Facebook Influencer Marketing and Facebook Ads continue to be two highly effective online marketing strategies. While both strategies are highly utilized by businesses, mainly for brand promotion reasons, choosing one over the other depends on several factors. Top factors include how much time and effort it takes to manage the strategy, and the level of audience engagement a strategy can offer a business.
Making the right strategy choice depends on a business’s promotional goals. Top business objectives include increasing brand awareness, improving lead generation, boosting website traffic, and expanding online conversion initiatives. Additional considerations include the types of products and/or services an online platform offers for promotional business use, and the overall functionality of advertising tools offered.
Today’s high competition compels a business to stand out by incorporating social media marketing into its marketing plan. Understanding the type of audience that utilizes any particular platform is essential, as audience engagement is key to brand success. Today’s top social media marketing options that every brand should consider are Influencer Marketing and Facebook Ads.
Influencer Marketing vs Facebook Ads
While both of these social media marketing options have proven to be very successful for many businesses, a business will often find that one tends to work better than the other. It’s a matter of not only reaching the right audience, it’s also the way a brand plans on relaying its promotional information to its target audience.
Influencer marketing is currently shifting the digital online marketing world. The extreme popularity of marketing influencers is quickly gathering the attention of small, medium, and big brand names. Influencer marketers are external content creators that market to their audience by increasing brand awareness. Professional influencers know what it takes to keep their audience engaged and are proving their worth by becoming top brand ambassadors.
Brands choosing to connect with a marketing influencer can expect them to manage their brand promotions, saving them time. They also get the benefit of the influencer’s audience allowing them to expand their reach, a top goal for every brand.
Facebook ads are extremely flexible. This flexibility makes it easy for brands to set up their ads in a way that best benefits what they’re selling. For example, these ads can be generated in a way to get a higher amount of traffic, more impressions, and/or to improve click-through rates. Brands have the ability to keep refining their Facebook audience until they find their perfect brand audience.
Brands that choose to use Facebook ads as part of their online marketing strategy can create the detailed ads that get noticed. These ads allow a brand to connect with its ideal target audience, with hopes of appealing to this audience so they will want to further engage with the brand’s products and/or services.
Influencer Marketing
The beginnings of influencer marketing started in 2004. Over the year, influencer marketing has substantially increased in its popularity. Many brands are now partnering up with one or more social media influencers to promote their brand. They want access to the nearly 14 billion people who follow one or more social media marketing influencers. Influencer marketing isn’t limited to utilizing one social media platform as many influencers utilize multiple social media platforms.
Professional influencers have already established an online presence that lets everyone know who they are and what they’re all about. They’ve created an influencer website and/or have created a professional influencer or business account on one or more of today’s social media platforms.
Successful marketing influencers are extremely creative in their approach to promoting a brand and offer brands instant access to their audience.
Influencer marketing requires a business to find an influencer that fits in with their brand. Hired influencers will then create sponsored content and accordingly promote it on one or more of their social media platforms. This gives brands instant access to the audience of the influencer, which could be in the thousands or millions.
Influencer marketing content isn’t tagged as sponsored or promotional content. Influencer followers are already aware that they may see or receive educational, informational, and/or promotional content.
Facebook Ads
Facebook ads officially launched in 2007. During its second quarter of 2021, the social media giant had roughly 2.89 billion monthly active users. Many businesses have used this online marketing option over the years to help them reach a wide variety of audiences. Facebook ads work by allowing a business to advertise directly to its target audience.
Facebook offers businesses the chance to market directly to their customers based on factors like location, age, gender, interests, behaviors, and Facebook pages they’ve liked. The many ad demographics Facebook offers make it easy for any business to benefit from this razor-sharp targeting strategy. Facebook ads are tagged as sponsored or promotional content, allowing users to immediately recognize these marketing ads.
Facebook ads are paid promotions that exclusively appear only on the Facebook platform. Brands have the option to include any relevant images are photos. Brands also have the option to promote what they’re selling using different types of ads. For example, the Carousel option allows brands to add more scrollable images or videos and the Single Media option allows for an image, video, or slideshow of images.
Unlike influencers, there are limits when it comes to what a brand can publish using Facebook ads. Facebook ads enforce word limits, picture restrictions, and format regulations. Facebook ads must first be approved before being published.
Which Is Better?
When it comes to which marketing option is the better choice, it depends on a brand’s promotional needs. Every business must choose an online promotional platform that best fits its brand and that requires an overall evaluation. Which platform best supports a brand’s customer base? The personality of the brand? How much engagement is a brand looking for? Is the ultimate goal to sell, connect, or build brand awareness?
Influencer marketing is ideal for generating engagement among younger audiences. Consumers in their 20s and 30s want to learn everything about a particular product before making an actual purchase. It’s also easier to reach niche audiences using the professional services of a marketing influencer. Many brands will benefit by using a micro-influencer as smaller influencers are known for focusing on producing detailed industry-specific content.
The high majority of people who choose to follow an influencer do so because they trust their opinion. Influencers gain this trust by providing their followers with insights into their personal lives. They also enjoy interacting with their followers daily, helping to create a long-lasting influencer, consumer bond. When consumers feel confident with an influencer’s recommendation, they’re much more likely to purchase what they’re selling.
Business brands looking for authenticity, fewer advertising restrictions, a niche audience, and the ability to get their content out there faster will likely benefit from hiring one or more social media marketing influencers.
Facebook ads tend to be beneficial for reaching out to older audiences. It’s the preferred option for brands who prefer written content to inform and educate their audience. Brands that choose this online marketing route are looking to get as many clicks as possible. to do so they often post positive news about the product and review articles to get the attention of Facebook’s audience. Facebook ads also offers an A/B test that allows a brand to find out which content is getting the best audience response.
Facebook is one of the more inspiring platforms for encouraging purchasing decisions. Even so, it takes time for a brand to earn trust utilizing Facebook ads. Today’s consumers spend a lot of time researching whether a product or service is right for them. They understand they have lots of choices when interested in purchasing a particular type of product. Brand competition has made it so most consumers trust the opinion of brand users over the brand itself.
Business brands may benefit from using Facebook ads if they require a variety of ad formats, want the option to measure their performance using post-performing data, and like the idea of being able to adjust their spending budget on a weekly or monthly basis.
Marketing Budget
Marketing budgets for business brands tend to range between 7% and 12% of their annual budget. Businesses must decide what their marketing budget allows, and whether it’s for monthly, quarterly, or yearly marketing needs. Influencers often charge per post or per video. Nano-influencers cost an average of $100 per post, while mega-influencer costs range between $2,000 and $20,000 per post. The majority of business brands that use Facebook ads will spend somewhere between $2,500 and $9,800 annually.
Conclusion
Every business brand needs to decide which online marketing tactic can best get its brand message out there for all to see. Some brands will choose influencer marketing because they want a professional marketing influencer to manage their promotional campaign. Brands also want instant access to an influencer’s already established social media audience. Other brands will choose to use Facebook ads because they want to control every aspect of creating social media ads to promote their brand name.
