When you have a limited budget, it can be difficult to decide whether to use Instagram Ads or Facebook Ads. It is possible to split your ad spend between the two platforms, but you will get a greater return on investment when you allocate your entire budget to the most effective platform for your business’s target audience. Are you unsure of which platform that is? Our goal in this post is to provide you with a step-by-step guide to selecting a social media advertising platform.
Who is Your Audience?
When choosing a platform for social media advertising, the audience is likely to be the most important factor to consider. In the end, advertising on a platform that your target audience does not frequent is like throwing money away.
Identify the social media platforms that your target demographic is most likely to use by analyzing their demographics. Facebook has more than twice the number of users as Instagram, so most brands have the best chance of reaching their target audience there. There is also a tendency for Instagram users to be younger, but this is changing.
In addition, Facebook’s audience targeting is a bit more detailed than Instagram’s native targeting options. As Facebook offers more tools for refining audiences, brands with hyper-specific target audiences may find it more effective to use Facebook Ads.
What Suits Your Content Best?
Most of the content formats available on the platforms are the same. The following options are available:
- Carousel: a collection of images or videos
- Media in a single file: one image or video
- Enhancing existing content
The important thing to note here is that Facebook captions can include clickable links, whereas Instagram captions cannot. On Instagram, you must use the included call-to-action buttons. These get the job done, but you can only direct viewers to one link.
You should align your content with your advertising goals, so it is important to consider the purpose of your content on each platform. Unlike Facebook, which is ideally suited for sharing information and interacting with family members, Instagram is extremely visual (and increasingly leaning towards video with each passing algorithm update). As a result, Instagram should be used for compelling visuals, while Facebook should be used for ads that contain a lot of copy.
Identify Your Target Goals
It is also important to consider your advertising goal when choosing a platform. When it comes to generating website clicks, views, or engagements for written content, Facebook is the best choice. Instagram is an excellent tool for promoting brand awareness through visual content.
According to some advertisers, Instagram is the best platform for creating brand awareness, while Facebook is the best platform for generating leads and increasing sales. In reality, it depends on the industry and the target audience.
With the advent of Instagram Shopping, users can complete their purchase from start to finish without ever leaving the app, Instagram is becoming a more prominent player in e-commerce. A test and review of the analytics is the best way to determine which platform is most appropriate for your goals.
Industry
It may be less expensive to advertise on a certain platform if your industry does not have a strong presence on that platform. You should consider this option only if your audience uses that platform. Depending on the industry, you may find that certain platforms are more suitable for certain industries because their audiences use them more frequently. Additionally, some industries are more adept at creating visual content, while others are more dependent on long-form content.
As part of its community-building features, Facebook provides advertisers with the opportunity to create communities within their target audiences. Because of this, Facebook is a better choice for brands that rely on community building to generate sales. In order to drive performance, analytics and automation are necessary.
Conclusion
In the end, both advertising platforms offer a high return on investment, and most businesses can find success with either. In order to determine which is more effective for your business, the online world offers tools that enable you to compare the performance of Facebook and Instagram side-by-side and even make daily recommendations for optimizing revenue and reducing expenses. Using your data, you will be able to determine which platforms, placements, and content types are most effective for your audience.
