Why Boosting Posts Is Costing You Clients (And What To Do Instead)

We’ve heard a few local businesses say that they’ve “tried” advertising on social media, when really all they did was boost a post.

However, that little ‘boost’ button? It’s like a fireplace where businesses throw their money into.

In the next 3 minutes, you’ll find out why boosting posts is a complete waste of money, and how you can use social media advertising to actually get more clients.

Let’s begin.

Why You Should Ignore The ‘Boost’ Button

On social media, there’s an option to pay money to ‘boost’ a post. Social media platforms try to rope you into this by saying it will help you reach a few thousand people.

That sounds great, right? Of course you’d want your business to be shown to thousands of people!

But the truth is… it doesn’t matter how many likes or comments your posts get if they come from the wrong people.

Let’s say you’re a local business only serving the county of Bedfordshire, England. Would you want followers living in Nepal and Botswana to swarm your account?

No, because they’re not going to become customers!

Meta (Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp) had nearly 3.4 billion daily users towards the end of 2024, so the chances you reach local customers interested in your business are slim.

When local businesses click boost, their posts end up being shown to people in countries that 99% of people can’t find on a map.

The chance of you landing a client from boosting a post is like winning the social media lottery. It’s not worth it.

Luckily, there’s an alternative.

This method helps you only target people interested in your business, without a Hollywood budget.

Let’s touch on that method now.

How To Use Social Media Advertising Correctly

We’ve established that boosting posts should not cross your mind when you think of advertising on social media.

So, what should you do instead?

Targeted social media ads. Here’s why:

Instead of reaching people living in the middle of nowhere, you can target people based on extremely specific things.

And when I say extremely, I mean it. It’s scarily accurate. Here’s an example:

You can create an ad, and using Meta Advertising settings, have your ad only be shown to 50-65-year-old women within a 10km radius of Milton Keynes who are interested in cats.

You might think that’s too specific and will barely reach anyone, but we just tested it on the Facebook Ads Manager and saw the audience size:

124,000 to 146,000 people with that niche of an audience. 

So in that example, your ad would be shown to nearly 150,000 50-65 year-old women within a 10km radius of Milton Keynes who are interested in cats.

It’s crazy how many users Meta has, and how specific the audience targeting is.

Let’s say you run a renovation company in Bedfordshire. You can target homeowners aged 40-65 (because they have more money to spend on renovations) who live only in Bedfordshire.

And your ads would only be shown to that group!

That sounds like a no-brainer, but you may have a final question:

“How Much Do Social Media Ads Cost Without Boosting Posts?”

Surprisingly, you don’t have to break the bank to run social media ads.

To advertise on Facebook, you can run ads for as little as £5 per day.

That’s £150 a month for one ad to be shown to a very specific audience likely to buy from you.

However, the truth is that the more you spend, the more people you reach. This means if you spend more, you get results you can measure quicker.

So if you want expert advice on how to start running social media ads, click here for a free marketing analysis where we will guide you through the process to help you scale your business.