You know you have to advertise but you are not sure where to allocate your budget. In this blog, we are going to attempt to differentiate between the two platforms and what they offer so you can make the right decision for your business.

Both platforms excel in what they offer, and both totally dominate the market when it comes to online advertising. They can work very effectively together just by the nature of how they work to find new business. 

Google Ads

Google ads, commonly known as PPC, Pay Per Click, is exactly as it says, you pay as the user clicks on your ad. Google is the world’s largest search engine and there are more than 5 billion Google searches a day!

The two most common forms of Google ads are:

1. Search – The user types what they are looking for e.g. ‘builder North London’ and the first 4 listings that appear are ads. As a company, you enter an auction against other companies who have added these keywords into their campaign. This is a highly effective form of advertising as the intent from the user is already there.

2. Shopping – this is for eCommerce businesses. These listings appear on the right-hand side of the page and show an image, reviews, shipping and price. These a highly effective as the user has already showed high intent by searching for that product.

Google ads is great for eCommerce businesses as you can effectively sell your products online. It’s also great for business targeting a local area as you can target your ads to only show in certain geographical areas. There are other forms of advertising on Google, such as display, video and Google ads retargeting. Together these can ensure that all parts of your sales funnel are catered for, from top of funnel brand awareness down to the bottom of funnel, sales and leads. 

Facebook Ads

Facebook works in a completely different away. Primarily it is a social network, so users are not on there to search for a product or service. Any advertising on there is considered interruption marketing, where your feed is interrupted with ads. This does not mean you should ignore Facebook in your marketing strategy though.

Facebook has 2.5 billion active users. Facebook also knows a lot about their users. They know what they like, what they engage with, what area they live in, age, gender, what shops they like etc…the list goes on and on. And on that basis, advertisers can use that information to target their ads. For example, you may follow the clothes shop Zara on Facebook. Zara will definitely be able to retarget you with ads, but also other similar companies with the same user demographic will also be able to target you with ads. 

Facebook’s retargeting options are fantastic but also their ability to find and target a similar audience to your existing audience is also a really effective feature that they offer. You can advertise to a completely new audience that has similar likes as your seed audience, so  you get your ads seen by totally new potential customers who are more likely to buy off you. 

So which one is better? Google ads or Facebook ads? 

Well that totally depends on your company objectives. Both work well separately and can be highly effective working hand-in-hand. 

If I was a newbie starting out though I would stick to the following rules

• If your objective is sales or leads – both Google ads and Facebook ads can cover both these very effectively.

• If you want to sell products directly, use shopping ads on Google

• If your objective is to build your social following, Facebook is your channel.

I hope this helps you make your final decision. If you would like help setting up and running your ad campaigns, that’s what we offer here at Satsuma Social. Please drop us a line and we can go through your business objectives and how best to achieve them. We offer full management across both channels.

By Natasha Fitzpatrick

Natasha is a Digital Marketing Specialist & Founder of Satsuma Social. She specialises helping growing business increase sales and generate leads.

Find out how Natasha can help your business.