A renewed focus has been placed on how to maximise the impact of online marketing campaigns. This has led to different businesses asking the same question, “Should I focus my spending on Facebook Ads or Google Ads to increase business performance?”. Fact is, both Google Ads and Facebook Ads dominate online advertising. Both deliver measurable results and can connect your marketing campaigns to billions of active users.
Google Ads target mainly user behaviour & intent <-> Facebook Ads target interests
However, these users/consumers are now more empowered than ever and demand answers fast. This means it’s more competitive than ever for brands to get the user-attention they desire. To help customers find your brand, you have to participate in their search. You have to assist them in a way that will convince them that you’re the best option.
How online marketing campaigns on Google Ads and Facebook Ads can help you:
- Build brand awareness
- Increase the spread of information
- Drive buyer behaviour
- Provide reminders to curious buyers
- Use repetition to improve sales
- Provide multiple purchase pathways
Google Ads
With more than 90% of the search engine market, Google Ads is a fantastic place to advertise if you’re looking to tap into an enormous amount of search traffic. The platform is great when you want to drive traffic with the intent to convert.
Here are a few ways to advertise on Google Ads:
- The Search network shows ads for searches based on specific keywords. These ads will show at the top of Google search results.
- The Display network campaigns show your ads (videos, images, and more) on websites and apps when your keywords are related to the site’s content.
- Google Shopping ads are e-commerce based ads that allow your brand to show up for relevant, high-intent searches based on direct product searches.
- Video-based ads provide you with the chance to show ads on streaming sites like YouTube.
- Retargeting Ads allows you to remarket to previously lost customers with sophisticated retargeting campaigns.
Facebook Ads
Where you can advertise with Facebook Ads
- Mobile
- Desktop
- Facebook Messenger
As a social network with more than 2 and a half billion monthly active users, Facebook allows you to connect with almost any target or niche market you can imagine. With such a large and diverse user base, your chances of finding success are reasonably good. This is taken a step further by allowing you to segment your audience into groups for increased targeting efficiency.
Facebook ads often come in the form of news feed style ads that integrate directly into users’ Facebook feeds and are usually aimed at driving clicks. This could send a user to a landing page, providing further information on the product/service they require and how it solves their need.
Facebook Ads is great if you want to:
- Drive brand awareness and likes on your business page
- Get more leads
- Get more traffic to your blog posts or engagement on your site
- Drive more sales and store visits
- Increase views on a video
- Retarget to customers that have engaged with your social media page or visited your site
It is important to remember that even though Facebook Ads offers a more diverse set of options the intent is slightly different.
So… Google Ads or Facebook Ads?
As mentioned both have fantastic features (benefits) but with uniquely different search intents. If you’re looking for increased sales, more lead-generation or something similar a combination of both platforms would work wonders. To give your brand a boost on social platforms Facebook Ads is your best option. However, if you want to sell products directly to your customers there is no place better than Google Ads (even though Facebook Shop and Marketplace now provides an alternative).
Better Together
- Build your brand with Facebook Ads and seal the deal with Google Ads
- Target your Facebook audience using Google Ads data
- Discover similar audiences on Facebook to boost your performance on both platforms
Revisiting the original question, “Should I focus my spending on Facebook Ads or Google Ads to increase business performance?”, it’s clear we should rather be looking at how to best combine these 2 platforms. By doing this, you’ll be in a position to leverage audiences to engage prospects no matter their intent types while guiding them smoothly through your marketing funnel. When adopting this cross-platform marketing strategy you can maximise your reach, the impact that your message has on the consumer and more importantly reach your advertising goals and KPIs more effectively.
Azapi can help you reach your target audience, generate new leads and grow your business through our expertise utilising platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads together.