As a brand, you want to reach your customers in the most innovative of ways to improve brand recall. Facebook ads and influencer marketing are two of the best marketing strategies for this purpose. The two strategies are quite popular with modern marketers, with statistics showing that Facebook has 10 million active advertisers on the platform. On the other hand, 71% of marketers feel that influencer marketing drives more high-quality leads than any other channel.
When deciding on what approach to pick for your marketing plan, Facebook ads seem like a natural choice. Facebook has almost 2.5 billion monthly active users compared to the top influencer marketing platform, Instagram, which has just one billion!
Facebook ads have the potential to reach large numbers. End of discussion — Facebook wins, right? Well, not so fast!
We agree, getting a ton of exposure is crucial, but it’s not the only consideration when planning a marketing strategy. What’s more important is to get your product exposed to the right audience – and this is where influencer marketing has the edge over Facebook ads.
Both influencer marketing and Facebook ads have their benefits. Let’s dive deeper into details and relevancy.
Influencer Vs. Facebook Ads: Which is Better?
Are you wondering about whether to use influencer marketing and Facebook ads as part of your marketing strategy? Facebook ad clicks increase by 70% every year, and ad click-through rates increase by 160%. On the other hand, 90% of consumers trust influencers over the 33% who trust an ad. 51% of marketers believe they acquire better customers through influencer marketing.
We’re back to square one! Influencers vs. Facebook ads: Which i’s better for your business? Let’s find out by considering these variables.
Target audience
Influencer marketing has the upper hand over Facebook ads when targeting relevant audiences in the following ways:
Ready base of target audience
Collaborating with the right influencer will help you connect with the best customers for your products and services. Influencers have invested a lot of time and effort to build their trusted communities of friends and followers. By tapping into these communities, you can attract highly-engaged buyers who are happy to try your products because of the influencer’s recommendation.
More credible
Influencers are also more credible than Facebook ads as a digital marketing channel. Social media users trust the influencers they follow and believe the products they recommend are genuine. As a new brand trying to penetrate the market, it will take you longer to earn customers’ trust on your own. But with the help of a trusted influencer, you can penetrate even the most challenging market and sell your products to thousands of consumers. Impressive, isn’t it?
Broader reach
Influencer marketing also broadens your brand’s reach on social media. You can reach thousands, even millions of loyal followers, whom you couldn’t reach on your own. When an influencer posts your branded content, the message is shared with all their followers on social media. When the followers interact with the content (through likes, comments, and shares), your messaging reaches even more people, thus bringing more potential customers to the basket.
Resonate with audience
The audience follows the influencer’s journey; hence they better understand their influencer promotions. Their close relationship makes it easy for the influencer to influence the buying decisions of their followers.
However, there are some challenges influencers face with audience targeting, such as:
Inaccurate intended audiences
An influencer’s followers may not match the exact audience you’re trying to reach. When working with an influencer, you cannot choose which followers to target and leave out of your promotion. Using technology, your intended audience can be controlled by Facebook ads.
Misleading audience
The followers of an influencer may be a ghost and not be following the influencer. Some influencers are also known to buy fake followers on the platform. This will limit your brand’s reach if the influencer you’re working with has ghost followers.
Content
When it comes to content creation and execution, influencers are better than Facebook marketing in the following ways:
New and creative content
Creating fresh and engaging content regularly isn’t easy. Working with an influencer can help fill the gaps in your content development process. The influencer can churn out content ideas that appeal to the followers to boost your brand marketing efforts.
Gives value to audiences
Influencer marketing provides content that offers solutions to the users’ problems. It informs and motivates your target audience. Influencers understand the needs of their followers and create content that appeals to them. The audience will actively engage with the content, thus improving your brand awareness.
Fewer constraints
Compared to Facebook advertising, influencer marketing has fewer constraints. Influencer marketing does not have a word limit or a specific type of content to post.
Engaging content
Most influencers are seasoned content creators who know how to create messages that appeal to their audiences. Followers would not skip past their posts since they follow the influencer and would want to purchase the product the influencer uses.
