Is Instagram Marketing Better Than Facebook Marketing in 2018?

Facebook hasn’t had the best year so far, have they?

The Cambridge Analytics data scandal, rumors of youth departing Facebook for Instagram & Snapchat, the fact that Instagram seems new & exciting…

You can’t blame people for wondering if Facebook is over and Instagram might be the new thing, can you?

IS Facebook marketing over?

IS Instagram marketing better?

And if the answer to both is yes, then how should we market on Instagram?

We answer those questions in this article.

(And, by the way, our ad agency does do a lot of Facebook advertising for clients. We also love Instagram and have been doing Instagram marketing and advertising for years. We ALSO run Google ads, LinkedIn ads, Twitter ads and Instagram ads for clients. We have always recommended what works best. We watch what is working best in digital and social marketing and we shift our services and recommendations as needed. After, back in 1999 all we did was SEO… and for a while it was just AdWords and SEO. What’s best in marketing changes and we adapt and grow with it.)

But First, For Those That Feel Seriously Behind on Internet Marketing…

Digital and social marketing pro’s, bear with me! We’re going to get to the really cool stuff later.

First, we need to acknowledge the fact that there are a TON of companies that have barely begun digital transformation.

Wait- WHAT is “digital transformation?”

These are just fancy words for things like:

• Getting your business listed online
• Getting customer and market data and using it to run your business better
• Marketing online
• Getting your sales programs into online customer relationship management tools

(I have a keynote program about digital transformation!)

Many companies have yet to market on Google or Facebook, and aren’t even thinking seriously about Snapchat or Instagram yet.

You’re not going to hear a lot about digital transformation from the thought leaders in marketing and advertising. For those of us who’ve been doing digital marketing for 10-20 years, it’s natural for us. But for millions of businesses, it’s still completely foreign.

A LOT of companies haven’t even considered started on Facebook marketing, and Instagram is barely on their radar.

When I do keynote speaking to real businesses in many industries, I typically hear something like this from the meeting planner:

“In our industry, we’re about 5-10 years behind.”

I have literally been told “we’re behind” by more than 10 different industries.

It’s commonplace.

• DIGITAL OVERWHELM IS NORMAL: There’s nothing wrong with feeling overwhelmed by getting into digital marketing and social media.
• BUSINESS IS OVERWHELMING: Most business people have a lot of other business to deal with, not a lot of time, and little digital expertise around them.
• DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS OVERWHELMING: Many don’t have the money for experts, no idea who to hire, or how to find or choose the right expert or consultant.

There are 28 million small businesses in the U.S.

Compare that to just 500 companies in the Fortune 500, and 5,000 companies in the “Inc 5000”.

Those numbers tell us that MOST businesses are SMALL businesses. Most businesses are overwhelmed by digital transformation, digital marketing and social marketing.

So, if so many industries feel like they’re behind, are they really behind?

Or is it more true that many of the Fortune 500 and we marketing thought leaders are just really far ahead?

Most businesses just need basic digital marketing that really works

A lot of the things that F500 companies focus on- like branding, engagement and influencer marketing that may not directly drive sales- won’t work for small businesses because they don’t have the time or money for it.

Small businesses can’t take the same kinds of risks that enterprise businesses can.

Most businesses have to get it right and get revenue this week. This month.

Most businesses can’t have a bad year and survive the way a publicly owned Fortune 500 company can. They need real solutions that work.

And that’s why I think it’s weird when small businesses try to incorporate Fortune 500 lessons. If you want to grow and thrive- even survive as a small business- you shouldn’t be looking at Fortune 500 companies. You should be looking at larger small businesses and medium sized companies. What did they do to grow from where you’re at to where they are? Did they do it in the last 10 years? If you’re looking at a F500 company that grew from nothing 100 years ago, sorry- the world has completely changed. The Internet has changed everything. If you’re looking at a company that came from nothing 30 years ago, again, sorry- the world has changed. Growing from nothing now- in the last 10 years- is totally different.

5 Digital Transformation Basics Most Small Businesses Need to Do ASAP

Many companies who haven’t begun digital transformation still need to get down to brass tracks and do the block and tackle basics of:

1. Getting online with a good website
2. Getting listed in Google, Bing, Yahoo
3. Dealing with any bad reviews in Yelp, Tripadvisor and the like
4. Making sure they have social business/company profiles on the biggies: Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn
5. Advertising on Google, Bing, Facebook and/or LinkedIn

And then, and only then, do they need to start thinking about Instagram.

