Facebook Ads vs Linkedin Ads: Which one should you choose?
“LinkedIn Advertising is expensive” is something we hear a lot when the issue of where to advertise comes up!
This has certainly been our experience in the past as well in terms of costs of advertising on LinkedIn until now.
In this post, we cover a case study of a test campaign we launched on both LinkedIn and Facebook. This was to test which platform may be best to concentrate on in the long term and where or how funds can be used. We hope it helps you get closer in making a decision about which platform is best for you and your needs.
Case study industry and target:
It is important to note that the audience that we targeted are those with decision making capabilities within their human resource department.
Naturally, LinkedIn seemed a far better fit as it’s built mainly for business professionals and has a recruitment based fcous to one of its services. We were prepared for the costs to be higher on LinkedIn as well due to this so we had some kind of expectation as to what was going to be the outcome.
Facebook generated more impressions than LinkedIn for about 76% of the same budget. Although Facebook appears to have more people clicking through on average, fewer continued on to view the landing page.
The Process:
Firstly we prepared the funnel for our campaign. If you haven’t heard of a funnel before or you’re thinking of that piece of plastic item, this is not that type of funnel.
This is talking about an online funnel whereby a user would have an initial page they are expected to see and then there’s a series of pages that funnel them into the desired outcome or action you would like the user to take.
A simple funnel usually consists of a landing page and a thank you page. Sometimes this can be much longer depending on what you offer.
For our case study, we designed a simple funnel to test our audience.
We designed and developed the landing page, thank you page with an upsell and necessary email automations that were attached to the funnel.
We ensured that both Facebook and Linked tracking was installed on the entire funnel so we could keep track and measure the outcome of our efforts. This is a very important step if you’d like to do a similar exercise!
…it was more cost effective to advertise on LinkedIn, the cost per page view for our landing page was 30% lower from our LinkedIn users. So it was more expensive to get our traffic from Facebook to view our landing page.
The Ad Campaign:
Both the Facebook and LinkedIn ad campaigns were set up with the objective of driving traffic to our landing page. The rationale behind this was to see who we could get that was interested enough in our ad to actually click through and land on the website landing page.
We used the same creative.
- Same image.
- Same copy.
- Same headline.
Targeting our audience on LinkedIn was a lot easier since most profiles were professionals who included their title and employer information.
Facebook targeting via job titles is also available but given that this platform is not strictly for work purposes and we have too often seen job titles like “CEO of Work From Home” or something of the likes, we did not depend on the job titles for this but utilised the interests, demographics and lookalike audiences seeded from the client’s contact list.
As this was a test campaign to test the waters, we had put aside a sufficient sum to perform the test with the requirement that both platforms needed a minimum of 5,000 impressions so it would give us a good indication of how our audience on each platform responded.
The Results:
Facebook generated more impressions than LinkedIn for about 76% of the same budget. We can also see from the table below that there was a higher click through rate from Facebook in comparison to LinkedIn. So it looks like everything is pointing towards Facebook being the more cost effective option.
What it came down to was how many users actually landed on the website to view our landing page.
So although Facebook appears to have more people clicking through on average, fewer continued on to view the landing page.
The deciding metric for our case study that it was more cost effective to advertise on LinkedIn is that the cost per page view for our landing page was 30% lower from our LinkedIn users. So it was more expensive to get our traffic from Facebook to view our landing page.
As our objective from the beginning was to drive traffic to the landing page, this met the requirements we had set in terms of determining an outcome as to where it would be best to focus further advertising efforts on. We weren’t deciding based on the number of clicks but the number of users that actually viewed the landing page. A step further from a click.
| Metric | ||
| Impressions | 5,813 | 10,344 |
| Reach | 3,037 | 5,786 |
| Average CTR (click through rate) | 1.05% | 4.03% |
What does this mean for you?
From the results of this case study, we can confidently say that it is always best to launch a test first before pouring your marketing budget into one platform.
Would it be cheaper for you too to advertise on Linkedin?
That depends. It depends on what industry you serve and who you are targeting.
Generally, it would be safe to say that direct to consumer products are best advertised on Facebook in comparison to LinkedIn but then again, it possibly could also depend on what type of product you are selling
We’ve seen business to business advertising work very well and more cost effectively on Facebook. At the end of the day, your ad campaign may have a different objective to our case study and driving traffic is different from the number of sales you convert from this traffic.
If you’re looking for assistance on some advertising, you can connect with us here.
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