Make spending simple.
It’s a pretty easy concept: If you make it simple for an engaged consumer to spend money, they will likely spend more. There is no better example of this than ‘Boosting Posts’ on Facebook.
It’s easy, here are the steps:
- Create a post
- Click ‘boost’ to increase the reach of that post
- Choose an amount, audience, and date range (or use the defaults)
- Confirm and pay
BAM! Facebook now has some of my money and the newly boosted post will then be promoted as requested, resulting in greatly increased reach, engagement, and results (so long as you’re doing things correctly).
Creating convenience should not sacrifice usability.
Enter the new Facebook Business Manager. Facebook needs to build better tools for power users, agencies, and anyone who manages multiple pages or campaigns – of this there is no doubt.
That said, their first foray into building a tool to accomplish this is frustrating, disappointing, and utterly confusing.
The first example of Facebook Business Manager’s failure is how boosting a post now functions. Let’s explore the new set of steps.
- Make a great post
- Go to boost it… but there is no button
- Notice that you are browsing as yourself and not the business
- Switch to Business Manager mode, the same post now says ‘boost unavailable’
- There is no indication of how to make it available
- Seriously? just take my money? why can’t it be like before?
- Go to the Facebook Help Centre. (Oh wait, it’s useless.)
- Google: “Facebook business manager why the fuck is boost unavailable”
- Click on the first result because Google is the Boss
- Learn that you have to now use Facebook Ads Manager. (Yes, even to boost a post)
- Find and open the Facebook Ads Manager
- Choose the right account
- Select boost your posts
- Choose the page you want to Boost
- Select the post you want to Boost
- Choose an amount and date range
- Struggle to find where to select your audience profiles because it’s not obvious
- Confirm and pay
I made a video going over this issue: boost unavailable in Facebook business manager.
From 4 steps to 18 steps, and that is if you know what you are doing. The only question I’m left with is, “How do I opt out of the Facebook Business Manager”.
The confusion doesn’t just stop there. There is mystery navigation a’plenty, undocumented features galore…
While adding your Facebook Pages to Business Manager is relatively easy (so long as you’re already an admin), adding in advertising accounts that are already shared with you is basically impossible (meaning you have to reauthorize with account owners). The list goes on from there.
New and supposedly convenient features should not create this much work.
A bright future, but a bleak moment in time.
Facebook continues to show huge potential to connect businesses with a great audience.
I hope these Facebook Business Manager issues effect revenue enough that this gets addressed immediately. Frankly I expect better from Facebook. Hopefully the lesson that comes through loud and clear is, “Don’t change engrained habits and make it hard for advertisers to spend money.”