Why? I’ll explain that next.

Is Facebook Still Working? How Well Does It Work Anyway?

Actually, many of our clients and students are still using Facebook advertising and marketing regularly. There’s been no change to its effectiveness.

There are a few changes going on:

FACEBOOK IS IMPROVING THEIR AD TARGETING, WHICH WAS ALREADY AWESOME

• Because of the Cambridge Analytica thang (which again, was not really Facebook’s fault), Facebook is removing Partner Category targeting, which is the ability to target people via data that came from third party companies like Acxiom, Epsilon and Datalogix (Oracle).
• This is consumer data people haven’t been aware that companies have known, collected and sold.
• Facebook realized through the controversy surrounding the Cambridge Analytica press that many people were uncomfortable with that data being out there and being used by marketers and is removing it.
• But even without it, Facebook ad targeting is still some of the powerful and accurate ad targeting anywhere.
• And the targeting they’re removing wasn’t the most effective, and was some of the most expensive, so it’s no great loss for advertisers and marketers.

FACEBOOK AD COSTS ARE GREAT WHEN YOUR ADS ARE GOOD

• There were fewer ad impressions in Feb 2018 after Facebook changed their news feed algorithm. As a result, costs went up.
• These are the overall trends, however, and we didn’t see those same reported cost increases in any of our clients or our own ads… is that because we’re better at ads than most people? Sort of. If your ads and posts aren’t very engaging… if you don’t learn from experience what your customers want to see, your costs will go up.
• You have to do a good job, or your marketing costs more money. That’s not really a difference between digital and traditional marketing- it was always expensive to suck at marketing- it’s just way more obvious when you have the numbers at your fingertips on the Internet.

YOUR FACEBOOK EXPERIENCE DEPENDS ON YOUR FRIENDS

• Your friends on Facebook create your experience.
• A lot of Americans saw a lot of controversy and negativity around 2016 on Facebook because of an extremely polarizing Presidential election process.
• And that argumentative spirit didn’t go away unless you pared down your friends list.
• Some people chose to spend less time on Facebook as a result.

THE UPSHOT: Facebook can be a challenging place to be, both as a user and a marketer, but you can handle it.

If you manage your friends, it can be fulfilling.

If you get more effective at marketing, you can get great results and your costs go down.

We still see companies driving big results: awareness, video views, email list growth, lead generation and ecommerce with Facebook.

You have to know what you’re doing, either through training, or hiring the right people.

What’s Going On With Instagram? Are Young People Really Switching To It?

Let’s first take a look at how many people are on Facebook and Instagram in the U.S. right now.

First off, on Facebook- if we look at the Facebook “Audience Insights” tool, which available to anyone- just get a Facebook ad account and you can use it- we see there are 200-250 million monthly active U.S. Facebook users right now (June 4, 2018).

• If 17% of Facebook users are 18-24, that means 38 million 18-24 year old’s use Facebook monthly.
• Another 58 million between 25-34 use Facebook monthly.
• That means that 96 million Americans between the ages 18 and 34 use Facebook monthly right now.

We can also get numbers from the Facebook ad manager. It can tell you, when you create an ad set, how many people you can easily target on Facebook or Instagram.

• When I put 18-34 in, Facebook Ad Manager says that we can target 90 million Americans. Pretty similar numbers to what I found from the Audience Insights tool.
• When I add in Instagram, we get 100 million Americans, 18-34 years old, on Facebook and/or Instagram.
• When I remove Facebook but keep Instagram, we get 69 million 18-34 year old’s on Instagram only.

More interesting is this chart I put together from FB Ad Manager’s data, users by age group:

That last row is what percentage of the total (Facebook + Instagram) is in Facebook. Over 50% would mean that there are more people in this age group on Facebook than Instagram.

In every age group, Facebook has more users than Instagram. Even in the youth segments!

Here’s a more graphic comparison of the number of Facebook and Instagram users by age group in June 2018:

• Even in the 13-17 age group, there are more teens on Facebook than Instagram. That may be changing, but it hasn’t changed yet. There are 12% more 13-17 year olds on Facebook than Instagram.
• And the gap widens as we look at 18-24 year olds. There are 17% more 18-24 year olds on Facebook than Instagram. It widens again for 25-34 year olds. There are 27% more 25-34 year olds on Facebook than Instagram. And so on.

