Facebook Ads vs. Boosted Posts

In working with franchise systems across a variety of verticals, we get a lot of questions on if it’s better to boost organic Facebook post content or run Facebook ad campaigns.

Firstly, I’d like to say it doesn’t need to be exclusively that you do one or the other; you can do both. But I do believe one strategy is currently more advantageous than the other for franchises. Here’s why Facebook Ads are the safer bet:

Facebook Boosted Post vs. Facebook Ads

• Facebook ad campaigns are more complex and performance-driven, whereas boosts simply expand reach with more limitations than ads.
• Since Boosted Posts are aimed at trying to get more engagement on general Facebook posts, local business owners would need to create consistent, high-quality post content themselves.
• With Facebook currently shifting their algorithms to de-prioritize organically posted content, paid content is likely to be further emphasized.

Facebook Advertising

• Allows for more control over key business objectives and goals, for every single location
• Hyper-local targeting based on geography and target audience demographics
• The ability to create thousands of local ads for franchise locations using approved brand guidelines
• Ensures only your target audience sees your advertising, rather than casting a wide net using broadly Boosted Posts

 Boosted Posts

• Primarily used only for audience engagement that includes Likes, Comments and Shares
• Requires location owners to have content marketing expertise and continually create Posts for their locations
• Difficult to scale strategies and tactics across large number of locations as there is no pooled data to optimize against
• Value of engagement (i.e. Likes) is often not worth the required time commitment to building content and scaling tactics

Likes Or Store Visits?

In short, in order to run successful post-boosting campaigns across a franchise system, the franchise owners actually have to be writing quality post content and then boosting it to expand within their current audience.

With ads, we can create thousands of ads for them at scale that follow brand messaging, get greater audience reach outside their audience but targeted to their demo/psycho graphics, and control the goals beyond just paying to get Likes and/or Comments.

As long as a franchise system has a good partner and platform in place for Facebook marketing, it’s really no comparison for me. Boosting is simply an inferior choice because writing quality content to boost is difficult and time-consuming for small business owners. It’s not worthwhile to spend significant money to earn few additional Likes and Comments when you can drive Store Visits and Lead Conversions that drive revenue for your business.

With Facebook Advertising campaigns, Location3 manages the entire process from start to finish, creating all ads with consistent brand messaging and executing hyper-local campaigns using our team of in-house paid media experts.