Facebook Ads vs Instagram Ads: which suits you better?

If your company has not yet made social media advertisements, you have most likely considered them at some point. Testing social media ad campaigns is essential to finding the right formula for your company. Additionally, it is interesting to hear what recommendations the market has about which platforms to choose based on strategy, target, and objective. Do you want to learn more about this? Let’s go!

First of all, while Facebook and Instagram are very different social networks, they are both managed by the same Ads Manager tool, because they are both under the Meta umbrella. In fact, you can extend and use the same ads for both social networks with a single click, but we don't recommend doing so without first thinking it through!

To determine which social network is the best fit for you, consider the following factors:

1. What is your goal?
2. Who is your target audience?
3. Where are your organic efforts?
4. What type of content can you produce?

1. What is your goal? 🎯

Let's begin with the most important question: Why do you want to advertise on social media? Even before we consider the characteristics of your target or service, we must consider the campaign's objectives.

Facebook Ads provides numerous filters for configuring objectives, sets, and ads in each campaign. Instagram, on the other hand, is much simpler; you can launch your campaign with just a few clicks. This gives us a good idea of what type of social network will be most beneficial to us based on our objectives.

If you have concrete, tangible, and quantifiable goals, you should probably be on Facebook, whereas brand awareness content should be on Instagram.

If you have more concrete, tangible, and quantifiable goals, such as website clicks from an article or news, you should probably be on Facebook, whereas brand awareness combined with eye-catching content should be on Instagram.

But, more specifically, what are the objectives you can set when creating your Meta Ads campaigns?

• Brand awareness (Top of the funnel)
• Traffic (Middle of the funnel)
• Engagement (Middle of the funnel)
• New customers (Middle of the funnel)
• App Promotion (Middle of the funnel)
• Conversion (Bottom of the funnel)

The most used objectives in Facebook Ads are Conversions (26.94%), Engagement (24.19%), and Traffic (22.64%). Other objectives, such as Brand awareness (1.35%), Event Responses (0.64%), and Store Visits (0.04%), are the least used for these campaigns (see full article).

In contrast, when creating an Instagram ad, you can choose between the following objectives:

• Profile visits: brand recognition (Top of the funnel).
• Website visits: traffic (Middle of the funnel).
• Messages: new customers (Middle of the funnel).

Furthermore, many brands have been converting through Instagram due to e-commerce for many years. Here's a step-by-step Instagram tutorial.

In general, Instagram performs better at the top or middle of the funnel because it focuses on creating engagement with visual content: brand awareness, recognition, and inspiration. Furthermore, users prefer that this content not be derived from outside the platform!

Facebook, on the other hand, is more focused on attracting and converting customers, i.e., bottom-of-the-funnel actions. Additionally, unlike Instagram users, Facebook users are more used to accessing links or articles that originate outside the platform itself.

2. Who is your target audience? 💁

Once the goal has been established, we must consider who we want to reach specifically.

Whether we want more followers, more sales, or contact with our customers, we must first understand our target audience's preferences and whether or not they use that social network.

To do so, we'll need to go over the buyer persona (if you don't already have one, you can use our template to create one). We can use our buyer persona information to calculate the size of the potential audience on each platform using Facebook's audience size estimation tool.

An Instagram user is 99.99% likely to have an account on another social platform. For example, 83% of Instagram users also use Facebook, and 55% use Twitter, but we must determine which social networks they use the most.

Let's look at some relevant data from both platforms:

Facebook:

• 2.934 billion monthly active users (datareportal).
• 60.6% of internet users use it.
• Between 18 and 35 years - 55% users.
• Women: 43%.
• 10 million advertisers.
• 33 minutes per day.
• Users access 8 times a day.
• 54,9% people use Facebook to follow brands or products.
• 23,6% of marketers use Facebook to market their business.
• The average CPC on Facebook is $0.94.

Instagram:

• 1.44 billion montly active users (thesmallbusinessblog).
• 23% of internet users use it.
• Between 18 and 35 years - 70% users.
• Women: 51%.
• 2 million advertisers.
• 30 minutes per day.
• Users access 6 times a day.
• 81% of people use Instagram for research on companies, products, and services.
• 38% of marketers take advantage of Instagram’s ad platform.
• The average cost-per-click ad cost is between $0.70-$1.00.

Also, both social networks allow you to select an audience to impact with your ads, as well as retargeting; however, Facebook offers more filters to select the audience than Instagram.

3. Where are your organic efforts? 🎳

Due to the fact that your Facebook and Instagram ads are linked to your profile as well as your organic posts, you should pay attention to your positioning on these platforms so that they compensate you and position your ads better.

If you don't have a strong organic presence on either Facebook or Instagram, consider limiting your ads to the platform with a stronger presence.

4. What type of content can you create? 📝

This is far more important than it appears! If you choose the right channel but send the wrong message, you will never get results. Both social networks require you to create specific content for advertisements; you cannot simply reuse an image from another campaign because you will waste money. The key is to define the strategy and the objective, then create specific pieces of content for the desired purpose.

That is why it is necessary to conduct an analysis: what type of content do we have? What is our budget? What kind of content can we fund?

On Facebook and Instagram, you can add different types of ads:

• Carousel: two or more scrollable images or videos.
• Single media: image, video, or slideshow of images.
• Existing posts: includes links that you might have shared.

The only difference is that on Instagram, you cannot include links in your image; instead, you must include a call-to-action to include a link.

What does the market say? On Facebook, content must be created in order to interact with friends and family, share links, and so on. As a result, blog posts, articles, and case studies will receive more attention.

We must concentrate on visual content for Instagram. A selection of photos, videos, and other media will work much better than an article. Take advantage of this on Instagram if you have highly visual content, short videos, or very visually engaging videos!

Also, as previously stated, content on Facebook can travel outside of the Facebook ecosystem; users are accustomed to this; however, on Instagram, it is preferable to link to buttons or actions within the social network itself.

Don't be afraid to experiment with different content types and calls to action. Facebook allows you to do A/B testing, but you must manage it manually.

To contrast Facebook and Instagram, we could say that the former allows you to directly reach the public and brand yourself through informative content. The second, through visual or audiovisual means, appeals to emotions more directly.

Instagram is easy to use, and it can be used for both personal and professional purposes. Facebook, on the other hand, is more complex and comprehensive because it can be used for a variety of purposes, including the creation of events and fan pages.

However, keep in mind that, while both are social networks, being in one requires significant resources and time ⏳. If we do not have enough resources, we will have to choose the specific channel to test thoroughly. Testing both can be less productive, because we will be spreading ourselves thin, and may not draw any valuable conclusions.