Facebook Sponsored Posts: Do They Make Sense for Your Business?

Facebook Sponsored Posts

Chances are if you found this blog, you know that I am a super affiliate and we run mostly on Facebook. Since you wouldn’t be reading this unless you had a little bit of marketing knowledge, I would assume you know how valuable Facebook ads can be.

You can choose the audience, set the bids, and craft an ad, and conversions just start pouring in…

Well, it’s not quite that easy, it’s a bit more complex than that, but here is what you need to know about Facebook Sponsored Posts.

Facebook ads can be highly profitable and produce incredible return on investment as I am sure you’ve seen from some of my results.

They can help business, small, medium, and large scale, build brand awareness, and sell products and services.

Facebook Sponsored Posts

There are a lot of people out there who know about Facebook Ads, but are not really familiar with Facebook sponsored posts.

And likely if they do know about them, they likely don’t understand exactly what the two platforms do exactly and how they should be used.

I would like to clear the fog and take a look at why Facebook sponsored posts are very unique and different from your more traditional Facebook ads and more importantly if ever you will want to use them.

If you are more visual, then this video lays it out well from my You Tube channel:

What Exactly are Facebook Sponsored Posts?

If you have a Fan Page on Facebook and actively post, as my team does you will see the option to “Boost Post” in the Image below.

This would allow you to promote that single post that exists in your fan page without having to go into the Facebook ads system and create an actual ad!

You can simply set the budget, general audience targeting, and time frame, in this simple pop up screen and you are advertising. Facebook makes it super easy to spend your money on Facebook sponsored posts.

Boost Facebook Post

This ad will display in your audiences’ news feed and looks similar to the ads created in the ads manager.

“Boost Post” was designed for a less overwhelming and simpler way to advertise and spend money on their platform.  Many of us in the beginning are simply intimidated by the Facebook Ads system and this is a nice alternative.

Use cases include small businesses that are just trying to improve reach, but there are a bunch of other great use cases as well.

What’s the Difference between Facebook Sponsored Posts vs. Facebook Ads?

So far I have covered sponsored posts, how about the difference between Facebook ads and sponsored posts?

There are benefits to both. Let’s have a look at them:

Facebook Sponsored Posts

One of the Key Benefits of sponsored posts is that they are easy to use and grasp, simple to create, and give you a lot of really good social proof even if you are not an experienced Facebook Ad Marketer.

Sponsored Posts

All those likes, comments, and shares, a.k.a. the social proof are visible to the audience and really give your ad a great impression right from the start.

Your Audience targeting is more limited here, as well as your placement choices, and bidding options. You can set bid limits, use retargeting, or play with bid strategies.

Your post only appears in people’s Newsfeeds.

Facebook Ads

True Facebook ads are created in the Facebook ads manager, while sponsored Facebook Posts technically are under the PPC category in the ads manager.

You can choose your objective like “traffic,” “conversions,” or engagement which gives you a lot more flexibility with what you are trying to accomplish with your ads.

Facebook Ads

Typically, based on experience, sponsored posts are really on valuable for brand awareness and engagement; however they can drive traffic to your site or landing page.

The actual Facebook Ads manager gives you a lot more options and is better optimized for many more actions.

With traditional Facebook ads you can create custom audiences and advance target your perfect customer, including people that already have some sort of relationship with your brand already.

You can daypart, which is only run your ads at optimal times of the day, you can adjust bids, and strategies, as the Facebook Ad platform is an auction for ad placements.

Budget & Schedule

Over Facebook book ads have more creative options as well, there are multiple ad formats, including canvas ads, Collection, and carousel etc.

Creating a Facebook Ad

Page Post Engagement or PPE

It’s worth mentioning that you can create your sponsored post through Facebook ads system as well.   You would just choose engagement and pick the current post you want to promote.

Here is Page Post engagement set up

Here is Page Post engagement copy hack

PPE

When Would You Want to Use Facebook Ads

For most businesses and generally for most ads, it’s going to benefit your company ads strategy more to use Facebook ads instead of sponsored posts.

Yeah it will take a little longer to set up and the Facebook Ads manager can be a bit tricky to understand but it is a skill worth knowing long term.

In most of my campaigns I want conversions not just engagement so in my case you would for sure want to be running traffic out of the ads manager.

Here is the simple answer on “when to use Facebook sponsored posts in instead of Facebook ads” almost never…

Creating a Facebook Sponsored Post

This is easy to do.

Find a post in your feed and simply click on the blue button “Boost Post”

Whoa la! A pop up comes up.

Here is where you choose your targeting criteria

-note custom audiences do not have the retargeting capabilities
-set your budget
-duration of the campaign

Facebook Sponsored Post

It’s really that simple

When you are boosting posts these are not eligible

  • Drafts
  • Post with a link to a note
  • Profile picture update posts
  • Full albums
  • Scheduled live videos
  • Mobile app install post(Ad platform only)
  • Post you’re featured in
  • Live videos from unverified pages

Here are some best practices

If you do decide that sponsored posts are for you then here is what you should do:

  1. Include a good image or video, I like to focus in on pattern interrupt and incongruent images that people wouldn’t normally see in their feeds
  2. Use posts that have a lot of social proof already. People like to follow the herd and if they see others liking, commenting, etc this will attract more people.
  3. Your priority id engagement here, you are not optimizing for clicks or conversions. You want the post to be engaged with ad brand awareness. If you are trying to sell something I would use conversions.

Conclusion

Both the Facebook Ads System and the Facebook Sponsored Posts are different tools, even though the sponsored posts are an extension of the system.

I would highly recommend you learn the Facebook ads system. If you want to do your Page Post Engagements then you can, through the main system as I demonstrated above.

If you are overwhelmed you can find free trainings on my YouTube Channel or consider one of my paid structured courses see the products section.

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