How to choose between Instagram or Facebook Ads for your business

If you haven’t won the lottery or made money from a serious investment, chances are you can’t just throw funds at any advertising tactic to see how it goes. Most companies have to be picky about where they spend their marketing dollars to ensure they are being put to good use. Nevertheless, in today’s world, advertising is essential. And where better to promote your business than on social media platforms? Ones that billions of people use daily. However, with a limited budget, it might not be possible to market yourself everywhere. It would be best to decide whether to choose Instagram or Facebook ads for your business. Luckily, Digital Dot has a couple of ideas on how to simplify the decision-making process.

Choosing between Instagram or Facebook ads for your business

According to research conducted by Statista, by the end of January 2023, the number of social media users came to 4.76 billion. That’s more than half the population of the entire planet! With such a massive and diverse audience, there’s no doubt that social media is an excellent way for your business to interact with people. That begs the question, how do you leverage this digital marketing gem? How do you turn it into the greatest growth tool you have ever seen? And ultimately, how do you choose where to market on – Instagram or Facebook? As a company behind top-notch social media marketing services NYC businesses trust, we hold the answers! Coming your way are the steps to take when deciding which of the two Meta’s greatest social platforms to advertise on.

#1 Determine your goals

One easy way to figure out where to advertise is to decide on your goal. Different kinds of ads have different purposes. Some marketers want people to interact with and see their ads, while others want conversions. For instance, Instagram is a better choice if your goal is to reach more people and raise awareness of your brand. When it comes to sales, however, it doesn’t work as well due to how the platform operates and how people use it. Facebook is usually a better choice if you want more control over how the ad looks and if you’re going to make direct sales. However, saving money would benefit you if you are interested in engagement. That way, if one of your updates does well, you can boost it.

#2 Consider your audience as well as the ad type

Maintaining and expanding your current pool of customers should be a top priority. Fortunately, both Facebook and Instagram collect a wealth of user information, allowing you to target specific groups of people based on demographics and other factors, such as their geography and particular hobbies. After you build an audience, you can reuse them for subsequent campaigns.

Remember that Instagram and Facebook each offer unique types of advertisements, so you may need to tweak your ad if you eventually intend to run it on both platforms. However, suppose you want to advertise only on one of these. In that case, you probably want to know more about the specific advertisements they offer before setting your mind on Instagram or Facebook ads for your business. That said, the following are examples of the most common types:

• Carousel ads – Advertisements with a carousel format feature multiple photos or videos combined into one ad.
• Existing posts – If you happen to be working with a sponsor, you’ll most likely be turning the already published content into adverts.
• Single media ads – The focus of these advertisements is on a single piece of media. A slideshow of photos is another option.

Finally, remember that Instagram does not allow links to be embedded in its captions; nevertheless, Instagram advertisements provide a workaround. You can add call-to-action buttons to your ads on their platform so the audience can take the next logical step in your sales funnel.

#3 Test and execute

Ads don’t just magically start doing well; you need to monitor the analytics and make regular adjustments to ensure they reach your target audience and generate the desired results. Without a goal and a method for measuring progress toward it, it’s impossible to know when you’ve achieved success. As a long-standing NYC SEO company, we understand that tailoring ads to your audience is one of trial and error. If, for example, you’re sponsoring solely posts with an excellent organic reach, the only way to test would be to wait for your next piece of well-performing content and advertise that. On another note, multivariate testing, when you try different graphics or calls to action, is an excellent example of conventional testing that can be applied to more traditional forms of advertising.

Before committing to potentially costly marketing initiatives like ads, it’s crucial to research and test to see what works. Only through data analysis and experimentation can you maximize your efforts and see a rise in conversions. Because of its capacity to publish so-called dark postings, Facebook is undoubtedly the superior network for conducting testing. These are essentially unpublished posts from the page itself. They allow testing many variants without flooding users’ feeds with several identical or almost identical posts.

The choice depends on your business objectives

Whether you choose Instagram or Facebook ads for your business depends on your unique objectives and the likelihood that those objectives will be met via those respective networks. As with many marketing elements, the research and experimenting stages are crucial. However, the most critical phase is laying a solid foundation and advertising for the right reasons. Of course, if you are struggling with social media marketing, here you can find the best PPC agency in NYC. Thanks to years of experience, we have what it takes to bring your advertising game to another level!

 

References:

Internet and social media users in the world 2023 | Statista. (2023, February 24). Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/