How to boost post on Facebook – Effective promotion in minimum budget

If you are a regular reader on Ahead with digital, you must be aware of the importance of organic promotion. By organic, I mean non-paid promotion. In my previous posts, I have always recommended sticking to organic promotion until you explore the maximum potential of organic reach (and engagement). I still recommend the same to my readers and especially small businesses. This article on how to boost post on Facebook is for all of you who are

1. Done with the experimentation of all kind of posts on your business Facebook page

Most of us think that Facebook has no audience now but this is not correct. Most of the people even if bored with Facebook explore it once and others who are part of groups, pages often visit and engage with the pages. So, thinking having a business page on just Instagram is not enough. We have to have one on Facebook too. Even if you are posting the same posts on Instagram, it is important to try everything which is part of organic promotion. Read a complete guide on how to promote a small business on Facebook.

The other very intriguing part of Facebook is its advertising platform. By spending some amount on our posts and running campaigns, we can target our audience for likes, engagement, reach & sales. In this article, we will be discussing how to boost post on Facebook – which will mainly help to reach a wider audience (people who have not liked our page) and let them engage with your posts.

2. Already have a proper social calendar for your business page

Versatility and experimentation are keys in digital. Never be complacent with the content on social media but keep experimenting with new features and new ways to engage with your audience. Once you think, you have done enough of engagement and experiments (I mean these efforts should be there for a few months) then you can try boosting a post targeting your specific audience with minimum budget. Stay tuned, will talk about how to boost post on Facebook in detail.
If you are looking for social media post ideas for small business, read this post.

3. Have a significant customer base to attract more audience

Imagine with your rigorous efforts you are spending money too to attract an audience. Everything is inline and your audience lands on your Facebook page but after seeing the content(posts on page) or the number of page likes they just bounce back. To avoid the situation, it is recommended to have a significant customer base so that your business becomes credible for your audience

Now, let’s move to the details and imperative part of How to boost post on Facebook. In this post, I will cover everything related to boosting a post

• How to start with boosting a Facebook post
• The objective of boost post
• What should be the relevant CTA (call to action on a boost post)
• What is the audience and how to target a relevant audience for your business
• Budget & duration selection
• Payment options

Get started with how to boost post on Facebook

If you own a business page, you will see the performance of each post that you publish on your Facebook page. Remember, you should be an admin of the page to boost and check the performance. Find below the screenshot for your reference.

In the above screenshot, you can see current likes & engagement. There is an option beside engagement that is Boost Post( blue in color). We can click on this option to boost the post we want.
Note: This option is available at the end of every post and we need to select the option on a post we want to boost.

After clicking on Boost Post, the below pop up will appear on the screen

Choose an objective for your Facebook boost post

Selecting the right objective for boost post is really important as Facebook will show your ad to the audience to fulfil the objective.

By default option that is selected is automatic. Here the Facebook will choose the most relavant objective for your business. But, following are the options that can be chosen(I recommend to choose option rather than going for automatic)

It is very important to make a note here that Facebook allows you to run campaigns with various objectives like conversion, lead generation(sales or inquiry, store visits etc. They are more advanced so and if your objective is to get more orders or sales so run campaigns instead of post boost. Will talk about this in a separate post.
Go for boost post, when the objective is Get more people to react, comment and share
So here I will choose the objective as same.

Add a button to your boost post

This is Call to action on your Facebook post which will appear to your audience when you will boost it. Remember you are not just reaching to your page followers but anyone. Will talk about this in detail in targeting

When you choose objective as engagement there are only 3 options to select for the button. We recommend selecting no button as CTA as we want the audience to engage others will provide distractions

How to target relevant audience

This is an important step as right targeting can help you reach to the most relevant audience who can become your client/customers later

Now, let’s look at targeting options that are available

Second option is People who like your page. There is no point of selecting this option when we have less number of likes on our pages because we can reach them if they are engaging with us. This option is provided because organically we can’t even reach to all the people who like are page due to Facebook algorithm. But we don’t have to choose this in case of small businesses.
Even option like people who like your page and their friends can be neglected as it will limit our reach.

Another option that is people in your local area can be chosen by people who are trying to promote business locally. Here Facebook, will show ad to audience who lives in your business area

I recommend choosing the first option where you can customize targeting. So, select an option people you choose through targeting. By default, it picks audience from age 18-65+ but we can change it by clicking on edit option. Following view will appear

While filling all the above information, it is required to have complete understanding of your business and who is your audience

• You can target only men, only women or both by simple clicking on gender options

• The basis to your business objective, you can select the age of the audience you want to target. For example, if for my gym service I want to target young people let’s say 18-30 so I can select the same and show my post to a particular group

• Location – This option allows you to target the audience in a particular area. You can add multiple locations here(the whole country can be selected or multiple locations) or can do radius targeting as well. (we can adjust the radius of location, see reference below)

• Target people basis demographics, interests & behaviour – This feature helps you to target people who actually will be interested in your service

Demographics

In demographics, we can target people basis their education, jobs, relationship status, events, parents etc. For example, I have child care services for children from age 3-8 so I can select demographic as parents and age groups of 24- 45. Similarly, targeting for other businesses can be done

Interests

In interests, we can target people who have an interest in particular business, industry, hobbies, families relationships, entertainment, fitness, wellness, food, drink, fashion, etc

Behaviour

In behavior, we can select people who are using iPhone, who have anniversaries or birthday coming up, consumer classification, etc.

Optimization of targeting is a vital step while doing boosting. Basis the response you are getting from people you need to exclude or add audience. This is a learning process- the more you will try the more you will ace it

Preview of how many people I can target can be seen while How to boost post on Facebook

I have selected men from the age group 18 – 30 who are interested in physical fitness in Delhi. You can see that I can target 2.8 million people. Size of the audience will reduce basis the budget selection in the next step

Budget & Duration selection

You can keep boosting your posts for a month or even for a day. You need to select budget for the boost post then your budget will be distributed uniformly within duration days

To gain confidence, I suggest starting with Rs. 100 per day with right targeting and see how it performs. One can decide a budget for a month and allocate some amount to each post

See example below

I have selected Rs.100 as a budget for 1 day and see I am getting an estimate of how many people I can reach with this budget – here, it shows 590-1700 people per day

Note: Facebook recommends a budget of Rs.75 for each day and duration as 4 days for effective results. So, to analyze the results one can select the same options

Payment options while boosting a post on Facebook

Select currency and your own account. Click on boost. You will get an option to enter business details. Add the same and use a credit card to pay the amount. Ads can be paused anytime and it never exceeds the budget allocated

Let’s boost your post and reach the maximum number of people. Good luck! I hope you like reading this post. Stay subscribed to ace your business digitally