Facebook Vs Instagram Ads – Which One to Choose for Your Small Business?

Facebook vs Instagram Ads… If you are wondering which ads will suit best for your small home run business then you are at the right post! Facebook and Instagram are both great platforms to grow your business. But choosing the right platform is what all you should know. Although Facebook is older and has a larger user base, Instagram is trending & steadily gaining popularity, with new features like Instagram Stories. If you intend to launch a successful campaign but are confused which platform to choose then a closer look at the benefits and statistics of each of these platforms is required. In this post, I have given insights that will help you launch a successful social media marketing campaign through the right channel.

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Facebook Ads vs. Instagram Ads: Factors that Determine What to Choose

To identify the best social media platform for placing a business Ad, you need to emphasize on these three main objectives: ● Reach ● Engagement ● Demographics

Reach

Instagram: Instagram has a stronger organic reach, nearly 800 million monthly active users which are promising stats to promote your business and brand. Facebook: Being one of the oldest social media platforms, it has a larger active user base than Instagram with nearly 2.07 billion monthly active users. What else? It allows selecting your audience based on location, age group, gender, language & custom preference that lets you refine your search and you can easily locate your potential customers.

Engagement

Instagram: Study shows that 80% of users follow at least one business on Instagram. You can find some most highly engaged users on Instagram. On an average day, users share more than 95 million photos and videos yielding a total of about 4.2 billion likes in a single day. A typical visitor from Instagram spends an average of 192 seconds which is the highest spent time on any social media platform. Facebook: When it comes to engagement, Facebook doesn’t perform as well as Instagram. But it still has the second highest audience engagement rate among all social networks. The above facts show that Instagram offers the highest Engagement rates than Facebook. Hence your business’ is specifically looking for higher engagement rates, you show blindly go for Instagram Ads.

Demographics

Instagram: Statics reveal that 31% of women and 24% of men use Instagram on a daily basis out of which 55% are between the ages of 18 and 29. This user base makes Instagram ideal for reaching a younger audience. So if your business’ most potential customers are youth, Instagram is a best platform to run your Ad then. A recent campaign of Harley Davidson is a perfect example where it managed to raise awareness about their motorcycles and engage a younger audience. Facebook: Facebook is most popular among young adults within the 18-to-29 age group constituting 71% percent of internet users between 30 and 49. Facebook seems to attract adult internet users of all age groups and thus effective for reaching internet users across all age groups. Well, looking on statics, we can clearly say that Facebook is popular among people of all ages while Instagram appeals to a younger audience, and it’s the perfect platform to engage a younger customer base. Now you have to decide your Ad campaign as per your business & the prospective audience you are looking for.

Comparing Both FB & Insta: Final verdict


Based on the data laid out above, here are a few facts we can make out: 1: Choose Instagram for better engagement 2: Choose Facebook for higher visibility 3: Choose Instagram to reach a younger audience

How to Choose Your Budget for Successful Facebook & Instagram Ads


• There are different costs for every cost-per-click on an Instagram ad on the basis of user age groups i.e. 18 to 24, 25 to 34, and 35 to 44. So you can choose to spend your budget on the basis of age-group that you are looking as potential customers for your business.
• Facebook ad pricing is governed by the time of the year. Putting an ad out during the holidays will be a lot more expensive than on non-holidays. Keeping this thing in mind will help you spend smartly on your Ad.
• Try spending minimum for your Ad for a couple weeks. Studies have shown that you can grow an audience by as many as 4000+ visits doing this!
• Keep an eye on your Instagram analytics after placing an Ad. This will give you a clear way of how your ad is performing & how you can adjust your budget further.

How to Create Facebook Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Select Your Campaign Objective: Here’s the complete list of Facebook campaign objectives available in the Ads Manager: o Brand awareness o Local awareness o Reach o Traffic o Engagement o All installs o Video views o Lead generation o Conversions o Product catalog sales o Store visits
2. Give Your Ad Campaign a Name
3. Set Up the Audience Targeting: In this phase of your campaign setup, you have two options: o Create a new Facebook target audience o Use a Saved Audience
4. Set Up Your Ad Placement
5. Set Up Your Campaign Budget and Bidding
6. Set Up Your Facebook Ads: Now select your preferred Facebook ad type and insert your ad images and copy. Follow the steps to create your FB ad: o Click on Create Ads o Choose your campaign objective: o Choose your Ad Set as per the demographics of who you want to show it to like age, location, gender etc.  o Set the budget of your ad
7. Choose Ad Format: single image, image carousel, video etc.
8. Review your ad and Pay
9. You’re done.

