Helping Small and Medium Businesses Achieve Their Full Marketing Potential | Digital Marketing Expert
Facebook Ads for Small Businesses: Should You Boost Posts?
Here’s All the GOOD Bits:
- Engagement isn’t sales – Likes and comments look good, but they rarely drive conversions.
- Targeting is too broad – Boosting limits on who you can reach and wasting precious budget.
- Objectives are missing – You lose access to lead gen, conversions, and smarter campaign goals.
- Costs keep climbing – Every pound counts, and boosting offers poor ROI.
- Ads Manager wins – More control, better targeting, and measurable results every time.
If you run a small business, you may already rely on digital advertising to reach customers. Meta’s platforms remain some of the most potent places to do that, with billions of people active on Facebook and Instagram. Yet one question still comes up repeatedly: should you boost Facebook posts?
Boosting a post is the most visible way Meta encourages business owners to spend. The ‘Boost’ button is right there under every post you publish. It promises quick reach and easy exposure.
For many, it’s likely their first experience with Facebook ads. The problem is that boosting isn’t the most effective use of your budget. In fact, with Meta investing heavily in AI-driven targeting and automation, boosted posts feel more outdated than ever.
This article explains how boosting works, why it often fails, and the more innovative alternatives you should use instead.
What Facebook Boosted Posts Really Do
When you hit ‘Boost Post,’ Facebook still optimises primarily for engagement. The platform will show your content to people most likely to react, like, comment, or share. This is useful if your only aim is visibility, but engagement alone rarely translates into meaningful business results.
Today, performance marketers know the real value lies in measurable outcomes. That means leads captured, sales completed, or customers nurtured through retargeting. Facebook boosted posts don’t align with those objectives.
By contrast, Ads Manager and Advantage+ campaigns allow you to optimise for the results that matter. Whether generating leads, driving traffic, or acquiring new customers, you can choose the outcome. Boosting leaves that choice in
Facebook’s hands, which almost always means paying for vanity metrics rather than conversions.
Limited Targeting Options
Another ongoing issue is targeting. Boosting still offers only three broad audience settings:
- People who already like your page
- People who like your page and their friends
- A basic audience you define with limited filters
However, this just isn’t enough. Businesses now expect precision. With Ads Manager, you can build custom audiences, retarget past customers, exclude irrelevant groups, and use Advantage+ Audience to let Meta’s AI optimise who sees your ads based on real-time signals. Boosted posts strip away those advanced tools.
If you have a serious growth target, limiting yourself to broad interest targeting will waste money and miss opportunities.
What Your Facebook Advertising Strategy Misses Out On
Meta has expanded its advertising objectives over the past few years. From sales-focused Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns to in-app lead generation forms and AI-powered creative testing, Ads Manager is now the control hub for serious advertising.
Boosting Facebook posts cuts you off from all of this. You can’t run dynamic product ads, you can’t test multiple creatives properly, and you can’t measure conversions in the same way. With rising ad costs, missing out on optimisation is a significant disadvantage.
You can collect data directly within Facebook and Instagram with instant forms and CRM integration. Conversion objectives also allow you to track sales events with far greater accuracy thanks to improved pixel and server-side tracking. Boosted posts cannot compete.
So, Should You Boost?
The short answer is no. Boosting was never the most efficient way to spend money, and with Meta’s advertising ecosystem becoming more advanced, it is even less effective today.
Boosted posts might help if you only want quick reach or some light engagement on organic content. But if you aim to grow a business, attract leads, or drive sales, Ads Manager and Advantage+ campaigns are the tools built for that.
A Better Alternative
Savvy advertisers use Meta’s complete ad platform to:
- Select objectives that match business goals, from awareness to conversions.
- Build highly targeted audiences or let AI optimise delivery dynamically.
- Control placements across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network.
- Track and optimise performance with advanced reporting.
Rather than throwing money at engagement, you can run campaigns that work across the entire customer journey.
Are You Paying for Likes or Real Results?
Boosted posts are easy, but they’re easy in the wrong way. They give the illusion of success through likes and shares while holding you back from the tools that encourage real growth.
With AI-driven Advantage+ campaigns, improved audience targeting, and more precise tracking available today, boosted posts are no longer worth serious investment. If you want measurable results, put your budget into Ads Manager.
If you’re not confident setting up campaigns, it might be worth bringing in specialists who know how to get the most out of Meta’s ever-changing system. At The Good Marketer, we help businesses turn ad spend into genuine results.
Get in touch today and use the full power of Meta Ads. You’ll experience the difference where it matters most: in leads, sales, and scalability.