Businesses have different options when it comes to content marketing promotion.
Two options that always come to mind: Facebook versus LinkedIn, which is highly debated right now on the internet. As the head of Michael Marchese, the CEO and
Founder of Tempesta Media with almost 25 years of industry experience, says it really comes down to audience and purpose. LinkedIn is significantly better for companies who focus on B2B marketing. Facebook is significantly better for those companies with B2C marketing initiatives.
Facebook = sales; LinkedIn = leads
The people that sign up for LinkedIn are employed by some sort of company, whether it’s their own company or another one that they work for. The purpose of why they’ve signed up on LinkedIn is to network from a business perspective with other people, either within their industry or they’re looking for prospective customers. They can also be looking for a specific vendor for a need that they have internally. Just by nature, these people are looking for other businesses.
Facebook, on the other hand, is used on a more social and personal perspective. Facebook users want to stay in touch with their friends and family. They want to learn about various interests that appeal to them personally. Simply put, they’re not looking to do business on Facebook. They’re trying to maintain a social lifestyle.
So at the very root of it, Facebook is geared more toward companies that are trying to go and attract consumers.
A great example would be 7-Eleven. They sell all kinds of food and other products through their stores to consumers. For them, it makes a lot of sense to go and advertise on Facebook because the audience that’s there is interested in purchasing things for their own benefit. So if they can see a coupon off of a free Slurpee at 7-Eleven, that’s going to appeal to them personally.
Likewise on LinkedIn, if Tempesta Media ran a campaign offering content marketing solutions to businesses, those businesses are going to be very receptive because the whole point of why they’re on LinkedIn is they’re trying to go and advance the objectives that I mentioned earlier. So if you’re going to build a professional audience and you’re a B2C-oriented company, Facebook is where you should center a lot of your operations. If you are a B2B company and looking for a significant presence, you want to focus on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn will do a good job for B2B companies in generating leads. Facebook will do a good job on to be for B2C companies in generating consumer sales.
Google AdWords as an alternative to Facebook and LinkedIn
For those companies that are looking at using Facebook as an advertising medium, the targeting platform that’s used within Facebook is incredibly robust and is similar to Google AdWords in terms of its granularity for targeting purposes. Regardless of the size of your budget as a B2C-based company, Facebook is a good alternative to Google AdWords. While incredibly good in terms of its audience, Facebook has limited targeting capabilities.
For companies that are looking to use LinkedIn, they should prepare to spend at least a couple thousand dollars in marketing costs just to get their campaign started and get the initial optimization out of the way. You’re not going to have nearly as many targeting options as you would see within Facebook. I think Google AdWords is also a good alternative to LinkedIn for B2B companies, and that should certainly be included in their mix.
One last tip
However, overall, these are just solutions, and they’re part of what I call paid media. Most companies should make sure that they also have earned media and owned media as part of their digital marketing strategy.
Content marketing is a perfect example of owned media. Guests commenting or posting is an example of earned of earned media. You need all three working together to make your digital marketing program successful.
