This is a question we get all the time both from our agency clients and AdYeet customers and we have never known what the right response is in each case without further inquiries. The problem is that every company is different by size, marketing budget and various other things.
So, by now you probably understand that there is not one correct answer.
Also, make sure you have a strategy in place that will lead to making more money with help of post boosts. Likes are nice, but they won’t pay any bills.
Q1: Who are you boosting your facebook posts to?
This is important since the size of your audience will impact your budget the most. We suggest you calculate it like this – every 1000 people you want to reach will cost you approximately 2€ or dollars.
NB! This varies a lot in different countries and even in the same country will differ in various audiences.
After you will have spent the first budgets on post boosts, you will be able to predict the cost of 1000 people reached for the next boosts. Nevertheless, some posts will work better and some will work not so well – Facebook takes into account the engagement rate for each to determine how many people will be reached by each of your dollar spent.
Another thing – aim to reach 50% of your audience, since each next percentage point of audience is more expensive than the previous one. This isn’t too scientifical, but we’ve found this to be a reasonable goal that both gives enough reach and doesn’t make boosts too expensive.
And don’t target audiences below 20 000 people (Facebook suggests this for better performance – their algorithms underperform with smaller audiences). So, don’t target audiences below 20 000 people and in case your audience is 20 000 people, gor for reaching 10 000 of them. Of course, in some case retargeting audiences can be smaller and then you just don’t have any choise – target the people you have in your audience and work on increasing it for future campaigns.
Boosting posts to people who have liked your page
If you are sure that most of your people have liked your page because they really, genuinely like you and not for your Like&Share contest, people who like your page can be very receptive to your posts.
Example: if you have 10000 likes for your facebook page, aim to reach 5000 people and if the average cost per 1000 people reached is 2€, put 10€ on that post boost.
Bonus – if your Facebook presence is extensive you can target people who have performed specific action on your page, for example, responded to event. In such cases – adjust the budget accordingly.
Boosting Facebook posts to friends of people who have liked your page
As in the previous case – if you offer something that isn’t a niche product, reaching out to people who’s friends like you might be a good idea. Problem with this targeting option – this can make the target group very wide. Do this only if you’re sure that your product has mass appeal.
Number of friends, that the average facebook user has, is 155. If your page has 2000 likes, the size of the audience of their friends can be up to ~ 300000 people.
Example: if your page has 2000 likes, the number of friends for those people is approximately 300 000 people. You should then try to go for 150 000 people that makes the post boost to be worth of 300€.
Boosting posts to specific demographics
Size of capital of Latvia (Riga) on Facebook is ~ 500000 people across all demographics. So if we needed to reach them, we would go for half of them, which is 250000 people and that would cost us 500€.
Boosting FB posts to people who have visited your website and/or done specific actions on it (with the help of facebook pixel)
This will differ by the amount of traffic you get and what kind of actions you would choose to target.
For example, if you want to show your post to people who have visited your website in the last 180 days and your daily traffic is 1000 people, the audience size (50% of those 180000) would be 90000 people and the cost for that? Yes, 180€.
Q2: What’s your facebook marketing budget and its split? This might tell you how much to spend on Facebook post boosts.
Everything benefits, if you look at things in perspective. If you already are planning your marketing and its budget, then you will start with max 10% of that budget to spend on Facebook posts. Depending on your budgets it can also be anywhere inbetween 1%-20% – just make sure that you continue using the channels you know work for you, but also give enough chance to post boosts to prove themself valuable (or not).
Q3: Have you heard about 80/20 split?
This will work for those who use agency services for their Facebook (and overall social media) presence.
In traditional media the golden ratio of budget split between creative costs and media costs was 80/20, meaning that 20% were spent on creative production and 80% were spent on media (TV, radio, print, etc.).
Nowadays, there are a lot of posts saying that everything old has to be taken out, but from what I see, “new approach” is usually something very illogical. I see cases of clients paying 500-1000€ for creatives to their agencies every month while those creatives are being promoted/boosted for 100-200€ per month. In a nutshell, companies are paying quite a lot for a content that is going to be seen by no-one.
Example: if you spend 1000€ per month on Facebook post creation, you should spend 4000€ on boosting them. If that’s above your marketing budget for Facebook, cut costs on creative until you reach 80/20 proportions.
Conclusion? Perspective.
Good luck. Get in touch if in need of consultation at ihaveaquestion@groundfloor.lv
