Organic reach of Facebook posts has been going down in percent for year, there is simply too many posts to show on someones timeline before it get crowded. So if you are running a Facebook group or a page, your post will probably reach something around 1-5% of your membership which is kinda a bad if your business is made around your followers looking at your posts actually.

One quick, easy, and affordable way to do that is to boost your organic posts through a sponsored post or better called – boosted post.

What is a Facebook sponsored post?

It is pretty much a already created post on your page that you push to more people from your follower list. How many, it is up to your budget. If you want your organic post on your Facebook business Page to get more visibility and to reach bigger audiences, you can promote your post. Your post will be seen by more people, can help drive more awareness and user engagement as well as possibly impact your website traffic if there is a link in the post you are promoting and boost your conversions too.

There are two ways you can boost a post directly through your organic post which is the easier way or through a Facebook Ads Manager, which needs a little bit of knowledge.

When you click on the Boost Post, you will get more options to chose, like audience which can be one of the already standard ones that Facebook will give you like audience that already likes your Page (that is the part when you want to reach your page fans, at least more of them), or your can target broader with people who like your page already plus their friends or totally new audience that you will create. You can also chose you budget, the time lenght of your promotion and ad placement. Facebook will provide you with the most basic options with too many complicated choices.

If this is your first time running an ad on Facebook, you will need to add your payment information such as a debit or credit card before you can activate your boosted post. Otherwise, if you used it before, Facebook will have it stored.

Set up through Facebook Ads Manager

If you have some Facebook advertising experience, head over to Facebook Ads Manager and set up a campaign with any campaign objective that makes sense for your boosted post goal. You can still use existing post just this time you will have more detailed options to chose from.

While there are countless ways tactics, one way we set up sponsored posts through Ads Manager is in retargeting campaigns, where we are reaching warm audiences that have not yet converted.

Facebook sponsored posts vs. traditional Facebook ads

Facebook sponsored posts are very easy to use, especially if you are a small business owner or an individual with small or no Facebook Ads managing experience. These are also effective for short term runs, going from one to seven days in duration, where traditional ads can run long term pretty much until you stop them or ran out of budget.

Another benefit of choosing a sponsored post is that you can do it for a very low cost. With an only $1/day ad spend minimum on boosted posts, you can begin reaching people. Of course, the more budget you have, the more users you will reach. Sponsored posts are primarily effective in driving brand awareness and engagement.

A traditional Facebook ad campaign and ads are set up in Ads Manager, where you can use a lot more features, see reporting and make further optimizations. Traditional Facebook ads provide you an option to select a campaign objective, such as awareness, website traffic, event attendance, engagement, mobile app installs, leads or conversions. You can also set more advanced targeting options with inclusion and exclusion audiences, utilize bidding strategies and optimization strategies.

There is much more flexibility in Facebook Ads Manager, which is useful to give it a try if you want more control. However, if you are just looking to quickly and easily gain more traction on your organic posts, sponsored posts may better suit your needs.

If you need ideal audience for your ads then Facebook with its around 2.5 billion users each month is pretty good choice. Facebook has many different types of ads you can make, from single image ads to video ads, but which type performs the best?

Better question is – which one is best for you? The best ad type you might use depends first on what your campaign goalsare. Do you want to increase page likes, generate leads or get more sales?  When you have the goal of your campaign figured out, you will then have a list of relevant ad types to choose from. Once you make your ad copy and ad creatives, you will need to choose the proper audience.  Then you will test various ad types to find the one that works best with your target audience.

If you have an eCommerce website that sells clothes you might consider ad type that show more than one product. There are few type of Facebook ads in that category, carousel with multiple images and collection. Collection ads are a great ad type used for showcasing products and encouraging users to explore your brand.

A video ad is an very effective marketing tool but comes with a problem of creating a good one that takes some extra skills so it in general more difficult creative to create than a simple images. But video ads are strong creatives that can grab your audience’s attention much better than images.  Another benefit of video ads is that they are good for retargeting. If someone watched your video, they have shown an interest in your brand or products. So you can retarget to someone that watched certain % of your video.

There is also an option to create a slideshow ad on Facebook, which is an alternative to video if you are not skilled enough to create video for your ad. This ad type allows you to add multiple images into Facebook’s tools to create a moving slideshow.

You should test different ad types, analyze results and repeat because not all of your campaigns will have the same goals which means some ad types may not work good for all of your campaigns. The most important part of this is to continue testing until you filter out which one is best for the campaign you are doing.

Facebook is very close second place to You Tube in terms of popularity with US audiences as the data shows, and the world-renowned social network is twice as popular as its nearest like-for-like competitor. If your business has serious ambitions on gaining more customers or going up as efficiently as possible, it is certainly worth looking at making some PPC campaigns on Facebook.

You should optimize your sales funnel

Facebook ads vs. Google ads perform somewhat differently. In the case of doing PPC advertisements with Google, audiences will be actively looking to buy the products or services you are advertising, but with Facebook, it is more likely that you will be appealing to audiences who are just browsing with little intention of making an immediate purchase and operating on smaller budgets might be a little problematic with Facebook ads. It is also good to run more campaigns in same time all with different goals which could lead to creating your own social sales funnel. Probably most purposeful funnels you could create for your Facebook PPC campaign could focus on engagement to try getting new customers in and is perhaps most effective when done through the video advertisment.

Build exposure through frequency

You can also monitor the number of times a specific user views your advertising campaign through ad frequency. This is an important metric because audiences that sees your ad repeatedly are more likely to remembers it. But it is important to leave your mark within campaigns and also be careful of not overdoing your frequency because if your ad appears too often, it will only lead to users ignoring your brand.

Make your budget go further

When you create your PPC for Facebook, you’ll be running probably few ad sets with multiple adverts within each set. To chose which ad set is more effective, it is important to look at the metrics available to see which campaign is best for accomplishing your goals. When you determinate which ad is performing best, allocate more budget towards the set, about 10-20% to steady boost without taking too many risks. When you continue to and see encouraging results, repeat the process until you notice signs of diminished returns on your investment.

Fine tune your target market

If you decide to incorporate Instagram into your ad reach, it’s reasonable to expect far greater engagement, but it is likely that you’ll see fewer comments or likes if you choose to place your ad as a Facebook page post, so remember that proper placements bring perfection to PPC campaigns. Facebook Messenger generally performs well when it comes to conversions and Audience Network placements can often increase a brand’s reach.

Get the right bidding option

Facebook uses an auction-based system when running advertising campaigns. Advertisers just need to pick the type of campaign they want to run, whether it’s based on conversions in the form of link clicks, landing page views, or certain on-site interactions.