What’s better for your business: Facebook or LinkedIn?
As a marketer, choosing which social media channel to focus on is always a puzzle. Many are left scrambling their heads with a multitude of doubts like “Where do I start?”, “Which platform gives me the best ROI on my efforts?” or “Is one platform better than the other?”
While asking questions about different platforms is normal, it isn’t smart to gamble your way out. The key to a successful marketing campaign is identifying your target audience and your marketing goals.
Among dozens of social media platforms, Facebook and LinkedIn are popular choices with marketers. Let’s break down what works best for your business.
LinkedIn is a professional network that was initially founded as a recruitment platform. Over the years, it developed to mimic many features similar to other social networking sites. For example, you can share status updates, send private messages, and connect with people.
On the other hand, Facebook was intended to be a platform for people to share and communicate. However, you can now find plenty of new features that let businesses reach their target audience. One survey by the company found that 74% of American consumers use Facebook to discover new products and brands.
So what are the differences between the two platforms?
Statistics
When it comes to numbers, Facebook is the clear winner.
There are 2.8 billion monthly active users worldwide on Facebook, while LinkedIn’s number stands at 64.7 million.
According to reports, the most active age group on both platforms is 25 to 34-year-olds. However, due to its popularity, Facebook has a broader range of users. 10% of Facebook users are under 18 or over 64. The reason behind this is that Facebook is for everyday users, but LinkedIn caters mainly to professionals.
B2B or B2C?
Undoubtedly, LinkedIn is a more robust B2B platform. Since the platform was designed for networking, it is a go-to place for business-driven individuals. Which also makes it easy to identify key decision-makers and target them directly.
Social selling is embedded into the platform. Reports suggest that LinkedIn has the largest share of B2B display ad spending.
While Facebook can be B2B, it is recognised more as a B2C platform. If you want to reach consumers directly, Facebook is the preferred choice. Not only it is a perfect place to generate brand awareness and engagement, but it also provides you 10X more prospects.
According to reports, marketers see the highest return on investment on Facebook. The networking site wins in numbers hands down, but LinkedIn generates tangible leads.
Thought Leadership
When it comes to thought leadership, LinkedIn beats Facebook relatively easy. The platform promotes business conversations, and one of the ways brands gain credibility and visibility organically is by thought leadership.
Through thought leadership articles, brands can educate, prompt conversations, and push to action. These programs increase website traffic and subscribers, thus helping with lead generation and brand awareness.
Marketers see more success with thought leadership content on LinkedIn compared to Facebook.
LinkedIn Groups vs Facebook Groups
On both platforms, groups are where businesses can connect with prospects and other like-minded users. Before engaging in groups, marketers need to ask themselves –
“Which platform is my target audience mostly active on?”
Keep in mind that users engage on different platforms with different motives. On LinkedIn, conversations revolve around work-related topics, whereas on Facebook, users connect to share their personal opinions on various topics like food, lifestyles, hobbies, etc.
Let’s look at an example. If you want to create awareness about your latest blender, targeting users in cooking groups on Facebook will get you the best results.
However, LinkedIn is a better bet if you’re providing a high-priced service like personnel management.
Facebook Ads Vs. LinkedIn Ads
In terms of variety, Facebook and LinkedIn fair equally. Both platforms offer a diverse range of ads types like carousel, video, dynamic and lead ads.
Targeting capabilities for ads on both sites rely on user input and content relevant to the information provided by them. So, you can easily target users based on basic information like job title, company, age, location, etc. However, Facebook also targets based on their life milestones, behaviour, and other personalized information.
Who wins? Facebook or LinkedIn?
You decide!
Our verdict is that despite sharing standard features, Facebook and LinkedIn have different audiences and intentions.
Which platform you want to use for marketing depends on your industry, target audience and goals.
Another essential thing to remind every marketer is – you don’t have to choose. You can always select Facebook for user engagement and LinkedIn for targeted lead generation.
All we can say is the winner lies in the eyes of the marketer!
Do you want professional guidance? GoViral has now a whole decade of experience specialising in inbound marketing and we can help you improve your business. Contact us to learn more!
5 Things to Know When Learning Facebook Ads
The world of Facebook advertising can seem overwhelming at first. With over 1,000 different targeting options, 11 objectives to choose from, and all the different ad formats available, it’s no wonder the internet is going crazy on how to crack the code to Facebook advertising.
1. Understand what goes into setting up an ad
First things first, you have to know the different components of an ad.
Step #1: Set your Objective.
Your objective is the result you want to get from your ad, and selecting the correct one will help you meet your goals. Facebook currently has 11 different ad objectives you can choose from.
