QUIKBIZ RESEARCH
Facebook vs. Instagram
Linh Vuong
4/22/2019
Tables of Contents
Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................ 1
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 2
Ease of Use ..................................................................................................................................... 2
Platforms’ Popularity ...................................................................................................................... 2
Audience Engagement .................................................................................................................... 3
Overall Cost .................................................................................................................................... 4
Conclusions and Recommendations ............................................................................................... 5
Work Cited ...................................................................................................................................... 6
Executive Summary
Queens of Hair, a new hair salon decides to choose a social media platform to advertise their
services and increase traffic. This report seeks to determine whether Facebook or Instagram
would be the best option for the salon. Information related to ease of usage, platform’s
popularity, overall cost, audience engagement are analyzed in order to compare the impact of the
two social media platforms. The analysis demonstrates that in the categories of audience
engagement and overall cost, Instragram is a more attractive option. The only category where
leasing is more attractive is in the platforms’ popularity. In the ease of use category, Instagram
and Facebook share the same result. This report recommends that Queens of Hair should
prioritize in Instagram.
1
Introduction
This report is an examination of two social media platforms for a local hair salon for the purpose
of business-related advertise. Before beginning, it is necessary to have a solid understanding of
the salon to see how the social media platforms fit into the salon’s business strategies and the
role it will play in the salon’s growth. As a new hair salon located in Rancho Bernardo, Queens
of Hair seeks to use social media platforms as means of popularizing services and reaching the
target audience of young female adults. The salon management narrows down to two platforms
that they are most familiar with, Facebook and Instagram. The salon aims to spend the maximum
of $300 for an advertising campaign. One of the salon’s management staff will responsible for
creating visual contents and monitoring the social media account. Due to limited resources, the
salon wishes to prioritize only one platform.
The purpose of this report is to determine whether using Facebook or Instagram would be the
best option for a small business like Queens of Hair. The categories this report will focus on in
order to reach recommendations are: ease of use, platforms’ popularity, audience engagement,
and overall cost.
Ease of Use
Facebook and Instagram are both popular advertising platforms. Before a business can run
advertisements, it needs to create a business page on its preferred platform. It is not much
different than create a personal social media account. In 2012, Facebook acquires Instagram.
Therefore, they share many similar features and settings. Business can link its Instagram
business account through their Facebook Business manager profile.The Facebook Ad Manager
allows small business to create ads that run on both Facebook and Instagram. If small business is
new to the platforms, the Guided Creation tool in Facebook Ad Manager walks through each
steps of creating an effective ad. Business can choose their objective, customize audience, and
others features such as budget, schedule, ad placement… (Cyca) It consists of fairly simple steps
to prepare an advertising campaign.
Both Instagram and Facebook offers similar advertising format to create visual inspirations such
as stories ads, photo ads, video ads, carousel ads, and collection ads. These formats are extremely
helpful since Queens of Hair will mainly focus on visual contents of their hair services. Since
both platforms share the same advertising manager and formats, it is hard to tell which one is
easier of the small business to use.
Platforms’ Popularity
Social media platforms’ popularity among the target audience is main factor to determine which
platforms Queens of Hair should prioritize. Business wants to choose the platform that can reach
large numbers of audience. Instagram, a relatively new platform launched in 2010 starts to
become popular wide across America. “35% of U.S adults now say they use this platform, an
increase of seven percentage points from the 28% who said they did in 2016”(Smith). Instagram
jumps to be the third most popular platforms with continuing expansion across America.
However, Facebook, the oldest site, still dominates the social media landscape. “Roughly two2
thirds of U.S adults (68%) now report that they are Facebook users, and roughly three-quarters of
those users access Facebook on a daily basic” (Smith). Figure 1 shows that Facebook continues
to be the far reaching media platform in America in 2018 after Youtube. It is undeniable that
Facebook significantly exceeds Instagram in the number of users.
