Speaker 1: Oh man, this is going to be the best Facebook post ever. I can't wait to see how many likes I get. I might even bring out the happy face background on this bad boy to really jazz it up. Perfect. Now there's just one thing left to do. Hold up, stop the beat a minute, Adam. Yeah? Don't you dare touch that boost post button. Not unless you want to end up angry and alone, living under a bridge, blaming Facebook for what could have been, should have been, and never was, simply because you didn't take the time to find a better way to get your content in front of more people. I don't want to live under a bridge, weird old professor. I don't know what you're supposed to be. Then come with me and let me show you a better way. And the fact is, there is a better way. If you're thinking about or are currently boosting posts on Facebook, I'm going to show you an alternative that will not only get you better results, but that will also give you more control, more feedback, and more opportunities with very little extra effort. So now, let me show you how it's done, starting by answering one of the most important questions of all. What exactly is a Facebook boosted post anyway? Well, according to Facebook, boosted posts are ads you create from posts on your Facebook page. And that's really the biggest key here. A boosted post starts just like any other old regular organic post on your Facebook page. But then, through the magical power of boosting, you turn it into an ad, which means you spend money to show it to more people, because as we all know, organic reach on Facebook is pretty much gone. So if organic reach is dead, then isn't boosting posts the only way to get your content in front of more people? And to that, I say nay, or no, because I'm not a horse. But I am a man with a plan, which means that no matter what goal I'm trying to achieve, I'm always looking for the best and most effective way to do it. And in no scenario or situation is boosting posts a better plan when compared to running a simple Facebook ad campaign that's set up properly right from the beginning. You see, with a boosted post, you create a post, and then you can boost it and spend money on it if you want. But putting money behind a post and turning it into an ad is often an afterthought, something that comes up once you're done writing it, which means you probably don't have a clear intention in mind for what you want it to do and what success would even look like. I mean, is it enough that more people see it? Or do you want them to actually do something? And if so, what is it? And how are you going to track and measure that? On the other hand, when you create an ad using the Facebook Ads Manager, your intention is different right from the beginning. You know full well going into this thing that you're going to be spending money, and that attitude changes the amount of time and energy and thought that you put into your content. Not to mention, boosting a post today is a lot more complicated than it once was. So you're still going to need to think about targeting and placements and budget. But when you boost a post, you're going to be doing all of this after you've posted your content, which is completely backwards. There are a few more other practical reasons to avoid boosting posts as well, as well as some key differences between just boosting a post and running a proper Facebook ad. So first, let's talk about audiences. When you boost a post, Facebook is going to ask you who you want to target, and they may even suggest a smart audience, which is their best guess based on how you set up your Facebook page. More often than not, though, this smart audience is very dumb because it may not align with your specific campaign, your content, or what you're trying to achieve. The other issue is placements. These change all the time, but you're significantly more limited when boosting when compared to setting something up inside Facebook Ads Manager and having just an absolute ton of options to choose from there, which also means you can be more selective about what placements you don't want to spend money on. But the biggest factor of all of them has to do with the objective of your advertising campaign. And 90% of the time when you're spending money on ads, it should be done in the form of something called direct response marketing, which is marketing that's designed to get an instant response by your prospect in regards to getting them to take some kind of specific action. In other words, direct response marketing is very goal oriented, and those goals are typically very easy to track and to measure and to manage. The alternative to direct response marketing is something known as brand awareness marketing. Here the goal is a little more fluffy, ethereal, ephemeral. What's the difference between ethereal and ephemeral? So brand awareness marketing is more fluffy and ethereal and ephemeral, and it's harder to track. Brand awareness marketing is important to a point, but it isn't usually as goal focused on something like increasing sales or providing some kind of direct and trackable metric. This is why this kind of brand awareness marketing is typically reserved for those big billion dollar brands who have a large budget and can afford to be a little more casual and loose with their advertising dollars. Still not very smart, but... For most businesses though, when you boost a post or run an ad or spend any kind of money on your marketing whatsoever, you'd better be sure that you're measuring your results and making sure that you're getting something back in return that's of equal or greater value to the money you're spending. More commonly known as ROI or return on investment, or in the case of advertising, ROAS or return on ad spend. And the best way to make sure that the money you're spending on ads is actually delivering something of value back in return is by setting up something known as a conversion campaign inside the Facebook ads manager. With a conversion campaign, you can still choose your targeting and placements and ad copy and all of that. But what you're telling Facebook is that what really matters to you here, what's really important is getting somebody to actually take action and do something. This could be to download a lead magnet, to send you a message, to book a call, or even to buy something directly from the ad. This does require an additional step of downloading and installing a tracking pixel, but that's easier now than ever before. And I'll put a link in the descriptions below that'll show you exactly how to do it. But if all of this sounds a little overwhelming, don't worry. You don't actually need ads to grow a business, which is why I've linked up a video right here on my number one organic marketing strategy. So make sure to check it out now, and I'll see you in the next video. The solution is to use a combination approach known as PAYSO, which stands for paid, earned, shared, and owned. So let me break those down for you now. Paid media is, wait for it, anything that you pay for.