LinkedIn VS Facebook- From A Marketer’s Perspective
With the increasing number of social media platforms, as a marketer, we need to make a crucial choice of focusing our social media efforts on a limited number of platforms. This decision is vital to the existence of a brand and can make or break it as well.
In this blog post, we will discuss the difference between LinkedIn and Facebook and which platform will best help you achieve your goals and objectives.
A brief introduction of our two contestants for today:-
Facebook– People tend to spend more time on Facebook than on LinkedIn for the simple reason that it is perceived as a more ‘fun’ platform where friends are able to get together and share their thoughts and opinions over a casual post like a meme or joke. Facebook is clearly in the quantity win with over 2.07 billion monthly active users.
LinkedIn– LinkedIn, however, is a more serious platform where users log in for a specific purpose, be it recruitment, job hunting, connecting with colleagues or sharing their professional expertise on specific industry related topics. LinkedIn is far behind Facebook when it comes to the numbers game, with around 467 million members.
1. Audience Profile
Facebook– General consumers. Facebook is primarily a platform where friends and family get together to de-stress or connect with known persons. Marketers on Facebook need to keep their audience interests in mind, keeping the tone light and friendly. Create content which your audience would like to consume.
LinkedIn– Companies/organizations/businesses. LinkedIn allows users to create a professional, job-oriented profile, offering a variety of ways for a marketer to target based on seniority, job function, industry and more. Marketers on LinkedIn should keep the tone serious and professional, industry-specific and to the point. LinkedIn is primarily used by B2B businesses to connect with users in the same industry segment.
2. Analytics-
Facebook- Facebook provides real-time, built-in reports consisting data of the type of audience, their country of origin, and others ranging from likes, reach, visits, posts, people, events, videos, messages to a lot more. This data is very useful to a marketer as their job hardly ends after an advertising campaign is created. They constantly need to optimize it to achieve the best results at the lowest cost.
LinkedIn- LinkedIn does not provide extensive insights on page performance limiting to updates, interactions, clicks, impressions, reach, followers and visitors. This makes it difficult for a marketer to analyze and extract data on the performance of a LinkedIn campaign.
3. Cost-
Facebook- Facebook gives the option to adjust how much you’re willing to pay per day (starting at Rs.40 per day), which corresponds to the number of users you reach out to. Overall, Facebook is a much cheaper option, with the average CPC of Rs. 5, being the lowest across all social media platforms. As a marketer, a lower cost is of vital importance in determining the success of an advertising campaign
LinkedIn- LinkedIn offers a specific way to reach an audience but the cost is higher than Facebook’s. LinkedIn is said to be one of the most expensive advertising platforms in terms of average CPC of Rs.150. The minimum amount that LinkedIn will generally require you to allot for your CPC and CPM bids is Rs.100 (for either). And the minimum budget generally allotted by LinkedIn for your daily budget is Rs.500. The huge difference in cost from that of Facebook, shy away many marketers, making LinkedIn a secondary consideration. That being said, there a number of successfully launched campaigns on LinkedIn as well, like the Volkswagen Campaign, where the results were far greater than the initial cost.
4. Branding-
Facebook- On Facebook there is a strong distinction between a user’s personal profile and a brand’s page. The content posted on a personal profile and a company’s page is completely different and unrelated. A marketer must build his company’s brand and his personal brand separately and simultaneously.
LinkedIn- On LinkedIn there is no distinction between personal and professional branding as it seamlessly integrates with each other in the form of a common profile. Through a user’s profile, it enables the audience to connect with the brand. Vice-versa if a brand posts valuable content then the employees of the brand are known as well. A marketer needs to be able to sell himself as well as his company through the use of one single profile.
5. Thought Leadership-
Facebook- Facebook is not a platform where users generally express their professional opinion but rather a light and casual conversation amongst friends. Marketers cannot hope to get their audience to pour out their expertise and insights into their industry or job.
LinkedIn- LinkedIn is the primary platform where users come together to influence others through their professional opinions. The most common place of thought leaders is LinkedIn groups where experts speak about their opinions with respect to a specific industry.
6. Marketing Objectives-
Facebook- As a marketer, Facebook provides a number of opportunities to achieve objectives such as Awareness, Consideration and Conversion but is more suitable for Direct Sales and Traffic. The level and detail of targeting on Facebook is world’s apart that of all other social media platforms, making it ideal for marketers to grow their brand.
LinkedIn- As a marketer, LinkedIn cannot be used to directly sell to your industrial buyers as users on LinkedIn login for their own personal and professional development rather than to outright buy a product or service. It will lead to a very low conversion rate and more often than not, a poor brand image.
Conclusion-
The controversy of which platform is better for marketing has been chewed over and over in the last years by marketers, entrepreneurs and bloggers.
Lately, Facebook is focusing on improving their paid marketing campaigns and continue to develop new and innovative features appealing to B2B companies and marketers alike, in a strive to reach above LinkedIn in the B2B space.
Having a deep understanding of who you are marketing to (your buyer personas) and how they use these platforms at each stage of the buyer’s journey, will enable you to become more customer-centric in your marketing.
Instead of focusing on which platform is better for your marketing strategy, simply being aware of how and when to use each on the potential journey your prospects go through before they decide to buy from you can make a dramatic shift in your marketing strategy.
To know more about effective ways to maximize Facebook conversions, check out ‘8 Types Of Facebook Content To Drive Engagement‘.
Image Source- Hootsuite, Pear Analytics, Pinterest, Social Media Examiner.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adnan-ghadiali/
