Google Ads VS Facebook Ads
Today, I am going to solve it all — Google Ads VS Facebook ads, which is the better platform?
If you have been around online long enough, you will find your Facebook Ads guys in one corner and your Google Ads guys in another corner, both very strenuously defending their platforms in how they deliver the best results for clients.
Now I started off running Google Ads, when I began my digital marketing journey many years ago.
I still believe that Google Ads is one of the most powerful platforms out there.
Facebook does deliver results, however, in terms of which platform will deliver results quickly and more efficiently for your client, that is something that you will need to test.
If you have run any Google Ads or if you have ever done a search on Google, you would have seen the sponsored results that appear on the top and many years ago, they appeared on the right-hand side as well.
Google has shrunk their inventory, so you get either three or four results at the top and there are some spots at the bottom on the page.
These results are triggered by keywords, so the commercial intent behind certain search terms is a lot higher. That is why you will find that the clicks on Google tend to be a lot more expensive than on Facebook because people are often looking to buy.
Just to give you an example. if you had a plumber as a client and they were servicing the London area, you would want to set up a campaign for them that targets people searching for plumbers in London or plumbing services in London and other variations of those keywords.
Now your client will not be the only plumber in London and there are going to be so many more, thousands of plumbers out there in London.
Those who are clever enough and who are doing some digital marketing might also be targeting those keywords as well.
Google’s model is quite straightforward. It is an auction and whoever is usually bidding the highest gets the top spot. In the bidding frenzy, the cost per click can get quite competitive.
When I first started using Google Ads over 10 years ago, you could pay 20p per click and generate sales within a couple of pounds or a couple of dollars.
These days you can very easily spend $10-$20 per click depending on the niche that you are operating in.
Facebook on the other hand has a huge amount of inventory with over two billion active users.
If you have done any Facebook advertising, you would have seen that they have evolved the platform over the past couple of years.
You can now set up a campaign for brand awareness, to get engagement and for conversions.
Now if you do have a large enough budget, you should be including both Google and Facebook ads into your marketing mix.
Facebook Ads are great for driving a huge volume of cheap clicks and can be a lot cheaper than Google Ads. However, the commercial intent is not always there because someone has not searched for a keyword.
Now there is a lot of talk about Facebook becoming a search engine over time and they did try this a couple of years ago through a partnership with Bing. I do not think that quite panned out but for the time being Facebook is primarily social advertising network.
You are targeting people based on their interests, likes and digital behaviours.
If you can think logically, have a good customer avatar and can map out your prospects’ interests, you might be able to get a good number of sales through Facebook.
However, if you are starting on a very small budget — say a couple of hundred dollars — and you want to demonstrate instant results for your clients, Google Ads might be a better way forward
Originally published at https://abul-hussain.com on January 4, 2021.
