If you have ever managed a business Facebook page, you’ve likely seen the tempting blue button that says “Boost Post.” It’s marketed as the fastest way to turn content into advertising, and for many business owners, it feels like the simplest entry point into digital marketing. The same goes for Instagram, where a single tap can turn your latest update into a sponsored placement.
At first glance, this sounds appealing. It’s quick, easy, and promises visibility. But here’s the problem: a Facebook boosted post, or even an Instagram boosted post, rarely delivers meaningful return on investment. In our experience, businesses that rely heavily on boosting posts often find themselves spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars without being able to point to a single measurable result.
In our view, this misconception—that boosting equals advertising—has cost small and medium-sized businesses more money than almost any other digital marketing mistake.
The Difference Between Boosting and Advertising
Before we dive deeper, let’s clear something up. Boosting a post is not the same as running a structured advertising campaign. When you boost, you’re essentially paying Facebook or Instagram to show a post to a broader audience. You might get more likes, more views, and perhaps a few new followers. But the targeting is shallow, the objectives are limited, and the measurement tools are basic.
A proper advertising campaign, on the other hand, allows for far more control. You can set clear objectives, build custom audiences, optimise for conversions, and track results with accuracy. You can also run split tests, refine creative, and link campaigns directly to sales outcomes.
In our view, boosting posts is like throwing seeds in the wind and hoping something grows, while structured campaigns are like planting in fertile soil, watering regularly, and measuring the harvest.
Why Boosting Posts Feels Attractive
We understand why boosting posts has become so popular. For busy business owners, it removes friction. You don’t need to learn Ads Manager, you don’t need to spend time building campaigns, and you don’t need to worry about pixels or tracking codes. One tap, and your post “reaches” thousands of people.
The problem is that reach is not the same as results. In our experience, likes and impressions often create a false sense of success. It feels good to see numbers climb, but if those numbers don’t translate into leads, enquiries, or sales, then the spend is wasted.
In our view, this is where so many businesses go wrong. They equate visibility with growth, when in reality, visibility without conversions is little more than digital window dressing.
The ROI Problem with Boosted Posts
The biggest issue with a Facebook boosted post is the lack of alignment with business goals. Most businesses don’t want vanity metrics. They want customers, revenue, and growth. Yet boosted posts are rarely optimised to achieve those outcomes.
Even worse, the audiences you can target with boosted posts are limited. The platform makes it simple, but in doing so, it strips away the sophistication needed to compete effectively. When compared to structured campaigns, boosted posts often have higher costs per lead, weaker tracking, and less accountability.
From our perspective, it’s clear that relying on boosted posts for your advertising is a bit like paying for a billboard in a random location. You’ll get seen, but you have no control over whether the right people are seeing you, or whether they are taking action.
Why Structured Campaigns Perform Better
A properly built advertising campaign allows you to do what boosted posts can’t. You can set specific objectives, such as generating website leads, driving purchases, or booking appointments. You can build custom audiences from your own data, retarget people who have engaged with your brand before, and create lookalike audiences that expand your reach intelligently.
In our experience, structured campaigns are also where you find real efficiency. With proper tracking in place, you can see exactly which ad creative, audience, or placement is driving the best return. You can adjust budgets in real time, pausing poor performers and scaling the winners. That level of control is impossible with simple boosting.
We think of it like the difference between hiring a professional chef and reheating a frozen meal. Both may fill you up, but only one is crafted with precision and designed to deliver the best experience.
The Risk of Over-Reliance on Boosting
When businesses fall into the habit of boosting, they often develop a skewed view of digital marketing. They assume ads don’t work, when in reality, it’s the method that’s flawed. We’ve spoken with countless business owners who say they’ve “tried Facebook advertising” but didn’t get results. Almost always, what they really mean is they boosted posts.
This over-reliance can also create budgeting issues. Because boosts are so easy, businesses often spend impulsively, boosting here and there without a clear plan. The result is fragmented spending that adds up over time but delivers little in return. In our view, this reactive approach is one of the reasons why many SMEs feel like digital advertising is expensive but ineffective.
A Real-World Example
A powerful case study of how structured campaigns outperform boosting comes from our work with an Australian manufacturer of fencing and livestock handling equipment. They had ambitious goals to grow sales and build brand recognition, but boosting posts was never going to achieve that. Instead, a comprehensive digital strategy was developed that combined Meta ads, Google campaigns, and highly targeted creative.
Rather than boosting individual posts, we built structured campaigns that spoke directly to their core markets. On Facebook and Instagram, ads were designed not just to generate likes but to drive meaningful engagement and direct enquiries from farmers and landowners. By using advanced audience segmentation, remarketing, and creative variations, we were able to deliver ads that converted.
The results were impressive. Over the course of the campaign, they generated a surge in enquiries and saw a significant uplift in sales. The return on ad spend demonstrated the difference that structured campaigns make. In our view, this case proves that if they had relied only on a Facebook boosted post or an Instagram boosted post, they would never have achieved the same level of growth. Structured campaigns gave them precision, measurability, and scale.
What to Do Instead of Boosting
If boosting isn’t the answer, then what is? The smarter approach is to invest time and resources into building campaigns with clear objectives. That means setting up Ads Manager properly, ensuring tracking is in place, and creating campaigns that are aligned with your business goals.
It also means thinking strategically about your creative. Instead of simply repurposing organic posts, design ads specifically for paid campaigns. In our experience, ads that are built with conversion in mind consistently outperform boosted content.
We also think it’s critical to integrate campaigns across platforms. For many businesses, success doesn’t come from just running Facebook or Instagram ads in isolation. It comes from combining those efforts with Google Ads, SEO, and a strong website experience, so every channel supports the other.
Looking Ahead: Smarter Advertising
The truth is, digital advertising is only getting more competitive. As more businesses enter the space, the need for strategy becomes even greater. We believe the companies that thrive in the coming years will be those that move beyond the simplicity of boosting posts and embrace the full capabilities of structured campaigns.
That doesn’t mean you need the budget of a multinational. It means you need to be smart, focused, and deliberate. A well-crafted campaign can still deliver outstanding ROI, even with modest budgets, provided it is built on data, testing, and continuous refinement.
If you have been relying on a Facebook boosted post or an Instagram boosted post to drive your advertising, it may explain why your ROI has been underwhelming. Boosting may give you visibility, but it rarely delivers measurable business growth.
In our view, the solution is clear: stop wasting money on impulsive boosts and start building campaigns that are designed to convert. With structured targeting, stronger creative, and a clear strategy, your ad spend will stretch further and deliver the kind of results you’ve been hoping for.
At Overt Digital Marketing, we help businesses make this shift every day. From strategy and creative, to campaign management, SEO, and data analysis, we provide everything under one roof to ensure your marketing works as hard as possible. If you’re ready to move beyond boosting and into real growth, we’re here to guide you.
Contact us today to learn more about your Digital Marketing Strategies.
By Manesh Ram, Digital Marketing Specialist. Please follow @maneshram & Meta
