Boosting a post on Facebook.worth it?

baldtooyoung

Hello all,
Apologies if the wrong thread. Been working for myself (have a full time job too) for the last 7 weeks. Only 1 product so far,will have 2 by Saturday.

I sell predominantly on my website but I also have my product in 5 shops in cork and 1 in Waterford.

My question is about 'Boosting a post'
Is it worth it

I ask because about a month ago the product got a wonderful review from a very well known Irish website,but very little people have seen this post on my Facebook page as it is way down the page now. I think,although I have been wrong about many things in my 33 years,that getting this post more noticed will drive a few more sales. Maybe I am wrong again!

Is it worth my while boosting this post?
Have any of ye boosted a post/review and was it positive?

Thanks very much.

davindub

baldtooyoung wrote: »

Hello all,
Apologies if the wrong thread. Been working for myself (have a full time job too) for the last 7 weeks. Only 1 product so far,will have 2 by Saturday.

I sell predominantly on my website but I also have my product in 5 shops in cork and 1 in Waterford.

My question is about 'Boosting a post'
Is it worth it

I ask because about a month ago the product got a wonderful review from a very well known Irish website,but very little people have seen this post on my Facebook page as it is way down the page now. I think,although I have been wrong about many things in my 33 years,that getting this post more noticed will drive a few more sales. Maybe I am wrong again!

Is it worth my while boosting this post?
Have any of ye boosted a post/review and was it positive?

Thanks very much.

Depends on a lot of factors, I personally never got much from facebook boosts, I would have used facebook to engage with existing customers, I had a page with over 2000 likes, but never really detected much new business coming in, but that was my industry. If you have a page (rather than posting on a profile) I think it still shows the number of impressions the post has made, someone else might say I'm mad but after boosting for the 1st time, i seemed to get less impressions on unboosted posts.

Its worth a try for the smaller amounts, see if you get anything, but I used adwords a lot which was effective but expensive.

You might want to get a digital marketing book, there is a lot in regards SEO/ content, etc you can do with effort rather than cash and supplement with adwords.

jimmii

It really depends on your target market and your product. Also unless your page has a reasonable following you're probably better off advertising the page rather than boosting a post. I find that until your page is at a decent size (10k+) then that is normally better value.

hairyslug

We use it, we probably spend about 200e - 400e a week on boosted ads, the facebook business manager can help you save on your target market by showing who is reacting to your posts.
The app Kit for shopify can target ads better and can show what profit/loss each ad made.

L.Jenkins

hairyslug wrote: »

We use it, we probably spend about 200e - 400e a week on boosted ads, the facebook business manager can help you save on your target market by showing who is reacting to your posts.
The app Kit for shopify can target ads better and can show what profit/loss each ad made.

If you're spending that much money per week, what is your ROI? I would hope that it would pay for itself at those costs.

hairyslug

L.Jenkins wrote: »

If you're spending that much money per week, what is your ROI? I would hope that it would pay for itself at those costs.

Yeah, it now pays for itself and the hope is to become less dependent on it as time goes on. It took us a bit of fine tuning to narrow our market down as a lot of the posts where going to people who gave us no response.
We are relatively new, with possibly 3/4 other sites doing the same as us and 1 of those being quite big so we need to push our advertising. 3 months ago, I would have been convinced that google ads was the way to go, now, we put a lot of not just money but time into facebook promotion compared to google.
From what I have read, facebook will be limiting who sees your regular posts when they are not boosted in the near future.
Now, I don't know anything really about other hosting sites but the facebook pixel that links my shoplift store to facebook gives me a good idea of what ads are performing and what ate driving sales.

baldtooyoung

Thanks for the feedback everyone

See the review we got is from a company with 611k followers. People love and trust this site.
But the post on our page is way down the bottom. People don't scroll!

I think myself that a boost so that more people would see it could be good for me.I'm going to study Facebook advertising and post boosts now and over the weekend and get back to ye

Thanks again

Graham

Do some study then give it a go.

You don't have to spend a fortune to try a couple of variations out to see how they perform for you.

PaulPinnacle

baldtooyoung wrote: »

See the review we got is from a company with 611k followers. People love and trust this site.
But the post on our page is way down the bottom. People don't scroll!

Boosting that post to get in front of a larger audience should help build a little more trust which could end up resulting in more sales, but without knowing way more about the business it's really hard for any of us to know for sure. If there's a more fundamental issue there, like the product is poor or the pricing too high or something we're unaware of (a problem with the security on the site), all the promotion in the world won't solve those.

So as a starting point, make sure you've a solid base in place before you start pushing the advertising. Chat to some customers, see what issues/concerns/questions they had on/before/after buying from you. Chat to some trusted friends (honest ones) that will give you genuine feedback on the product and on the website. If they all say it's great and they love everything about it, they're lying or looking at it through blinkers. Find ones that will give you the critical, but constructive, feedback you need (for the website you can even use the Review forums here on boards, tends to get honest and helpful advice).

Assuming the other bits and pieces are all in place (the really positive review suggests that probably is the case), it's probably worth investing a little into boosting the post.

Take a look at your target demographics and put some effort into figuring out the psychographics of your customers (so both the who and the why behind purchases - if you search for "persona building" you'll get a lot of guidance on that side of things). How do they align with those that trust the site you're thinking of promoting? Is it a pretty similar market? If so, great. Better chance it'll help. If they don't tend to overlap and match, far less likely you'll see great results from it.

On the post itself... is it interesting or exciting? Is there anything in it that will make me stop scrolling and pay attention? Is it the type of post I or others might write off and ignore as sponsored content (which can easily happen even when it's not)? It might be a positive review and it might be really valuable to you if people take the time to read it, but if there's no value for them in stopping to read it on their timeline it's likely to get skipped past pretty quickly. You'll end up with a lot/few impressions but pretty low engagement and in the end a low return on the cost of promoting it.

I'd strongly suggest investing a little time into ensuring you've got your basic Facebook setup right before pushing much money behind advertising there. It'll help ensure you get the best return on it. Ignore the idea of promoting a single post and spend some time looking at all the available options and potential ways to reach more people there. Something like this deck from Ned Poulter might give you some ideas (small tips like switching videos to cost per view can provide huge savings), or some of the more specialised guys like Jon Loomer would have some decent overview guides out there.

baldtooyoung

Excellent post Paul. You seem knowledgeable and experienced.
Pm sent to you if you want to have a look at my site.only 1 product now,but another at the weekend.

StupidLikeAFox

You can pin the post to the top of your feed also