Are you a business owner? Or do you manage your company’s social media accounts? If so, do you often find yourself confused? Don’t worry, you are not alone. Many other marketers and social media handlers face the same issue every day. And the problem gets worse when they have to choose between two prominent platforms to run their ads – Facebook and LinkedIn.
Recently, I was in the same scenario when I had to distribute the budget amongst the various platforms to run ads for a staffing agency. And here are the factors that helped me make a more informed decision.
Audience
One platform at a time. Talking about Facebook first. The platform caters to the audiences in a more personal way. And rightfully so as Facebook is a place where friends and family connect and engage your followers and the best example of that is Michael Souder Facebook page which got high engagement. On the other hand, LinkedIn has a more professional approach to targeting. Again, this is justified as LinkedIn is a platform where individuals connect for job-related or other professional purposes. Not only this, but people also use LinkedIn as a place to seek career-related advice, and collaborate with like-minded people.
So, you will have to see what is the nature of your business to decide what type of audience you wish to target. Here are some examples that will aid you in making a better decision. For example, if you run a business and wish to make it grow among other industry leaders, then LinkedIn would be the best option to advertise on. However, if you tend to run an e-commerce brand that caters to consumers, you will have to go with Facebook.
Ad Types
Having discussed the audience, the ad types that both platforms offer are similar to some extent. For example, you will find the Lead Generation ads on both platforms. In both cases, a form that you prepare will get attached to the ad so that the visitors can fill in the required information. Moreover, in both cases, the form contains all the information that a user shared with the social network in the past. Hence, saving them the hassle to do so all over again.
Apart from lead generation, other similar ads on both networks include a link, video, image, carousel, and mail ads. However, Facebook offers some more categories as well that LinkedIn does not. These include slideshows, canvas, stories, and collections.
Targeting
If you thought that retargeting is an option unique to Facebook, you were wrong all this time. Because both LinkedIn and Facebook offer some retargeting audience options. However, they have different names for the same type of audience targeting. For example, a Lookalike Audience on Facebook is an Audience Expansion on LinkedIn.
But when it comes to targeting, Facebook takes the lead. As it allows marketers to make customized combinations of target audiences. And most prominent of them all is the marketers’ ability to make combinations from real data. These include demographics and geolocation, to name a few.
Not only this, but Facebook also allows you to target an audience based on their psychographics and interests. However, due to the privacy crisis that the platform faced in the past, some of the targeting options are not available to marketers anymore. But the ones that they can use are still more than what LinkedIn offers.
Cost
Apart from comparing the other features, you also need to pay considerable attention to the cost of running ads on both platforms. Because at the end of the day, nothing is free. And you have to allocate budgets accordingly. So, here is good news for businesses that advertise on Facebook – the CPC is cheaper than LinkedIn. It is the lowest when compared to the four major social networking sites – LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
On the other hand, CPC is the highest for LinkedIn when compared to other platforms. However, high CPC does not imply that LinkedIn ads are overpriced. It tells just how valuable they are. Because the expensive leads on LinkedIn translate into high-quality leads. Researches show that clicks on LinkedIn ads have a 500% greater chance of converting leads than Facebook ads do.
Analytics
Because the layout/sections for the Analytics of both platforms are different, let’s look at them separately.
There are three sections On LinkedIn Analytics. They are:
- Updates
- Followers
- Visitors
Facebook analytics look somewhat similar to LinkedIn but you can access these through Page Insights. Apart from that, the number of sections on Facebook is also more than those on LinkedIn. These include:
- Overview
- Likes
- Reach
- Visits
- Posts
- Video
- People
Takeaway
So, there is no right and wrong answer for the platform that you should advertise on. It all depends on the target audience that you create the ads for. And the platform that they engage on the most. For example, if you are running an IT staffing agency, then your target audience will most likely engage on LinkedIn. However, if you are running a clothing business, you will find a favorable audience on Facebook.
