Introduction
The rise and growth of Social Media Marketing have been phenomenal over the last decade. Somewhere along the way, digital has managed to do with the click of the mouse what on-ground marketing usually takes longer. Running advertisements on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and more have led to business organizations, irrespective of their size and tremendous growth.
What is very notable is that Digital Marketing helps companies see growth in terms of sales and numbers and increase their goodwill. Social media and digital advertising have been the real game-changers in the field of marketing. But which is better to invest money, Facebook Vs Instagram marketing?
With advancements within the field itself, running ads on social media platforms have become simpler and more effective. Today, thanks to the various internal and external analytics tools, every penny spent online can be accounted for and, more importantly, optimized when the lead quality is not great.
Advertising: Facebook Vs Instagram
There is scope for growth through social media advertising for almost any industry. While most social media platforms provide their users with options to advertise, Facebook and Instagram are two platforms that come bearing maximum potential and benefits for big and small businesses alike.
When asked why Facebook and Instagram, our minds directly cling to the fact that they are the most used platforms today. According to statistics, Facebook and Instagram have around 2.32 billion and 1 billion users, respectively.
While most of the audience on Instagram overlap with those on Facebook, advertising on either platform surrounds a number of factors, including the industry and your target audience. Given the size of the platforms, it can be tempting to divide and spread your budget across both mediums, but it is not bound to work all the time and yield you the desired result!
With Facebook being the parent company, the management of both Facebook and Instagram ads is simplified and can be done through a single platform. But running the same ad on both Facebook and Instagram won’t give you the same result you require!
Choosing the right platform to advertise your business involves the careful consideration of factors like your target audience, campaign goals, and more.
Ads Management on Facebook and Instagram
Management of ads on both platforms, as mentioned earlier, is a highly seamless process. Advertising activities on both platforms can be run and managed through Facebook’s Ads Manager. The ads manager tool makes it easier to run, manage, and optimise ads, with the results being downloadable.
The Facebook Ads Manager provides advertisers with many options for Facebook ads in terms of campaign objectives and ad sets, with a galore of optimisation options, ad combinations, and ways to preview the ads.
The ad process on Instagram is pretty straightforward, with simple steps leading to your ad being set up on an existing post or a story. The interface is very easy to use, making the setting up of an ad or a campaign on Instagram via the Facebook Ads Manager a simple task.
As for the audience set on Instagram, it is a little narrower compared to Facebook’s, but most of the audience sets that exist on Facebook can be replicated on Instagram too, so it is not a herculean task at all.
It’s 2024: What Do Instagram and Facebook Offer?
Today, we are all well aware that Facebook is seeing a significant decline in engagement and usage, with the younger generation flocking to social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and more.
Yet, Facebook has the most advanced targeting options compared to Instagram, and it is natural for every brand to target the right sets of people in their ads, right? Apart from this, we must also consider what Facebook and Instagram, as platforms, have to offer brands.
Facebook provides a galore of ways that advertisers can tap and make maximum use of for their brands. If you have a Facebook Business Page, advertising on Facebook is a walk in the park. It is one of the most fundamental requisites for running ads, and of course, the ad account.
Given that Facebook is a platform that provides us with great marketing opportunities, what more are there that give brands an upper hand?
1. Facebook Messenger
Source: theverge.com
2. Facebook Live
Source: hootsuite.com
3. Facebook Events
Source: askdavetaylor.com
4. Facebook Shops
Source: fb.com
5. Facebook Stories
Source: techcrunch.com
6. Facebook Ads
Source: manychat.com
Through Facebook Ads, advertisers can promote and run ads in most of the features mentioned above. Facebook also provides admins with insights that give out reading and results of campaigns, including metrics like reach, actions, audience behaviour, views, analytics of posts, and more.
Instagram is where the youth spends most of their time! It is, therefore, a vibrant space for young brands directed at the youth to thrive! If you have a business profile on the platform, you have the right opportunities to grow your own community and even sell and drive store visits, as you can add a call button and your address on your profile itself.
In terms of features, Instagram offers a lot for brands to monetise.
1. Instagram DMs
Source: trengo.com
2. Instagram Live
Source: verified-badge.vedb.me
3. IGTV
Source: vimeo.com
4. Instagram Stories
Source: productlondondesign.com
5. Instagram Shops
Source: embedsocial.com
6. Instagram Reels!
Source: techcrunch.com
With the platform introducing the option of running ads via Reels, which already has a great organic reach, Instagram has opened up a whole lot of promotional opportunities that you must look to tap into as a business.
Facebook Vs Instagram? Factors To Consider Before Choosing your Platform
Advertising on Facebook and Instagram seems seamless today, thanks to Facebook’s Ads Manager which helps us navigate our campaigns effectively. But what requires actual effort is considering both platforms and choosing the one that will be the most effective for our organisations/clients, results-wise. Both platforms offer advertisers a variety of options to best optimise campaigns.
Let’s look at some of the factors that need to be kept in mind while narrowing down to a platform:
1. Facebook Vs Instagram: Audience and Demographics
The audience is the most crucial factor to consider as they are ultimately your customers. While weighing the pros and cons of Facebook and Instagram, you must consider the demographics and audience set that exist on both platforms.
Facebook has the most comprehensive demographics and audience sets compared to any other platform out there, while Instagram dominates when it comes to the younger audience persona.
Facebook’s audience targeting is broader than that of Instagram’s. So, defining your target audience is vital in choosing a platform for advertising.
2. Facebook Vs Instagram: Campaign Goals
Like any other marketing campaign, digital marketing campaigns also need to have a relevant and robust goal. Knowing clearly, what you expect out of advertising on either platform is as important as the platform itself.
This concrete definition of goals will help you understand your desired metrics, which will, in turn, help you effectively optimize campaigns.
3. Facebook Vs Instagram: Industry
The industry also plays a vital role as that impacts your target audience majorly. Industries like fashion, food, clothing, and apparel work well on Instagram, while those like real estate perform well on Facebook.
If you have an account on both handles, study the social media analytics, align your observations to your campaign’s goals, and choose the one that is most likely to give you better results.
4. Facebook Vs Instagram: Content
However effective your chosen platform is, it is always content that ultimately sells your brand and products better. And when it comes to content, different types of content work better on different platforms.
Both Instagram and Facebook ads can market similar content styles, including carousels, videos, single-image posts, and existing posts. But furthering this, unlike Facebook, Instagram lacks the option to have in-caption links clickable and requires a separate CTA, like “Click on the link in Bio”, and more. So content plays an equally vital role as the other factors.
Key Takeaways
We’ve seen what Facebook and Instagram offer as individual social media platforms, and we have also discussed some important factors to consider while choosing a platform to run ads. While choosing one and sticking to it is always a wise choice, testing the waters on both platforms can be fruitful. Whatever you decide is best for your brand, do not oversee the factors discussed in this article!
Your campaign goals, the audience and demographics, the industry your business belongs to, and the content is interrelated with respect to what each medium has to offer. Do a thorough study, choose wisely, and most importantly, be ready to optimise your campaigns promptly!
