Facebook ads or google ads – which one to use for advertising your business?
There is no right or wrong answer to this question. But it depends upon a variety of factors and primarily it’s based on your business model.
If you run a digital marketing agency or work at a digital agency, you might have seen your new clients asking for which platform to go to after advertising. Everyone wants high ROI, so everyone likes to know a predetermined answer before making a decision priorly.
In this blog, I will not be able to pick which platform will work best for you. But I will give you some insights, on which you can make your own decisions. There are a few important things you need to know about – before choosing which platform to start advertising.
1. Impressions Vs Clicks
Facebook Ads cost you based on Impressions and Google Ads will cost you based on clicks.
Facebook & Instagram is a visual platforms, where most of the content revolves around Images and Videos with a little amount of text. People who spend a lot of time on Facebook will be most adapted to the visual form of content consumption. So, your medium of communication should also be in a visual form to make your campaign more effective.
As Facebook is based on Visual content platform, it charges for ads based on the number of impressions it can provide. The money you pay for the advertisement will be used by Facebook to make your ad reach more people and give as many impressions as possible. Based on your campaign objective and audience, Facebook will decide to whom to show your ad.
Google Ads, mostly search ads are charged based on the number of clicks. Google ads appear on the results page based on keywords when people search on the search bar. And these ads are in the text format to indulge along with the search results. And here google doesn’t charge you on basis of impressions it charges based on clicks. That’s one of the reasons why it is also called PPC (Paid-per-click) ads.
2. Keywords Vs Audience Types
The targeting options available on both platforms are not the same.
In Facebook ads, you choose the audience based on their type of interest or behavior. But In Google ads, you choose to target people based on the type of keyword.
Google has affinity segments – where you can target people based on their interests and behavior. But it is limited and not robust as Facebook ads. Google ad’s primary targeting option is based on the triggered keywords.
There are both advantages and disadvantages of both types of targetting options
Advantages of Keyword Targeting
- Target people with the purchasing intent
- High-quality traffic – as they are looking for what you are offering
- Filter targeting people – based on irrelevant keywords
Disadvantages of Keyword Targeting
- Not able to create awareness about the product – until they search for it
- Not able to target people who are the potential customer – but not looking for buying the product
- Not able to target people based on their interests or online behavior
The advantages and disadvantages of keyword targeting are based on the comparison with facebook’s targeting options.
Advantages of Audience Type Targeting
- Target based on their interests
- Ability to show our ads to people who are not aware of the product
- Ability to push our ads to more potential customers
Disadvantages of Audience Type Targeting
- Many irrelevant audiences may be targeted
- Low-quality traffic as they don’t have purchasing intent yet
The advantages and disadvantages of audience type targeting are based on the comparison with Google ad’s keyword-based targeting system.
3. Based on the Customer’s Intent
As discussed in the previous topic of keyword vs audience type targeting – the customer’s intent will be different in two different channels. The people who come through google search ads will be highly qualified as they are actively looking for the product/service. But the people who are scrolling their feeds on Facebook & Instagram might not look for your product.
Based on your brand credibility and product or service awareness you have to choose which platform to proceed on. You can select both, you can create brand awareness through Facebook & Instagram ads and the traffic to pull more cold audiences. And you can run google ads to capture a more qualified audience. And you can optimize it better for more conversions gradually. And combinedly you can strategize to pull more traffic to your customer acquisition funnel.
4. Ease of Use
If you are a beginner at online advertising, you will need to learn about doing ads. In that way, If you have a limited period and you want to start running ads – you can choose to go with the ease-of-use platform initially.
Facebook ads are easiest to run in comparison to google ads. Google ads interface might be a little complex for beginners as it also involves further steps to set up the conversion tracking code and keyword research. Just for ease of use, you can choose to proceed with the platform that you think is easiest to understand and start running ads.
5. Cost Bidding
Based on my experience, you can run Facebook ads with a much lower budget than google ads. But a lower budget might bring leads of lower quality as there is not enough budget to make Facebook ads algorithm learn which audience will work for you. Google ads might be costlier based on the cost-per-click of the keyword. But always focus on the KPI of Cost-per-Lead. In the long term, focusing on reducing the cost-per-lead is going to make your campaign more efficient.
Conclusion
There are so many advertisement platforms in the world. Make a plan to advertise, where the majority of the audience spends their time the most. Facebook Ads and Google Ads are the major advertisement platform in the world.
People search online, whenever they have any doubts. And Google owns almost 92% of the search market globally. More than 80% of businesses rely on google ads. Google earns almost 97% of its revenue alone from google ads. The same goes for Facebook, almost 97% of Facebook’s revenue is derived in form of advertisements.
Google and Facebook being the top advertisement platform, we can’t lose to make the most out of these channels. Before proceeding to other advertisement channels for pulling more audiences, it is necessary to gain an audience from the platforms that have the majority market share.