How To Create Instagram Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Create Instagram Business Profile: You need a Facebook Page for advertising on Instagram. So, first, you must create a Facebook Page.
2. Facebook Adverts Account: Add billing details to Facebook Adverts Account
3. Business Profile: Once you are done with that, it’s time to convert your Instagram account into a Business Profile. To do that : o open your Instagram account on your smartphone and click on the settings button at the top right corner of your Instagram profile, then scroll down to the Accounts sections and then choose ‘convert to business profile’ option.  o After that Instagram will prompt you to link one of your Facebook pages with your Instagram account and then you are all set to go.
4. Set up the Advert, Budget and Publish: Now open the Facebook Adverts Manager & choose:  o Your Advert objective, Target Audience, and Advert format.  o Set the duration of your Advert and the Budget
5. Publish: As soon as your Adverts are approved, you will receive a notification for the same.
6. Now create Instagram Ads Directly on Instagram App: Once you have linked your Instagram account with your Facebook page, you can directly create your Ad on Instagram App.

Facebook Ads: Pros and Cons for Small Businesses


Pros

1. Due to Low minimum costs, Facebook Ads are affordable for any size business. You can boost your post in as low as Rs 5 to make 1000 impressions. For a small time business Facebook is an affordable medium to promote the business.
2. With Facebook, you could easily reach customers through Easy targeting via location, age group, gender, hobbies and interests, marital status etc. This Microtargeting ability of Facebook ads makes it a very efficient and precise tool to use for your business Ads.
3. Facebook acquires Customers Loyalty & build relationships with your fans, interact with them, which helps to build your business brand image.
4. Facebook offers image-based ads with additional content space for ad descriptions, which gives you a better flexibility for ad creation.
5. Facebook is considered the Biggest Social Platform with over one billion users & 70% of internet users are on Facebook. This makes your brand reach to more and more people.
6. With Facebook, you can Go Viral in Minimum Time. If your content is interesting, people will want to share it with their friends once it pops up on their feed. This means it is possible to go viral with a great ad, at no extra cost.

Cons

• Facebook algorithm limits the visibility of brand messages. This means that in many cases only about 8% of your fan base is going to see your posts. Thus you may have not a big exposure.
• Facebook is Time Consuming and requires frequent attention on your business ad/posts. You may require additional time & money for keep on updating your FB business post.
• It is more of a social network, not a business network.
• You might be advertising to fake or dormant profiles.
• Returns & thus conversion rate might be slow with little to no interaction with the users viewing your ads.
• Unless you are paying Facebook for ads, no one sees your content and this is a big con to Facebook advertising.

Instagram Ads: Pros & Cons for Small Business

Pros

• Instagram is one of the most visual Eye Catching social media platforms people spend their time on. Your photo and video content will surely get higher reach for your business.
• With Instagram business pages you can create shopping posts & showcase your business products & services thus letting you more benefits by direct selling.
• It makes it easier to share your brand’s message, makes a big impression and a great chance for making your business go viral. Thus you can avail more exposure & thus more benefits for your brand.
• Instagram is created specifically for mobile devices keeping in view the increasing mobile users in the world. Thus it is highly likely of getting more leads and customers out of mobile users in the world.
• Instagram hashtags can also make it easy to have new followers connect with an account. It helps to extend the reach of a business through simple searches that the 150+ million users of the platform perform on a daily basis.
• With Instagram you will get responses happen in real time. This can give a brand a good clue as to how well a product or service is going to be received.

Cons

• One of the big con of using Instagram is you have a Limited Audience. Though it has a huge active monthly user base with about 800 million active monthly users but the audience is made up primarily by users ages 18-29. So if you are looking to reach an older audience, Instagram may not be the perfect fit.
• Instagram is still not a top priority for many marketers. Facebook or Twitter still considered the giant of the social media industry. This may affect the brand you want to promote via Instagram.
• With Instagram, you have a limited room for additional content. For images that need a little explanation will go in vain since Instagram doesn’t offer much space to make that happen.
• Instagram doesn’t allow clickable links on the posts. This restricts a lot of initial direct traffic on Instagram. Instagram availability on just mobile devices makes it difficult to reach customers who use the desktop for their business. Some businesses may discover that many of their online consumers will be left out if the marketing focus is Instagram only.
• There’s no doubt Facebook is the giant in the social ad network. You can find almost half the world’s Internet population on Facebook, but Instagram is the hottest new trend going on which is most appealing to youth. Thus to conclude, advertising on Facebook or Instagram, is entirely dependent upon your business goals, your audience and where they spend most of their time.
• If you are targeting older people then Facebook Ads is your best bet. If you are targeting a young audience focused on brand engagement and conversions, Instagram Ads is your obvious choice.
• Pick the one that fits your needs, and get started.