Every e-commerce founder in Nairobi asks the same question in the first month of running ads: Meta or TikTok? Both work here — but they reward different things, and if your first budget is small, the platform you pick first matters more than people admit.
TikTok in Kenya rewards products that are easy to understand in three seconds of video: visually simple, one clear benefit, impulse-friendly price. Fashion, beauty, phone accessories, and food brands tend to do well because the format does the selling for you.
Meta — Instagram and Facebook feed and Reels — still carries more weight for products that need trust before purchase: higher price points, anything health-related, or anything where a customer wants reviews and a proper product page before checking out.
Kenya's TikTok audience skews younger and more urban. If your product is aimed at 18–28 year olds in Nairobi, Mombasa, or Kisumu, TikTok's cost per engaged view is usually lower right now because competition for that attention is thinner than on Meta.
If your customer is older, or you're selling into a family-purchase decision, Meta's targeting and retargeting are more mature, and WhatsApp integration for closing the sale through chat is a real advantage TikTok doesn't match yet.
With a genuinely small first budget, run on one platform, not both. Splitting it means neither algorithm gets enough data to optimize, and you get two mediocre campaigns instead of one that's learning.
Whichever you start on, three things decide whether it works: a pixel firing correctly, a landing page built around one offer, and creative made for the platform rather than repurposed from a photoshoot. Get those right first.