Facebook boosted posts have been a staple in automotive Facebook advertising for years, but has the time come to cancel this practice? 

When something is “cancelled,” it goes away. A TV show is cancelled when it delivers poor ratings. School is cancelled when a major winter blizzard moves through the area.

In recent years, however, “cancel” has taken on a whole new meaning. The phrase “cancel culture” has gained traction, especially among celebrities and politicians. 

Merriam-Webster explains this new edition of the word “cancel” as “a means to stop giving support to a person… usually due to the person in question having conducted themselves in a way that is unacceptable.”

While boosting a post doesn’t necessarily qualify as a “questionable action,” there are much better ways for auto dealers to promote content on Facebook. 

What Is the Facebook Boost Button?

By now, auto dealers have heard about the decline in organic reach on Facebook. You know you need to start putting some money behind your content and products if anyone is going to see it. 

The simplest way to accomplish this is to “boost a post” on Facebook. 

According to Facebook, a boosted post is “a post to your Page’s timeline that you can apply money to in order to boost it to an audience of your choosing.”

After you’ve posted to your timeline, you can boost a post by clicking the blue box in the bottom right.

From here, you can pick a target audience based on Facebook interests and demographics, set a max budget, and decide how long you want the ad to run. 

Boosting posts on Facebook is a fairly simple process, which is why many automotive marketing managers and GMs incorporate them into their Facebook marketing for dealerships. However, boosted posts also come with quite a few limitations.    

5 Limitations of Boosted Posts on Facebook

Boosting a post is easy and sounds attractive. In reality, though, there are many reasons why businesses should move away from boosted posts and focus on creating Facebook ads in the Ads Manager platform.

1. Limited Audience Targeting

While boosted posts allow you to do some demographic and interest-based targeting, there is little room to incorporate Custom Audience targeting. 

Custom Audiences — which can only be built in Ads Manager — allow you to target people who are already connected to your dealership in some way. This could be a list of contacts from your CRM, people who have engaged with your Facebook content in the past, or people who have recently been browsing your website. 

2. Fewer Placements

When you boost a post, there are only three placement (or platform) options for your ads to appear: Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. 

If you build your automotive Facebook ads in Ads Manager, you get all of these wonderful placement options: 

More placement options means more opportunities for your ads to be seen.

3. No Dynamic Ads for Auto 

As your dealership’s Facebook strategy becomes more refined, you’ll likely want to incorporate dynamic ads for auto. These ads often take less time to build and deliver better results than non-dynamic ads. 

Using the Facebook pixel and a product catalog, dynamic ads immediately update with price, availability and other detail changes to your inventory. You can even retarget them to people who have already looked at certain vehicles on your website, so you know they’re interested.

When you only boost posts on Facebook, you miss out on all of the opportunities dynamic ads have to help you dealership capture more leads and eventually sell more vehicles!

Be Dynamic with Facebook Ads for Auto Dealers

4. Inability to A/B Test

Another downfall of Facebook-boosted posts is the inability to test if the ad targeting, images and even the wording are as optimized as possible through A/B testing. 

Why test? It can help inform your dealership’s Facebook ad strategy moving forward.

5. Inability to Include Multiple Ads in a Single Campaign

Facebook’s boost button is focused on a single post — meaning you’re not able to create additional ad variations in the single campaign. 

Your dealership will likely want multiple ads (and potentially multiple ad sets) to try different copy, creative, ad formats, and audiences — all possible when built in Ads Manager.

Bye Boosted Posts, Hello Facebook Ads Manager

The five limitations mentioned above are just a few of the many downfalls of Facebook’s boosted post feature. 

Boosted posts at their core are simple one-off ads that, in the long run, have little impact on your dealership’s digital strategy, other than wasting valuable marketing dollars. 

Dealerships that incorporate Ads Manager into their automotive Facebook strategy can create more robust ads that fall into a greater campaign strategy that shows the right people the right Facebook ad at the right stage in the buyer’s journey.  

Ads Manager vs. Meta Business Suite: Which Is Better for Facebook Marketing?

Take On Ads Manager and More with Help from 9 Clouds

If your dealership is ready to “cancel” boosted posts for good, you’ve come to the right people. 

After scheduling your marketing assessment with 9 Clouds, check out our helpful Facebook and Instagram advertising resources for auto dealers and other businesses to help you step up your digital advertising game.  

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