Social Media Use in 2018
Youtube
73%
Facebook
68%
Instagram
35%
Pinterest
29%
Snapchat
% of U.S adults who say they
use the following social media
sites online or on their
cellphones
27%
Linkedln
25%
Twitter
24%
WhatsApp
22%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
Figure 1
Audience Engagement
Advertising a business is not just about reaching as many people as possible, it is also about how
the customers engage with the contents. Both Facebook and Instagram offer tools to create
sponsored content to engage a larger and more target audience. Instagram can’t compete with
Facebook on the numbers of users, but statistics show that advertising on Instagram is more
engaging than Facebook. “Only 32% of Facebook users regularly interact with brands compared
to 68% of Instagram users” (Ellis). Instagram’s engagement is stronger and better than Facebook
or Twitter (Figure 2). Particular of young female adults, Instagram is known as a style resource,
an ideal place for learning new trends and discover interesting places. It dominates industries like
fashion, beauty, interior design and architecture. Instagram users are more actively looking for
new recommendations, rather than ignoring them on Facebook (Ellis).
The main reason why users often ignore ads on Facebook is because the numbers of marketers
on Facebook is significantly high. Advertisements start to become ineffective when there is
present of competitions between businesses. Queens of Hair’s marketing dollar will worth better
with Instagram because it fits more into the salon’s industry and target audience
3
User interactions with brands’ posts as a percentage of brands’ fans or followers
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
4,21%
0.07%*
0.03%^
0,00%
0,50%
1,00%
1,50%
2,00%
2,50%
3,00%
3,50%
4,00%
4,50%
Figure 2
Base: 1,526,388 user interactions on 162 Instagram brand posts
*Base: 1,405,249 user interactions on 329 Facebook brand posts
^Base: 98,298 user interactions on 910 Twitter brand posts
Overall Cost
As shown earlier, Instagram and Facebook share many similar features because Instagram is a
part of Facebook. Therefore, advertisement pricing on these platforms calculates in a similar
way. There are many factors in order to calculate the total cost of running the advertisement
campaign such as ad objective, bidding type and amount, audience, ad quality and industry.
There are two methods that Facebook and Instagram can charge businesses, either by cost per
click (CPC) or by cost by impressions (usually about $5 per 1000 visitors). Businesses expect to
pay somewhere between 20 cents and two dollars per click on a campaign. Figure 3 shows the
average cost per click and cost by impressions for the two platforms in 2018 (“How Much”).
The cost of Instagram’s advertisement is relatively higher than Facebook due to the higher
engaging rates. However, business may decide to pay more for advertising which may likely
allow business to receive better result at the end.
4
Average Pricing for Facebook and Instagram advertisement
Facebook
Instagram
Average CPC
$0.27
$1.41
Average CPM
$7.19
$7.91
Figure 3
Conclusions and Recommendations
A review of pros and cons in each evaluated categories of audience engagement and overall cost
demonstrates that Instagram is a better option for Queens of Hair. The only area where Instagram
is less attractive is platform’s popularity because of the large number of Facebook users in
America. However, Instagram wins over with the highly engaged audience. In this situation,
quality is more attractive and effective to business than quantity.
Instagram is an ideal social media platform for Queens of Hairs. It features exclusive photo and
video contents which allow audience to catch up with trends. Therefore, Queens of Hair need to
focus on developing its visual contents. In order to save money on advertisement, the salon
should play closer attention to its advertisement management tools such as the objective,
demographic and target audience. Developing a relative and high quality advertisement can save
a lot in the salon’s marketing dollars.
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Work Cited
Cyca, Michelle. “Instagram Ads: The Complete Guide for Marketers.” Hootsuite Social Media
Management, Hootsuite Inc, 1 May 2018, blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-ads-guide/.
Elliott, Nate. “Instagram Is The King Of Social Engagement.” Forrester, 15 July 2017,
go.forrester.com/blogs/14-04-29-instagram_is_the_king_of_social_engagement/.
Ellis, Matt. “Instagram vs. Facebook: What's the Better Marketing Avenue?” 99designs,
99designs, 21 Aug. 2018, 99designs.com/blog/business/instagram-vs-facebookmarketing/.
“How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on Instagram?” Influencer Marketing Hub, 1 Mar. 2019,
influencermarketinghub.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-advertise-on-instagram/.
Smith, Aaron, and Monica Anderson. “Social Media Use 2018: Demographics and Statistics.”
Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, Pew Research Center: Internet,
Science & Tech, 17 Apr. 2019, www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-usein-2018/
“U.S. SMB Social Media Usage 2018 | Statistic.” Statista,
www.statista.com/statistics/474204/smb-usa-website-social-media-presence/.
.
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