- Brand awareness
- Reach
- Traffic
- Engagement
- App installs
- Video views
- Lead generation
- Messages
- Conversions
- Catalogue sales
- Store Visits
Step #2: Select your Audience.
Ahhh, targeting. This is where things can get complicated. Facebook allows you to select dynamic targeting parameters for your ads such as age, location, language, interests, demographics, behaviors, and more.
Step #3: Choose Ad Placement.
This is where you decide where you want your ad to be seen. You can choose to allow Facebook to use automatic placements, or you can determine them yourself.
Some placements include News Feed, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network, Video Feed, Stories, and more. You can even choose to target your ads to desktop or mobile devices based on what you know about your audience!
Step #4: Set your Budget.
This is where you decide how much you’re going to spend on your ad. First enter how long you want the ad to run, then you can enter a daily budget: an amount Facebook will allocate toward your ad each day; or a lifetime budget: an amount Facebook will allocate toward your ad throughout the entire time it runs. Learn more about the different ways to use your budget here.
Step #5: Format your Ad.
This is where you can get creative and choose what your ad is going to look like. Facebook offers a variety of ways you can play with the design of your ads with images, videos, and copy, which you can play with according to the ad placements you selected.
After you’re satisfied with these 5 steps, now you’re ready to launch your ad! But, it’s important to understand…
2. There is no secret formula for success.
After launching your ads, you’re not quite done yet. Unfortunately, success in Facebook advertising is not black and white. We often see many businesses new to Facebook ads get discouraged when they don’t hit conversion goals immediately. Well, we’re here to tell you this is normal. With all the different options for targeting, formatting, budgeting, and so on, it’s impossible to know what’s going to work without testing.
Be prepared to play around with different targeting, ad copy, images, and placements until you find what works for your audience. There’s a lot that goes into it! But, one step that will make launching successful, converting Facebook ads will be way easier is identifying your buyer personas. This will give you the best possible understanding of what your audience might be looking for, and how to reach them through your targeting.
A/B Testing
A/B testing allows you to run multiple different ads under the same campaign while directly comparing results. You can compare different images, headlines, copy, placements, and even targeting, and Facebook will show you what your audience responds to more! Trust us, this is a game-changer.
In summary, you need to constantly be testing, measuring, and optimising your ads. You can’t simply launch some to the world and leave them for a week. Well, unless you want to waste a lot of money.
3. Use retargeting.
Ever heard the theory that on average, a customer needs to see an ad at least three times before they convert? Retargeting new ads to people who have already engaged with your brand is one of the biggest missed opportunities we see for people new to Facebook Ads.
Facebook allows you the option to retarget ads to people who have already clicked on your ad, liked your page, visited your website, etc by setting up Custom Audiences.
For example, if someone clicks on one of your ads leading to a blog post on your website, they can be filtered into a custom audience of people who have taken similar action. Next time you run an ad, you can make it sales-focused and target it to all of the people in your custom audience.
Guess who’s going to be more willing to buy from your brand? Someone who has never seen or heard of your brand before, or someone you have already reached through your content? See where we’re going with this?
Using content marketing and retargeting features are how you turn clicks into real conversions and sales.
4. Determine a good method of tracking your ads.
Take it from us, it’s really easy to start playing around with different types of ads, tweaking small things here and there, and then all of the sudden you see a change and don’t know what started working.
How do you know if your ad is really working? Well, it depends on what your goal is (more on this in another article soon). Luckily, Facebook Ads Manager has a ton of built-in Ads Reporting tools that allow you to create, customize, export, share and schedule reports on your ad performance based on a set of parameters that you choose. You can look at how many clicks an ad gets, how many impressions it left, cost per click, and tons more. If this is too overwhelming at first, AdEspresso is a great tool to help analyze your campaigns.
5. Always be ready to learn.
“Always be learning” is actually one of GoViral’s 8 Company Ethos (Check out the full list here). It’s important to never be stagnant in your know-how, because if one thing is for certain, it’s that the latest trends and rules of digital marketing are constantly changing-and Facebook advertising is no different. Facebook is constantly refining and changing its rules, policies, and algorithms, adding new functions to Ads Manager, etc.
For example: Recently, Facebook posted that they will be putting a greater emphasis on building community through Facebook Groups. We wouldn’t be surprised to see the addition of advertising for Facebook Groups sometime in 2021.
To keep up with the latest changes, we recommend setting Google Alerts, following Facebook Community for real-time updates, and subscribing to newsletters from trusted sources. Some of our favorites are Social Media Examiner, and Hubspot.
So, be patient, be willing to try new things, and always be ready to learn.
Are you interested in leveraging Facebook ads for your business? Contact us below for help.
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