Facebook is Losing to Instagram as Most Preferred Platform for Online Marketing

A new report dubbed the 2019 Social Media Marketing Industry Report has revealed that marketers prefer using Facebook and Instagram as compared to any other platform.

The report has, however, revealed that marketers are diversifying away from Facebook, and for the first time in the last 5 years, Facebook lost share as the most important platform for marketers, dropping from 67 percent in 2018 to 61 percent in 2019.

On the other hand, 73 percent of marketers are using Instagram, up from 66 percent in 2018 making it the second most important social platform for marketing (behind Facebook) and surpassing LinkedIn for the first time.

The report has further shown that a significant 69 percent of marketers plan on increasing their Instagram organic activities over the next 12 months, while only 51 percent of marketers plan on increasing their Facebook organic activities, down from 62 percent in 2018.

Marketers interest with Instagram may be somewhat motivated by the significant jump in the referral traffic coming from the image-oriented social network.

According to Merkle’s Q1 2019 Digital Marketing Report, Instagram experienced a 114 percent increase year-on-year in its referral traffic. Instagram is also one of the few social networks whose reported user base is growing, an appealing fact for marketers.

Instagram has recently made a serious push into the e-commerce and marketing space, having rolled out its tap to shop feature in April.

Read Also: Instagram Taps Into the Lucrative E-commerce via a “Checkout” Button

The social network also has experienced a 44 percent increase in advertising investment in Q1 2019.

Snapchat and Twitter both saw a decrease in the share of marketers reporting use, with Twitter showing a 3-point dip in 2019 at 59 percent from 62 percent in 2018 making it the third most preferred platform for online marketing.

Snapchat dropped down 2-points, a significant dip for a platform that barely registered interest with marketers last year.

LinkedIn and YouTube both registered growth in the share of marketers using the platforms, with the growth of 2 points and 4 points respectively.

A significant 93 percent of all marketers surveyed indicated that their social media efforts have generated more exposure for their businesses. Increased traffic was the second major benefit, with 87 percent reporting positive results.

Read Also: Updates to Watch Out for On Facebook, WhatsApp, And Instagram