What Boost actually does
Boost takes a post you already made and shows it to more people. That is it. It optimises for engagement, which means Facebook finds the people most likely to like and comment. Likes are not customers. You end up paying for a post with 400 reactions and nought enquiries, which feels like success and is not.
What a proper campaign does instead
In Meta Ads Manager you choose the outcome. Leads, messages, website visits, calls. Facebook then goes and finds people likely to do that specific thing, not people likely to tap a thumbs up. Same budget, completely different audience, completely different result. This one setting is usually the difference between an ad that works and one that does not.
A simple structure that works for a small SA business
- One campaign per outcome. Do not mix “get messages” and “get website visits” in one campaign.
- Two or three ad sets testing different audiences. Location plus interest, a lookalike of your customer list, and a retargeting set of people who already visited your site.
- Three or four creatives per ad set. Different image, different first line. Let Facebook find the winner, then kill the losers after a week.
- Realistic budget. Under about R50 a day, Facebook does not get enough data to learn anything. Rather run one good campaign at R80 a day than four at R20.
What to measure
Not reach. Not likes. Cost per enquiry. Take what you spent, divide by the number of real enquiries, and compare that to what one customer is worth to you. If a customer is worth R4,000 and an enquiry costs you R90 and one in five closes, you are printing money and should spend more. That single calculation should drive every decision.
The trap
Do not judge an ad in two days. Give it a week before you touch anything. Most people kill campaigns during the learning phase and then conclude that Facebook does not work in South Africa.