Whilst Facebook has over 2.2 billion active users with 1.6 million connected to a small business, LinkedIn offers in-depth industry-relevant targeting capabilities that lives within the platform which is also known as the 1# social network for lead generation. So where should you spend your advertising budget?
Choosing where to spend your social advertising budget can be a difficult and time-consuming decision – and whilst there is a magnitude of options available, LinkedIn and Facebook remain the most renowned social media platforms used by advertisers. But choosing between the two can be tricky. This article will put both Facebook and LinkedIn to the test, in order to help you decide which one best suits your unique advertising needs.
Targeting
Facebook has a wide selection of interests and behaviours you can use to better narrow targeting. It also offers the option ‘lookalike targeting‘ which essentially uses your customer base list to target new audiences with similar interests, demographics and behaviours, making for a stronger prospecting audience.
LinkedIn offers a more professional targeting base especially because of the platform houses users who are generally more interested in networking and career-related news and updates. Within LinkedIn company pages and user profiles provide in-depth information about the users’ professional career, their interests and the company they work for. Therefore marketers can seamlessly target individuals based on this information, e.g. targeting companies of a certain size in a certain location.
Overall: As a general rule, it is recommended that B2C e-commerce brands may find Facebook a better platform to utilise their budget with. But if you are an agency wanting to boost brand awareness or offer B2B products and services, then LinkedIn might be more beneficial
Adverts
Facebook has a plethora of advertising formats available for their advertisers which would, therefore, appeal to those who want to offer a more interactive and immersive experience. For example, with the options of video, photo, slideshow, carousel, dynamic product ads (which offer a full-screen vertical format) and lead form ads – there are many ways that marketers can choose to reach their audience and therefore would appeal to a wider range of purposes.
Much like Facebook, LinkedIn also provides a range of advertising types and formats to choose from, including; sponsored content, direct sponsored content, sponsored InMail, text ads, dynamic ads and lead generation forms (which can be used within sponsored content/InMail).
