Social media sites are the most popular marketing channel today.
With several options, brands that have to choose only one platform to advertise on are often in a fix.
Compare and contrast
Experts use some key parameters to measure the efficiency of marketing platforms.
Some of them are as follows –
A) Reach
The whole point of marketing is to draw more attention and become more popular than peers by reaching out to more people.
Instagram has over 800 million monthly active users and more than 500 million daily active users.
Most of these users are located outside the US indicating that the platform is popular all over the world.
This makes it an ideal marketing medium for the 100 million advertisers who also use Instagram.
Facebook, however, continues to be the world’s largest social media network with 2.2 billion monthly active users. In terms of reach, it beats Instagram any day.
B) Engagement
Just promoting a brand through advertising content is of no use if the audience does not watch those ads or engage with them in any other way.
The success of a marketing campaign is determined by how well it has been received by consumers.
According to research, Instagram has some of the most engaged users who share over 95 million photos and videos every day.
Those posts garner over 4 million likes daily. These numbers have made Instagram the social media site with the highest audience engagement.
Facebook falls behind Instagram in this regard. But, it still has the second-highest user interaction numbers among social media sites.
C) Demographic
Most marketing campaigns aim to reach out to specific groups of people depending on the product or service being sold.
Thus, the choice of marketing platform depends on the target audience and the social media sites they prefer.
According to studies, Instagram is more popular among females. 31% of women who use the internet browse Instagram regularly, while 24% of men with internet access log in to the platform.
Also, people in the age group of 18 to 29 years form the largest chunk – 55% -- of Instagram users. However, it ranks 6th among social media sites in terms of overall popularity.
Facebook too is more popular among women than men with nearly 80% female and about 65% of male internet users regularly accessing the platform.
72% of all adult internet users are on Facebook, making it the most popular social media platform. Instagram and Facebook have their unique strengths and weaknesses.
Instagram is ideal for brands looking to reach out to a younger audience with a higher rate of engagement.
Facebook, on the other hand, is better suited for businesses looking to increase visibility irrespective of demographics.
At the end of the day, if you can, use both. If not, focusing on the one to maximize effectiveness and efficiency is still the smarter move.