Beginner marketers consider launching a social media campaign. Experienced marketers launch a social media campaign on Facebook. Smart marketers study all social media platforms and launch successful integrated social media campaigns on the platforms that are best for their business.
Let’s be honest, social media marketing is a versatile, cost-effective and powerful tool to use for marketers and small business owners alike. It helps to reach the target audience, boosts sales, increases brand recognition, enhances conversion rates, boosts traffic to your website and even, improves search engine rankings. No wonder, then, that more and more businesses decide to include social media in their marketing strategies.
In fact, according to Statista, investments in social media advertising are forecast to grow from 32 billion dollars in 2017 to approx. 48 billion dollars in 2021. Pretty impressive, isn’t it?
Now, whether you’re a beginner marketer or an experienced one, you may want to know on which platform to launch your social media campaign. After all, social media advertising can be expensive and to get the best results, you need to invest in the right ads on the right platform.
Facebook vs. Instagram: audience and targeting
Facebook might not be the best social media platform in terms of customer engagement with brands, but, because it’s one of the oldest social media platforms and one that gained the biggest popularity, it has an enormous audience worldwide.
According to research, men and women from all age groups are active on Facebook. However, the most active users are 25-34 year old men.
Instagram, on the other hand, has a smaller audience. Statistics show that although both men and women use Instagram, neither both sexes nor all age groups are equally active. It occurs that Instagram’s main audience is 18 to 34-year-old men and women.
Thus, if you’re trying to reach women from younger generations, that is Generation Z and Millennials, you should advertise predominantly on Instagram. If your target audience is young men, then you have equal chances of reaching them on both social media platforms.
As far as older generations are concerned, they’re not so active on either platform. However, you’ve much bigger chances of reaching them on Facebook rather than on Instagram.
Facebook vs. Instagram: mobile-friendliness and mobile users
Facebook much different when accessed via mobile app than via a Web browser on your PC? Not really. The only difference is in layout and overall design (after all, smartphones have much smaller screens than laptops and PCs). However, you can check activity as well as read and create posts both via mobile and desktop. Also, you can easily access Messenger from both devices. Thus, Facebook is perfectly optimized for desktop, laptop as well as mobile usage.
Instagram, on the other hand, lacks a desktop experience. It puts a number of limitations on users when they log in through a Web browser. For example, on Instagram you can’t easily upload photos, edit the existing posts or watch Instagram stories. It’s been created predominantly for mobile users to share interesting moments of their lives instantly.
Thus, when you want to do some advertising, on Facebook it doesn’t matter what device you use and how you access the platform. On Instagram, on the other hand, you have to do all via an app.
Now, research shows that 95% of active user accounts access Facebook via smartphone, 31.8% via laptop and desktop, and only 8.8% via tablets. As far as Instagram is concerned, hardly anybody accesses the platform via laptops and PCs. Most access it either via smartphone or tablet.
That means, if you want to launch your social media campaign on Facebook, you should optimize your content for mobile usage. As far as Instagram is concerned, you have no other choice but to make all your posts and/or ads mobile-friendly.
