Facebook Ads vs Google Ads
Published July 12, 2019
When your company is looking to invest in digital advertising these two top players often come up, but do you know which platform is best for your business? Facebook Ads and Google Ads may seem similar; however, their strengths are completely different. Today we’ll talk about their core purposes to help you identify the best platform to try first.
Where do your ads show up?
The clearest distinction between the two is the platforms they advertise on. Facebook Ads let you post sponsored content on Facebook and Instagram. Every advertisement looks similar to an organic (i.e. unpaid) post with your profile picture and name on the top left and the post below, fitting into a viewer’s feed between the content they follow. Small “sponsored” text above the post lets viewers know that it is a paid advertisment. Facebook Ads has have customized options to decide how and where you want your ads to appear, giving you more control over your advertising to differentiate you from your competitors
Google Ads gives you the option to display the advertisements within Google’s search engine or as a standard webpage ad on their network of websites.
The next major difference is what you are advertising and how your ads will appear. On Facebook, you are advertising from your businesses’ Facebook page. Google Ads shows your ad as a paid search result or in an advertisement area of one of their different platforms. These ads are then designed to take the potential customer to the website URL you specify.
Their main purpose
Facebook Ads can be designed with many different goals in mind. You can choose an awareness goal, action goal, or a conversion goal. Deciding the purpose of your ad will also decide how you will be paying for it. If you are trying to reach the most people, your ad will charge you more for the more people you reach (also referred to as “cost per click” or CPC).
Google Adshave similar goals to choose from, but are designed to have your website URLs be one of the first results in searches that are relevant to your products or service. Google Ads can be as specific as linking to purchase a specific item on your website or as broad as your home page.
Usability
Facebook offers multiple ways to make a paid advertisement. The most basic way is to boost a successful post on your Facebook page, or you can get more in-depth with theirads manager. The Ads Manager lets you create ads from scratch and gives you a lot more customizability for targeting specific places, people, or times of day than simply boosting posts.
Similarly, Google Ads also offers two methods of making paid ads. They offer a very basic version where it directs and selects keywords automatically for you based off the information you enter in or a more advanced version which gives you more fine-tune customizable options, similar to the Facebook Ads Manager.
Ask yourself the following questions to decide which platform is best for you
Which is my companies’ stronger platform — our website or social media? Facebook performs strongly advertising both platforms, while Google Ads isn’t as strong at advertising social media accounts.
How active is your Facebook page? If you aren’t active on social media it would be best to wait on Facebook ads. Yes, your ad would reach a lot of people, but when they like your page or visit your page and don’t see many recent posts, they’ll have a negative opinion of your account.
How is your company’s SEO? SEO (search engine optimization) decides the order that organic (non-paid) search results are displayed. Are you on the top page when searching words or phrases people may be using to try and find your business? If this is the case then there isn’t a huge need for Google Ads. Your customers will likely find your brand organically.
How competitive is your market? Market competitiveness is huge factor with Google Ads. If there are a ton of competitors, it’s harder to make it on the top of search results. While Google Ads is a great platform for artificially raising your website to the top in a competitive market, it also means that top keywords will be more expensive to bid on.
Our suggestion would be to answer these questions and give one of them a try. If you would like help or assistance with one of these platforms don’t hesitate to get in contact with us.
