Facebook vs TikTok vs LinkedIn: which is right for your business?

"Which platform should we be on?" is the wrong first question, but it is the one we get on almost every social call. The wrong bit is the assumption that there is a single right answer that holds regardless of what you sell, who buys it, and how long they take to decide. Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn are not interchangeable channels with different logos — they reach different people, in different mindsets, expecting different things. Choosing well starts with being honest about which of those three descriptions fits your buyer.

Audience and intent: who is actually there, and why

Facebook — and its sibling Instagram, which shares the same ad system — remains the broadest reach in Singapore. Nearly every demographic that can buy something is on one Meta property or another, which is exactly why it is the default. People are there to be entertained and to keep up with their circle, not to buy, so intent is low but volume and targeting depth are high. You are interrupting, but you are interrupting almost everyone, and Meta's machine is very good at finding the interruptible.

TikTok skews younger and is built around discovery. Users are not searching for you; the feed decides what they see, and a good idea from a small account can reach an enormous audience with no follower base behind it. That is the platform's gift and its catch — reach is earned by the creative, not bought by the budget, so a weak idea simply does not travel no matter what you spend.

LinkedIn is the narrow, expensive, high-context one. People are there in a professional frame of mind, and you can target by job title, seniority, company size and industry with a precision the other two cannot match. That precision costs money — click and impression prices are materially higher — but a click from the exact decision-maker you need is worth a great deal more than a cheap click from someone who will never buy.

Ad formats and what the creative demands of you

Each platform rewards a different kind of asset, and underestimating that is the most common way budgets get wasted.

Meta is forgiving and flexible: static images, carousels, short video and lead forms all work, and its strength is testing many variations quickly to let the system find what converts. You can succeed here with competent, clear creative and a good offer.

TikTok is unforgiving in one specific way — it punishes anything that looks like an advertisement. Content has to feel native, made for the platform, ideally by someone who is comfortable on camera. Repurposing a polished brand film almost always underperforms a rougher, faster clip shot for the feed. If nobody in your business will get in front of a phone, or you have no budget for creators who will, TikTok is harder than it looks.

LinkedIn sits at the opposite pole. Credibility and clarity beat entertainment; the winning formats tend to be single-image ads, document ads and thought-leadership posts, carrying a substantive message to a considered reader. Trying to be playful here usually reads as trying too hard.

Cost per lead: the number that actually matters

We report on cost per qualified lead, not on cost per click or reach, and the three platforms behave very differently against that measure. We will not quote benchmark figures here, because a credible number depends on your industry, offer and sales cycle, and anyone publishing a universal cost-per-lead is selling you a fiction. What we can describe honestly is the shape of it.

Meta typically produces the lowest cost per raw lead, but lead quality varies and needs qualifying — cheap leads are only cheap if they convert. TikTok can produce startlingly cheap reach and engagement when a piece of creative catches, and nothing at all when it does not, which makes its cost per lead the most volatile of the three. LinkedIn almost always shows the highest cost per lead on paper, and can still be the cheapest route to revenue when the deal size is large enough that one right buyer pays for the whole campaign. The headline cost per lead means little until you set it against what a closed customer is worth to you.

B2B or B2C? The single biggest sorting question

If you sell to consumers, Meta and TikTok are where your buyers spend their attention, and the choice between them is really a choice about creative capability: Meta if you want reliable, testable performance from ordinary assets, TikTok if you can produce native content and want the upside of organic-style reach. LinkedIn is rarely worth it for a straightforward consumer product.

If you sell to businesses — especially considered, higher-value purchases with a named decision-maker — LinkedIn's targeting earns its premium, and Meta often plays a supporting role for retargeting and broader awareness at a lower cost. TikTok is increasingly viable for B2B where the category benefits from personality and education, but it remains the least predictable of the three for a complex sale.

How to choose (usually more than one)

In practice the answer is rarely a single platform. It is a sequence set by your goal and your ability to feed each channel. Start where your buyers actually are and where you can sustain the creative — one platform, done properly, beats three done thinly. Prove it can produce qualified leads at a cost you can live with. Then add a second channel for a job the first cannot do as well: retargeting, broader awareness, or reaching a segment the first misses. Spreading a small budget across all three from day one is the fastest way to learn nothing on any of them.

None of this is platform worship. Every one of these channels is a rented audience whose rules can change, and none of them fixes a weak offer or a slow follow-up — they simply deliver more people to whatever you have built. If you want the practitioner version applied to your business, our social media marketing services start by working out which platform your buyers are actually on before a dollar of budget moves.