Wednesday, July 21st, 2021
For businesses, running digital ads can be hugely beneficial but deciding which platform is right for your business can be tricky if you don’t know the specific benefits of each. Ideally, you want to run Google Ads and Facebook Ads, as they can work in tandem at every stage of the customer journey.
However, if you only have the resources for one of these, then you need to know the differences between them, as well as understand the specific marketing needs of your business. In this blog, we’ll go over everything you need to know about Google and Facebook Ads and guide you towards the one
When looking at these two platforms, the key difference we see is that of Google’s paid search vs Facebook’s paid social.
When advertising on Google, businesses must ‘bid’ on keywords, search terms and queries inputted by users. This will then see their ads displayed on relevant search results, with the aim of attracting those users to their brand. For every click generated, the advertising business will be charged. This is PPC, or pay-per-click, advertising and it’s a complicated field in its own right, but also a hugely important aspect of any marketing campaign.
With Facebook Ads, you’ll be engaging in ‘paid social’, i.e running ads on a social platform. Facebook is full of advertising opportunities, with a huge user base that logs on every day. Here, ads are displayed based on user’s interests and their engagement with a brand. This can cover a comprehensive set of targeted audiences, including retargeting those who have interacted with your brand but have not yet made a purchase.
In essence, the difference between Google Ads and Facebook Ads is that the former can be used to spread awareness of your brand to a broad range of new audiences, while you can use the latter to target prospective customers who are actively looking for something related to your business.
As we’ve already mentioned, the best campaigns will utilise both Facebook and Google. However, if you don’t have the resources to hand for this, you’ll need to decide which one is best for your current goals based on their unique benefits. With that in mind, let’s examine what each platform offers.
Facebook is the largest social platform in the world, with over 2 billion active users every month. Because of this, it’s tempting to think that the greatest benefit this channel can off is the sheer size of the user base. However, while this can be hugely beneficial, Facebook Ads’ greatest strength is its granular targeting capacities.
With this, you can target incredibly specific audiences. Facebook users share a vast amount of information with the site, from life milestones like promotions and relationships to personal interests like hobbies. Brands can then target their ads towards appropriate audiences with near unparalleled precision.
For example, the introduction of lookalike audiences gives advertisers more powerful tools than ever before. With this, brands can upload information based on their own customers, which Facebook will then match with users on the site. This allows businesses to target new audiences that have the same interests as their current customers, which can generate new leads and purchases.
While Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world, Google is the most used search engine and as such, offers a similarly massive audience to cater ads to. PPC ads are an extremely effective way to market your business to people searching for related terms.
One of the best aspects of Google Ads is that it isn’t necessarily the highest bidder or those with the largest budgets that are the most successful. This is because Google values ads that are relevant to the user’s search query over those who merely spend the most. To make the most of Google, you need to make high-quality ads optimised for the specific terms and keywords you’re targeting. Google uses Quality Score to determine the quality of advertisements, based on a variety of factors.
In current times, Google Ads blend into the SERP, or Search Engine Results Page, with only a small ‘Ad’ label in the top left to differentiate them from organic results. Because of this, many users simply assume the top links are the most relevant to their query. With that in mind, it’s clear Google can be a vital part of any campaign.
The truth is that these two platforms should be viewed in tandem, rather than opposing or conflicting applications. To get the most out of your marketing, you should do everything possible to utilise both, as their inherent benefits are crucial in the modern age of digital marketing. Neither is really better than the other, so it’s down to personal preference when it comes to which you should use. If you want to target specific audiences precisely, then Facebook Ads is probably the way to go, while Google can help draw in people searching for things related to your business.
If all this sounds rather complex, that’s because it is! Determining which platform to use is one thing but knowing how to effectively market your brand on each is another matter entirely. At Social Nucleus, we can manage both Google and Facebook Ads for your business, from audience targeting to killer creatives and engaging copy. Get in touch now and take your campaigns to the next level.
