Facebook ads or Instagram ads? (Or both?)

Four questions to ask yourself when planning your social media ad campaign

​So, you’re running Facebook ads, and maybe your conversion rate is okay: you’re seeing engagement and enough sales to make the campaign cost effective, but you’re not exactly setting the world alight with your revenue bump. And now everyone’s telling you that the advertising marketplace on Facebook is overcrowded – costs are increasing for diminishing returns – and Instagram, a veritable untapped mine of advertising opportunity, is now the place to be. And that’s not not true, as such, but whether or not Instagram ads are going to be a better fit for your business than a Facebook ad campaign is a complicated question. And it comes down to more than just a question of platform population density.

Studies like this phenomenal breakdown of costs and CTR on both platforms can give you the figures, but raw data alone is only part of the story. So, if you’re a small business owner or solopreneur and you’re wondering which way to go with your limited advertising budget, you could start by thinking through some of the following questions.

1. Can you easily create compelling visual content to capture the essence of your brand?

Some brands naturally gravitate towards visual storytelling; others will have less obvious visual appeal. Both can advertise on Instagram, of course; you just might have to get a bit more creative with the latter. But regardless of the photogenicity or otherwise of your brand’s offering, you must make sure that your visual content is up to scratch.

It sounds self-evident, but a successful Instagram advertising campaign requires imagery that instantly captures a viewer’s attention. And for the overwhelming majority of us – by which I mean those of us not professionally skilled in photography, filmmaking or design – that’s not as easy as it sounds. Those phenomenal visuals you see on your feed? They’re the result of hours of work, both in front of the camera and in front of a computer screen, editing out the bits that detract from the central message. Sure, you can teach yourself the basics but it’s a steep learning curve and you’ll be competing against ads created by folks with a lot more design experience. And make no mistake: images that look anything less than professional will not do your campaign – or your brand –  any good.

2. ​Do you have – or are you willing to have – a business account on Instagram?

For most small businesses and solopreneurs, the answers are going to be yes and I just told you: yes, but you might have very good reasons to answer no and no. Instagram’s algorithms make it more difficult for business accounts to achieve organic reach, and it already feels a lot like screaming into the void when you’re just starting out, so why make things more complicated? But personal Instagram accounts can’t run ads. Nor do you have access to the insights that are going to tell you how hard your ads are working for you, but that’s a problem for down the line. Once you convert your personal account to a professional one, you can – in theory – go back if you decide it was all a terrible mistake, but as this article warns, Instagram may continue to tag your account as professional, even after switching back. So there’s that.

3. ​What’s your goal? Is it compatible with your platform of choice?

I mean, “compatible” is a fairly elastic term in context, but Facebook works better for some campaign objectives and Instagram works better for others, so it’s a good idea to know in advance what you want your ad to achieve. Looking to increase brand awareness for your product? Instagram’s visual focus might be the best way to drum up excitement for your aesthetically pleasing objects. But it’s also a notoriously difficult platform for links, so if you’re trying to direct all your lovely new potential customers to a landing page so that you can work your charms, you likely want Facebook. Which is not to say that you can’t generate brand awareness on Facebook or squeeze a link into the comments below your Instagram ad, but… why wouldn’t you play to each platform’s strength? Life’s too short. 

4. Why not both?

With a healthy degree of caution over the partiality of the source, this article suggests that “Campaigns that ran across both Facebook and Instagram resulted in similar or better performance for website clicks, website conversions, video views and mobile app installs than those that ran on just one.” It’s certainly true that Meta makes it very easy to advertise across both platforms at once, because, well… why wouldn’t they? But the bottom line is that you should be A/B testing your ad campaigns anyway, so if you’re not sure where to put your advertising budget, why not start by testing it across both platforms and act according to the results? 

Bonus round: are you sure you’re actually making the most of your Facebook advertising campaign?

Facebook ads can underperform for all kinds of reasons. Most of those reasons are, tangentially at least, related to the fact that there is a lot of competition on the platform, but that’s all the more reason to make sure that you’re investing in success. It’s very easy to blow money on a lacklustre campaign that barely (or fails to) make its money back. To paraphrase a copywriting colleague of mine, if you’re not a plumber, you wouldn’t try and fix your own plumbing – you’d hire an expert. Writing your own advertising copy without any training in writing advertising copy is a great way to save on your upfront costs – and also to drastically reduce your ad’s performance. Copywriters want to see your ad succeed – and we have the skills and the training to make that happen. ​

So, if you’re ready to get serious about your social media advertising, click below to set up your free discovery chat with me. I’m not a plumber. But I do know about writing copy that sells.

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