Whenever you hear the word social media marketing, you instantly think about Facebook and Instagram marketing, right? The problem is that you might not know which one to choose.
And that’s why in today’s article I’m going to show you which one is better and why you should use it…
Got it? Awesome, let’s dive in…
Facebook Marketing Pros And Cons
Facebook marketing is here for a long time, and actually, it was one of the first platforms you could do social media marketing on. That is why it is so spread and known.
But that was about a decade ago. The real question is, is it worth doing Facebook marketing now?
Well, let’s see…
Pros Of Facebook Marketing
Let’s start with the pros of Facebook marketing (as we always want to be positive here.) Facebook is an awesome platform to:
- Facebook has over 2 billion users and that gives you access to a huge audience
- You can connect with customers on a personal level
- Facebook pages are an awesome way to handle customer service
- Facebook marketplace lets you sell your products easily
- Facebook shopping is a great way to make sales DIRECTLY on Facebook
- You can use groups as a great way for your community to hang around and build a strong brand
- Facebook has better than average analytics
- Facebook allows links in their posts
- Facebook advertising is an awesome way to get customers online and it has unbelievably great targeting
Whoa! That’s a lot of pros, right? Unfortunately, there is one con that is going to hurt almost all of them on a huge level.
And that’s also why Facebook marketing is going down with popularity and doesn’t get you a lot of results anymore.
Cons Of Facebook Marketing
All right, and here we go with the bad things. The first one of the cons on the list is probably going to be the main reason why you’re probably not going to do Facebook marketing at all unless you have a great marketing budget.
So, here we go:
- ORGANIC REACH OF FACEBOOK IS ON RECORD LOW – in other words, unless you are willing to spend 8+ hours per day on commenting or you have a ton of money to spend on ads, your Facebook page is not going to grow – ever (even Facebook itself has to justify it on their own blog.)
- It’s A Lot Of Hard Work – If you want to be successful on Facebook, it is going to take about twice as much work as it takes on Instagram. You have to consistently engage with audience, handle all of the questions, collect data, create content, outreach for collaborations, etc. It’s incredible.
- Users Have To View Their Feed – Only those who are logged in have the luxury of seeing your ads. This is a con. When you advertise on AdWords for instance, your ads are served to everyone who uses the internet, where AdSense ads are served. But on Facebook, everything happens behind a login. If there are less than 2 billion Facebook users, what happens to the other users of the internet?
Again, as I mentioned, the first point is the main reason why you should forget about Facebook. It is a pay-to-play platform right now.
If you don’t have a big budget, you’re hardly going to be successful.
But now let’s take a look at Instagram…
Instagram Marketing Pros And Cons
Instagram is my favorite platform for social media marketing. It has an awesome organic reach, it is as good for B2B as it is for B2C, and you don’t have to spend 8 hours per day there to be successful.
Are there cons to it? ABSOLUTELY as there are cons with everything. And that’s why let’s take a look at all of the pros and cons now…
Pros Of Instagram Marketing
There are more pros to Instagram marketing than I can count. That’s why I will talk about the most important of them only…
- MASSIVE ORGANIC REACH – Some people say that organic reach on Instagram is dead. But that is only because their content and their strategy sucks. You can reach MILLIONS of people without spending a penny on Instagram if you know what you’re doing.
- 50% Of Instagram Users Have Visited A Website To Make A Purchase After Seeing A Brand On Instagram – This only shows how Instagram is an awesome platform to market your brand online and make a ton of sales. If you know what you’re doing, it can be a money generator.
- Instagram Shopping – As a response to economic crisis, Instagram has started to promote in-platform shopping. That means a lot of users are in “buyer” mode, and if you set your own Instagram shop, you can get a lot of new customers.
- Building Relationships And Trust With Your Audience – Instagram is an awesome platform for brand building. You can easily engage with your audience, and build relationships by posting the right content. Also it can be used for customer support or answering questions.
- It’s Easy To Build A Following – If you have the right content strategy, optimized profile, and basically you follow the strategies for Instagram marketing that I share in my blog and Instagram Marketing Domination Vault, you can get even 10,000 followers in a few weeks or months. (Even if you start from nothing.)
- Instagram Ads Are A Great Way To Get Customers – Instagram ads have as great targeting as Facebook ads and they work like crazy. After all, you create them throught Facebook Business Suite or Facebook Ads Manager. So, it’s not a surprise.
- Instagram Is Awesome For Influencer Marketing – It’s truly amazing. You can even get influencers to promote your brand for FREE if you know how to do it. Influencer marketing is on a big rise on Instagram and you can use it to make a lot of sales and build a huge following.
And MANY, MANY more! The pros of Instagram marketing can be listed on a sheet of paper that goes across the entire USA. There’s more of them than I can count.
But as with any platform, there are many cons that you have to be aware of.
Cons Of Instagram Marketing
All right, now is the time to check out some of the cons of Instagram marketing that you have to know:
- You can’t share clickable links in posts – That’s the worst con of all. It might cost you a lot of traffic but people on Instagram are used to go to the link in your bio. So, if you add a call to action in your posts to do that, you will get similar results.
- Only one link in your bio – Your Instagram bio is the only place where you can share a clickable link (not counting link stickers in stories). Unfortunately, you can add just one. So, if you have more than one of landing pages you want to share, you must use a tool like Linktree or Znaplink.
- Increasing number of spam bots – One of the biggest frustrations that you are going to face are many bots spamming in your comments and DMs (direct messages) offering scams. But it’s not that bad if you will learn to instantly block them.
- Instagram ads are generally more expensive than Facebook ads – Instagram ads are bit more pricy, but it is more than worth it. However, if you want to advertise to masses super cheaply, use Facebook ads more than Instagram ads.
All right, these are the worst cons that Instagram marketing has. So, which platform should you choose?
Instagram Marketing vs. Facebook Marketing – End Result
In my opinion, marketing your business using Instagram is way more effective than doing Facebook marketing. There are no costs associated, you can get a ton of new customers from scratch, reach MILLIONS of people without paying a penny, build massive trust with your audience, and more.
The main thing that kills Facebook marketing is virtually zero organic reach.
That’s why you should avoid it unless you have a big budget. And if you do have a big budget, you might as well spend it on Instagram marketing, and turn great results into INCREDIBLE results.
Filip Konecny 