5 Reasons You Should NEVER Hit The Boost Post Button On Facebook

Golf club marketing has changed a lot since Facebook emerged on the scene with the ability to advertise to your local market. 

If you use Facebook for your club, chances are you’ve boosted a Facebook Post. You’ve taken the leap and decided to hit the Facebook Boost Post button to promote your posts hoping more people would suddenly flock to your club and drive revenue.

As the organic reach, or unpaid reach, got watered down over the past few years (and for most barely any reach). Now in 2019 where everybody likes, subscribes and follows so much stuff, organic reach is at an all-time low!

So many clubs are now turning to the “Boost Post” button to get their messages in front of their audiences because it’s fast and easy.

However, that doesn't mean it's your best option...

...in fact, I have some news for you. If you're using it regularly, it could be costing you a lot of money. Hundreds, and for some, thousands of ￡s wasted.

Sure, it’s easy to use and Facebook delivers plenty of likes, shares, and comments – but very little in terms of actual ROI (return on investment). 

So today, I want to share the five reasons you should never hit the Facebook Boost Button.

5 Reasons Why You Should Not Boost Your Posts

1) Low ROI Because Of Poor Ad Objectives

If you’ve only ever hit the Boost Post button, chances are you’re not even aware Facebook currently offers 11 different campaign objectives.

Here are Facebook’s current 11 campaign objectives. Nine of them aren’t found when clicking the Boost Post button.

When advertising on Facebook, Facebook optimises your campaigns depending on which objective you choose.

If you choose the lead generation objective, Facebook optimises for leads, people who are interested in your green fees, society days or memberships and who enter their information and contact details.

If you choose conversions, Facebook will optimise the campaign for a specific offsite conversion relative to what you are trying to achieve, for example, membership enquiry, tee time booking, society day booking, etc.

But if you boost a post, you are restricted to two objectives:

• Engagement

‘Getting more people to react, comment and share’  

Optimising for social media metrics: likes, comments, shares

Which does not equal revenue in any way and is ultimately a waste of money!

• Messages

'Connecting and chat with potential customers'

Optimising for FB Messages: people either clicking the auto-generated message suggestions or sending a message themselves.

Which often leads nowhere, is very time-consuming and...

If messages are not answered promptly it results in upset customers and leads going cold!

Here are 4 typical pre-loaded messages potential customers can choose from when golf clubs use the message objective:

‘Where you located?’ - which is already on the FB page

‘What are your hours?’ - which is already on the FB page

‘What amenities do you offer?’ - which is already on the FB page

‘Do you have any promotions?’ - which is usually what your recent posts are about!

If you want to chat with potential customers in an automated and enquiry-generating fashion, you should check out EnquiryBot - an automated enquiry-generating bot for your website, to engage website visitors and generate more enquiries. 

2) Untargeted Audiences Because You Can't Use The Best Features

When boosting a post you have NO option to:

• Upload and profit from custom audiences - you can upload visitor databases, member database, data collected from website visitors, etc and market DIRECTLY to them.

This is SO effective for golf clubs as existing members and management committees are often against advertising or showcasing that your club is actively marketing (which is extremely unfair in my opinion), BUT this gives you an opportunity to reach people on platforms they congregate on for hours, every day (social media sites like Facebook and Instagram) without 'advertising' to everyone!

• Create lookalike audiences - again using existing databases, you can upload one of your databases but this time have Facebook go out and find people, from their near 2.5 billion users, that look, behave and act like the database you present to Facebook.

By clicking 'Boost Post', you miss out on these two features which are possibly two of the most effective features of Facebook marketing!!

3) Can't Attract Attention Because You Can't Add a Headline 

Instantly attract more attention with a custom headline.

Have you noticed that some ads in your News Feed look different than the posts you boost? Some have headlines – a bold text section directly under the image. 

On the surface having the ability to add a headline may not seem like a big deal. However, when the primary goal of your campaign is to drive revenue, a headline is one great tool to help your ad stand out from the crowd.

The headline font size is substantially larger than all the other “competing” text in and around your ad.

Winners often only win by a slight edge. Your headline, when crafted with skill, gives you that slight edge.

80% of readers never make it past the headline: According to some sources, on average, eight out of 10 people will read headline, but only two out of 10 will read the rest.

4) Poor ROI Tracking and Reporting

When boosting a post, as your only options are 'likes, comments, shares' or 'messages', this makes tracking your ROI is very difficult, if not impossible.

There is no way to measure the return on investment when there is no trackable and measurable revenue generated.

Attribution to the sale is not clear when 'boosting posts'.

If you would like results and clear ROI generated from your Facebook marketing efforts - check out a post a did about 5 numbers you MUST know as a golf club manager when marketing.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the fifth reason you should never hit the boost post button on Facebook is...

...you can’t control the placement of the ads you pay for...

5) No Control Over Ad Placement (and NO Instagram)

When you’re boosting posts, you don’t control the ad placement.

So you can’t choose where you want to show your ads — there is just a default option (of Facebook).

Most of the time their algorithms will try to find the cheapest way to achieve an objective, even if it might ruin your overall campaign results.

They would love to show you a lot of likes and engagement, but that doesn’t always translate to results.

For example, let’s say you want to promote an upcoming membership day at your golf club and you are wanting to sell entries for it.

Facebook might, unfortunately, push as much as 99% of your advertising budget to the mobile news feed option (because it’s less expensive than Desktop News Feed), regardless of whether it’s getting you what you want, which is sales.

From our experience, even if a website is responsive and mobile-friendly, the conversion rate on mobile is usually 2 to 3 times lower than on desktop. Mobile conversion tends to be lower because it’s just not as convenient to fill in all the sign-up or purchase information on handheld devices. If the website is not mobile-friendly, it can be even worse.

And you will not be able able to advertise Instagram - your best opportunity to reach millennials (which is crucial today's challenge on tackling your ageing membership).

Conclusion

If you want MORE than Likes, Shares, and Comments, then you need to avoid the Boost Post button like the plague.

Generating likes, shares, and comments, causes you to believe you’re getting results.

But in reality, Facebook is just using interaction to convince you to keep spending money by clicking the Boost Post button. 

It’s your job to get the highest ROI out of each and every marketing campaign. And unfortunately, you won’t get this by clicking the Boost Post button.

If you want to get the MOST from your Facebook campaigns, you’ve got to learn how to use Facebook’s Ads Manager and Creative Hub.

Yes, it may take you a few minutes longer, but you’ll be able to choose the campaign objective that makes the most sense for your golf club, you’ll be able to select more relevant audiences, and have complete control on where to show your ads.

Combined, these things will result in better utilising your marketing budget and generating huge returns on your golf club marketing campaigns.

In the end, your goal should not be just to get more engagement or Facebook messages but to get people to take an action — visit your website, sign up for an event, opt-in with their email for a contest, book a green fee, buy a membership, or simply come in to your golf club — and you should do everything you can to achieve those results in the most effective way.

Running Facebook ads is the SINGLE best way to generate new memberships online -

Which helps golf club managers like you:

• Secure the future stability and growth of the golf club.
• Have surplus cash to invest in the club to improve facilities.
• Finance the continued upgrade of equipment.
• Be in a comfortable financial position to operate with considerably less stress!

As always if you're interested in growing your membership and increasing your revenue just send me a message here on LinkedIn or email me at [email protected] and I'd be happy to help.

Hope this was useful!

Davis Jones