With over 1 billion users now, Facebook is a site where you can easily find many potential customers. Facebook, of course, realized this a long time ago and they offer businesses a few different ways to reach people with a marketing message. Two of such ways are Facebook ads and promoted posts. Here, we explain the differences to help you decide which might be most effective for your business. There are basically five major differences that set these two apart.
Creation
In order to create and run a promoted post on Facebook, your page must have at least 400 likes. Creation of the posts is at the bottom of the posts themselves. With display advertising, the Ads Manager or Power Editor is used to create the ad.
Bidding
With display advertising, you bid on how much you are willing to spend per click or per thousand impressions. This is not an option with promoted posts. When you choose to use a promoted post, you set the amount of capital you’d like to use to promote the ad and Facebook will provide you with the estimated amount of people it can reach with your post.
Location
Every regular user of Facebook is familiar with the thin right column that gets filled with advertisements. This is where a display advertisement will show up. An ad does not show up in the news feed, but a promoted post will. Promoted posts look the same as any other news post, with the exception that at the bottom of the post, there is a notation that the post has been sponsored.
Targeting Options
Display advertisements give you the option to target certain markets. These targets can be based upon location, interests, connections, and demographics. These ads can reach people who are not your fans, or people who are in the friends lists of your fans. Promoted posts, on the other hand, will only reach your fans, unless they have chosen to hide your posts in the news feed. Display advertising, of course, bypasses these restrictions by placing the ad in the right column of the page.
Duration
The maximum amount of time that a promoted post can run is three days. Facebook ads do not have a time restriction.
So Which Is Right For You?
If you are only interested in marketing to those who are fans of your business’ Facebook page, then running a promoted post is the way to go. But if you are looking to expand your fan base or reach those beyond your fan base, you should consider Facebook ads. Both are effective in their own right and both can be used in tandem so that your marketing message has the greatest reach on this social media giant.
Ultimately, any social media efforts, including advertising on various platforms such as Facebook, should be a part of a larger marketing strategy. While social media is a great way to market your brand, never neglect the importance of a good website and along with it, search engine optimization efforts. By ensuring that your marketing strategies encompass all of the various facets of digital marketing, you ensure that your marketing dollars will create the best returns for your business.