However, influencer content may fail to connect with your audience because of the following reasons:
Unimpressive content
If the content doesn’t engage the audience, the marketing technique will deter the consumers.
Difficult to track
Sometimes, it’s hard to measure if influencer marketing is increasing sales.
Accurate audience targeting
Native ads perform better than Facebook influencers when it comes to reaching targeted audiences. Facebook marketing software lets you define your audience and reach them with razor-sharp accuracy.
Micro target your audience via Facebook demographics
Social media marketing gives advertisers the ability to show their ads to targeted users using the data they collect. Facebook has very rich data about its users, allowing marketers to micro-target the best audiences for their businesses.
Facebook allows you to narrow down the demographic when running ads on the platform. You can target potential customers according to age, demographics, location, and interests. Another benefit of Facebook advertising is that you can also target users who have previously engaged with your brand. This allows you to improve brand recall and drive sales.
Define their own audiences
Brands can increase reach by defining a large audience base through Facebook’s system. Facebook’s targeting capabilities dig deeper than any other platform. You can layer them to reach a large audience base at a granular level while eliminating users who are not your target market.
Track performance
And if that isn’t enough, Facebook also allows you to track the ad’s performance against set objectives. You can see how many people have interacted with your ad and how much you’re paying for clicks. With these metrics, you can optimize your Facebook ads for better performance.
Decreasing competition
Facebook’s system allows your competitor’s audience to view your ads. You can create a custom audience of users interested in rival brands to reach well-qualified users.
However, there are some inefficiencies with Facebook ads, such as:
Simple, generic ads
Facebook ads are generic and do not resonate with the audience. This limits their ability to have an impact on the targeted users.
Ads are not credible
Most people don’t like ads because they don’t find them to be credible. As a result, most users tend to avoid posts marked “sponsored” or “advertised”.
Inexpensive costs
Facebook ads outperform influencers when it comes to the cost of running a campaign in the following manner:
Low costs
Facebook ads are cheaper and affordable to many advertisers. You can pay 1 Euro per ad and still reach a highly defined audience.
Pay for clicks
With Facebook ads, you can structure your campaigns such that you only pay for clicks. A pay-per-click (PPC) campaign is quite beneficial to your business as it connects you with highly-interested users.
Many ads
Because of the low advertising costs, you can publish many ads for different campaign objectives.
Increase traffic
Facebook ads have also been found to be effective in increasing site traffic. You can directly refer customers to the product/service section on your website.
However, despite their low cost, Facebook ads struggle to deliver the desired impact because of the following issues:
Not interesting
Some Facebook ad formats are plain and boring. As such, they tend to be skipped past. So, despite the price, it may not yield results.
Return on investment would be lower
With many people ignoring sponsored content on the platform, the return on ad spend for Facebook ads is usually low.
Both Can Align!
Each marketing channel has its pros and cons, and it will be up to you to decide what kind of campaign you want to put into place for your business. It might even be more interesting to combine influencer marketing with Facebook ads, repurposing content from your influencer campaigns in your paid advertising campaigns.
Influencer marketing has almost 7x better conversions than traditional advertising. When you amplify an influencer’s message to Facebook’s limitless audience — you have the potential for credible growth and visibility. Furthermore, the performance can be tracked through the ads, which can help analyze the engagement through both marketing techniques. This will help balance the marketing techniques while taking advantage of the pros of both kinds of marketing.
There is no right method of marketing, and it takes trial and error. We have listed out the positives and negatives of each type of marketing. It is up to you to choose what resonates with your unique brand!
The Bottom Line
Today, with consumers trusting influencers more and Facebook ad prices rising, are you wondering where you should be spending your money? Leave the worry to experts!
We have designed an influencer marketing platform to pair you with the best influencer for your marketing campaigns. AtisfyReach, our AI-based influencer marketing platform, helps brands build strong social media connections by matching them with the right influencers. Register your interest now and get started!
