In the recent times, advertising mediums such as Google Adwords and search engine backed marketing tools such as Bing Ads have garnered a hefty following. Marketers have come to use such marketing and advertising tools to promote their respective brands as part of their online digital marketing strategies.

Google Adwords and Bing Ads as marketing mediums are advertising platforms which follow a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) system and provide advertisers with two ways to reach out to people; through the Search Network and through the Display Network. Though these mediums of marketing continue to be the choice of marketers, their prominence within the market is slowly decreasing with social media oriented marketing tools being on the rise. Facebook and LinkedIn, two of the most prominent social media platforms, are the front-runners when it comes to the choice for marketers to promote their businesses over the internet.

Facebook and LinkedIn on the Rise

Facebook and LinkedIn alike are marketing mediums which engage the attention of a large number of people, with the former having 2.23 billion active monthly users worldwide and the latter having 106 million active monthly users. The sheer size of the traffic received by both of these mediums is an indicator of their marketing potential which has come into the limelight in recent years. In addition to this, when choosing between the two you can cater to your audience accordingly, for example, LinkedIn ought to be utilised as a marketing medium for businesses and/or professional services since the users fit the bill respectively. Whereas a Facebook page and/or group can aid you in building a community as a marketing resource along with the usual marketing tools such as sponsored posts etc.

In addition to this, both of these marketing platforms include a key component which Google Adwords and Bing may not be able to boast about i.e. user-generated content. Facebook and LinkedIn thrive on user-generated content, which has enabled businesses to market their product and/or service offerings further; reviews, experiences and other such content can provide businesses with an organic marketing tool to generate leads.

Not to mention, when it comes to advertisement types, Facebook and LinkedIn provide their users with a plethora of options which can truly cater to their varying needs as opposed to Google Adwords and Bing, which predominantly focus upon keywords and pictorial based advertisement. These social media sites’ ad technology focuses upon targeted advertising through leveraging quite a bit of clickstream data and constantly tagging interests based upon the activity of the user. For example, Facebook alone provides marketing tools including link click ads, video ads and boosted page posts which are geared towards generating traffic and leads for your website. Whilst, if sales are the target for a business it can utilise carousal ads (multiple products), dynamic product ads, Facebook Lead ads and canvas ads, to name a few.  LinkedIn has followed suit by launching new audience networks and matched audience targeting in 2017.