a little deeper into both options to highlight their benefits.

What is a Boosted Post?

A boosted post is essentially an ordinary social media post that is promoted beyond the reach of the organic algorithm with ad spend. Essentially, a daily budget is allotted, basic targeting is implemented, and with the click of a button, you can get more eyes on that post (and your profile) almost instantly.

You can “boost” just about anything. The exact functionality of post boosting differs from platform to platform, but the general theme remains the same.

Social Media Advertising Campaigns

A proper social media ad campaign, on the other hand, takes advantage of the respective platform’s ad manager in order to create finely-nuanced ad campaigns at scale.

All of the major social media platforms have their own backend ad platform that provides merchants and marketers with everything they need to create a full-fledged advertising campaign. Important features like ad sets, budget pacing per ad group, and granular targeting are all taken into account. These features allow for a much more sophisticated approach to advertising.

What is the Big Difference Between Boosted Posts vs Ads?

To clarify, a boosted post is not an ad. While on the surface it might be easy to mistake the two, very rarely do these two features produce the same effect.

The reason for this being is that most of the time, you wouldn’t be posting organically what you would be promoting via a dedicated ad. In this regard, you are “boosting” a creative and copy that is not optimized for conversion.

This brings me to the next important factor to consider, advertising goals.

In platforms like Facebook and Pinterest, when you set up an ad campaign, you are prompted to set up a particular goal, such as engagement or conversions.

The problem with boosted posts is that you cannot setup a conversion goal for them. These kinds of “ads” are always centered around likes, page follows, or other social media engagement metrics. Not sales or conversions.

There is no true way around this, as these in-feed posts cannot take advantage of the robust targeting options that are available in the ad manager, and so cannot be optimized for conversions.

Why is this significant? The key thing to focus on here is that even if you create an organic post that is very sales-orientated, and then boost it if you see it is performing well, it still won’t be optimized in the advertising algorithm to draw in conversions. At best, you can hope for clicks, but that is not the same thing.

Through the ads manager, you can “program” the ad targeting to go after users that have a high probability of clicking and then converting, whereas with a boosted post, all you can hope for is that your copy or creative is eye-catching enough to evict a click regardless of who sees the post.

This might seem like a small nuance but can have a massive impact on how well your ads perform.

Something we hear a lot when performing audits for clients, is that they “tried to advertise on social media” in the past using boosted posts. They may have gotten a lot of likes or even some traffic to their website, but rarely any sales.

The reason for this is that you cannot tell these platforms to optimize a boosted post for conversions. It simply isn’t an option.

Merchants buy into the idea that a boosted post is an effective way to advertise but the reality is that without the sophisticated targeting available in the ads manager, you’re basically throwing money away.

When Should You Boost a Post?

A boosted post can be useful in certain niche situations. If you notice one of your organic posts really taking off, this could be an opportunity to supercharge it with ad spend.

The resulting effect will be more page likes, more content views, and possibly traffic to your website, which could result in a few sales. That shouldn’t be the goal however – when boosting a post, remember that the default goal is post engagements.

Boosting a social media post is basically a way to trade money for page engagement. If you see a post doing well that means it is resonating with your audience, which would indicate that boosting it could net you some extra followers.

When Should You Run an Ad?

If you are serious about running a social media advertising campaign, you shouldn’t boost posts. Instead, you should work out of the ads manager on whichever platform you want to promote on, and build out true ad sets using the tools provided.

This way, you will have full control over the targeting, budgeting, and conversion goals.

Making an advertising campaign make sense financially is one of the most important aspects of running a successful campaign, and it’s for this reason that you will have a much better chance at success if you start off with a strong foundation.

Even if your ultimate goal is just brand awareness instead of conversions, using the ads manager will allow you to specifically target with this in mind.

A boosted post approach, while very easy to launch, doesn’t use any kind of conversion goal (even if the default seems to be engagement), the algorithm will simply serve your ad to x number of people that fall under the wide umbrella of targeting you have set within the allotted budget. It won’t take into account the nuances of user behavior and who is more likely to engage vs convert.

Remember, not everyone who shops on social media will interact with your posts. Some will view your ad then search for the website in Google and convert that way. Others will click on your ad but won’t like the post. Still others will like the ad and comment positively, but won’t actually click onto your website and convert.

Proper goal setup takes into account these different user behaviors, significantly increasing the chance that the users you target will be high quality relevant to your desired goals.

Boosted Posts vs Ads: The Final Verdict

If you have a goal in mind and want to achieve it with the help of social media advertising, my recommendation is to stick with the classic approach and build out a full-fledged campaign using the ads manager of the platform you want to promote on.

Boosted posts are more of a gimmick to get you to spend money, and while they have their uses (especially on TikTok where organic virality combined with a bit of ad spend on an ordinary post can go a long way), you are going to want proper goal setting and all of the other features that come with using a proper ads platform.

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