The data I can’t find is: how much time does each age group spend on each social network? It’s easy to find how many people of each age group use a site. Or how much time users of a site spend on that site, but not how much time each age group uses each site.

Is Instagram More Effective or More Affordable for Marketing Than Facebook?

Some other data that’s not out there…. but that I can give you a sampling of from our campaigns and our clients… this is from multiple industries and represents nearly 20 million very recent ad impressions…

I don’t want you to get too wrapped up in this, because ad performance changes when you microtarget according to these findings… like a Facebook Heisenberg Uncertainty principle- performance is actually better when you let Facebook optimize placements for you… but what we can take away from this is:

FACEBOOK VISIBILITY COST LESS THAN INSTAGRAM’S: You’ll get more marketing awareness for your dollar on Facebook than Instagram. Facebook usually gets you the most affordable visibility (CPM’s).

FACEBOOK CLICKS ARE MORE AFFORDABLE THAN INSTAGRAM’S: Facebook clearly has the best cost per clicks (CPC’s) overall. However, Instagram Stories and Facebook Messenger click costs can rival some of the better Facebook ad CPC’s.

YOU’LL GET MORE TRAFFIC FROM FACEBOOK MOBILE THAN INSTAGRAM (WHICH IS ALWAYS MOBILE): People click about 3x as much in the Facebook mobile news feed as they do in the Instagram one (CTR).

FACEBOOK GETS MORE ENGAGEMENT THAN INSTAGRAM: Facebook is still the king of affordable engagement (CPE). It’s important to realize that costs for video engagement count a video view as an engagement, so I tend to take those with a grain of salt. But the Facebook news feed CPE’s are still 40-70% more affordable than Instagram.

FACEBOOK VIDEO VIEWS ARE MORE AFFORDABLE THAN INSTAGRAM’S: Surprisingly, Facebook is also winning at cost per video view.

In summary, Facebook is still MUCH more effective and efficient at advertising than Instagram.

We can also tell you anecdotally that it’s harder to scale Instagram spends. When you do find good results on Instagram and increase the spends, the results decline faster than they do on Facebook. We’re not sure why this is yet.

What’s So Great About Instagram

Here’s why people are attracted to Instagram:

• Young people seem to prefer Instagram and Snapchat, but Instagram is easier to market with.
• Instagram’s audience is younger than Facebook on average.
• Instagram posts and ads are much more positive, inspirational and lifestyle-oriented than Facebook’s, which can be political, negative, cranky and salesy at their worst.
• You can advertise on Instagram though the Facebook ad platform.

How to Combine Facebook and Instagram For Mega-Social-Marketing Power

The good news is, you can use the best parts of both Facebook and Instagram while avoiding their bad sides.

• Using the Facebook Ad Manager (using a desktop or laptop computer to access Facebook ad manager), you can reach your customer on both Facebook and Instagram.
• The Facebook Ad Manager is more effective than Instagram posting because you can add a link to drive website traffic, leads and sales, and can control your targeting better than with the advertising options you see within the Instagram app itself.
• You can use 60 second or less videos and square images, then let Facebook automatically place things on either Facebook OR Instagram. This is the easiest option, because then you don’t have to create twice as many videos and images and ads, and you don’t have to monitor, analyze and optimize your budgets in separate ad sets. Sometimes it may be worth having separate ad sets for Instagram and Facebook, Facebook Ad Manager is very good at granular optimizing for audiences, and if you are strapped for time and if content creation ability is a bottleneck for you, this could be a smart option for you.
• If you want to separate them, then focus on older audiences with Facebook and younger audiences with Instagram. Get more in-depth on Facebook, answer more difficult questions, get more engaging. On Instagram, be more positive and lifestyle-focused.  It’s always easy to smart with an 80-20 or 90-10 budget split when you’re not sure what it should ultimately be. Spend 80-90% on Facebook and the rest on Instagram until you see evidence that Instagram can spend more or that it is getting you better results. As you can see in our stats above, Instagram performance isn’t yet matching Facebook consistently. This may change in the future and for you it may be different if you really get a bead on what your Instagram audiences want.

Conclusion

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