Content

Facebook Ads vs Google Ads: which is more effective in attracting leads for your business

6.09.2021

15 minutes

easy

Content

Facebook Ads vs Google Ads: which is better to choose?

If you’re looking for a quick way to determine which ad platform is best for your business and where to order online ad setup, use the Facebook Ads vs Google Ads comparison in the table below.

Feature	Google Ads	Facebook Ads
Buyer’s intention	Purchase; warm audience; covers users who are ALREADY interested in buying	Brand awareness; cold audience; spontaneous purchases; reaches out to users who can potentially become customers
Targeting	Broad keyword targeting with demographic restrictions	Detailed targeting by demographics, characteristics, interests, behavior
Spend	Pay more for clicks, but users are more likely to convert	Get more impressions and clicks at lower prices
Audience size	3.5 billion requests every day	2.74+ billion monthly active users on Facebook. 1.82+ billion people every day. Together with Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger – 3.21+ billion monthly
Types / formats of ads	search campaigns; GDN campaigns; shopping campaigns; YouTube video campaigns; mobile app campaigns	Ads in the feed, on the side of the feed (on desktops), in the messenger can be: video and photo; slide show; carousel; dynamic product advertising; advertisements in the lead forms
Fits best	For online stores, SaaS, services	For goods worth up to $ 50-70; goods with a social component; information products; SaaS; services

We will figure it out in more detail further to make it easier for you to decide which advertising on the Internet to order from a ppc advertising agency.

Facebook Ads vs Google Ads: which is better to order? Advanced method for selection

Google is a search engine. Typically, ads on Google respond to a user’s request. We are looking for “toy paw patrol” – we get “toy paw patrol”:

Facebook is a social network. The interaction with ads is different here. Ads do not appear in response to a specific request, but are displayed in the feed:

Google has long been associated with paid search, although both Bing and Yandex provide such services. And Facebook has a paid social network.

Let’s take a look at the benefits of each of the platforms.

Benefits of advertising in Google Ads

It is worth ordering paid search advertising on Google at least because it is the most popular and widely used search engine in the world. More than 3.5 billion searches are performed every day; which opens access to a potential audience of users who are actively looking for goods and services. With Google, the search engine itself, the GDN, YouTube and partner networks are available for advertising.

We recommend using Google as your basic advertising system. And only if advertising there does not bring the desired result, look for other networks. For most companies, this is a great place to start.

Google focuses on the quality and relevance of ads, and only then on what budget you invest. The more relevant the ads are to the user, the more impressions they have and therefore the more likely they are to continue to use Google as a search engine. Relevance + User Experience = Quality Score.

Advertising formats and types are tailored to the unique needs of specific types of businesses:

advertising formats – text, video, graphic, audio ads;
campaign types – search campaigns, display campaigns, shopping campaigns, YouTube video campaigns, mobile app campaigns.

Advertisers have access to ad extensions, additional links, user reviews, addresses, phone numbers and other functions. Google is constantly introducing new ad formats and features, empowering advertisers to reach new audiences and grow new businesses.

Here are some examples of advertisements:

Benefits of Facebook Ads

Facebook’s audience consists of 1.82+ billion monthly active users. However, Facebook’s real strength lies in the potential granularity of this audience. People share life details, joys and achievements, and view content that matches a huge range of personal interests, beliefs, ideologies and values. All this can be easily used when targeting a target audience.

Facebook is a visual platform. It is important to understand this when ordering targeted advertising on Facebook. Basically, you can show users your product in video and in an image. But to create visual content, you will need to invest.

The following ad formats are available on Facebook:

video;
photo;
slide show;
carousel;
dynamic product advertising;
lead forms.

Ads are displayed when scrolling the feed, on the sidebar (on desktops); you can also send advertising mailings to instant messengers.

Steve Page from Giant Partners extols the value of Facebook Messenger advertising, stating that businesses can get over 90% open rates and over 30% click-through rates.

When ordering targeted advertising on Facebook, the price will vary widely depending on the size of the audience, campaign goals, messaging. But the cost is affordable here. This makes Facebook ads attractive to small businesses and companies with limited resources.

Fundamental differences between Facebook Ads and Google Ads

Specialists of the Penguin-team PPC Agency note that Facebook Ads and Google Ads differ in several nuances. And you need to know them before ordering any paid advertising services.

User intentions

When deciding whether to launch ads on Google or Facebook, you need to consider which part of your marketing funnel you are targeting.

For the top of the funnel, it’s best to order Facebook ads.

Roman, Middle PPC Specialist and PPC Team Lead of the Penguin-team PPC Agency

Since Facebook is a social media platform, most users are reluctant to actively buy products. The goal here is to attract an audience and whet interest. Facebook ads are great for building brand awareness.

Alena, Middle PPC Specialist and PPC Team Lead, Penguin-team PPCC Agency

Facebook better sells products that can be impulse purchases – jewelry, apparel, snacks, and so on – you didn’t know you needed it. Google has the ability to work with a hotter audience that already knows what they want; they are looking for specific proposals and these proposals are of interest to them right now.

However, you can also order targeted Facebook ads for mid-funnel and end-of-funnel audiences. Provided that you are working with a narrow custom audience or using remarketing. For example, you can retarget an audience that has already visited your website but didn’t buy anything.

Here the editorial staff wandered through the online bookstore and looked at books, and later the advertising of this store caught up with me on Facebook:

Then the editorial staff admired the wonderful glasses, and the Facebook advertisement seemed to whisper: “Wanna buy it, hon?”:

For the bottom of the funnel, when the goal is to convert your audience, it is better to order advertising on Google. When consumers want to buy, they are more likely to turn to Google for information searches. Of course, search terms can be different, but certain keywords – buy, order, cost, shipping – indicate a high purchase intent. But even without the “commercial” words, there is a possibility that the user wants to purchase the product. For example, we drive into the search “notebook with a goose”. We hardly want to just stare at the notebook. This is where Google ads come in handy:

Tanya, Middle PPC specialist of Penguin-team PPC Agency

Which is better than Google Ads or Facebook Ads? There is no definite answer, each case is individual. It all depends on the niche and goals of a particular client.

But it’s important to understand that Google and Facebook ads help you connect with users at different stages of the funnel. In the first case, we bring the hottest and most targeted traffic to the website, because users already have a clearly formed interest and need for the product, in the second, we interact with a colder audience that is not yet aware of the problem that the promoted product / service will help solve.

Targeting

Another big difference is audience targeting. Effective advertising requires targeting the right leads. No creative will work if you show up to the wrong one.

Alena, Middle PPC Specialist and PPC Team Lead, contextual Penguin-team PPC Agency

Facebook wins in targeting. Advertisers have more control over who will see ads. Facebook knows a lot about its users (sometimes it seems like too much) – about life events, interests, behavior, viewed content and much more.

… but none of Facebook’s targeting capabilities will help if you don’t know who to target. You can’t go to a social network and think that the system will find your ideal client by itself. You need to know who will buy your product.

Google, on the other hand, focuses on the keywords that people enter into the search engine. Therefore, you don’t need to know exactly who your audience is in order to show your ads to interested potential customers.

Tanya, Middle PPC specialist of Penguin-team PPC Agency

It is worth paying attention to who the product is aimed at – gender, age, marital status, sphere of work, personal interests, desires and fears of consumers. That is, it is desirable to have a well-designed and well-thought-out portrait of the target audience, otherwise you run the risk of draining the advertising budget to probe the market without obtaining the desired result. For example, a youthful and inexpensive product with an interesting presentation (high-quality photo and video creatives) is more likely to go to Facebook / Instagram / TikTok than to Google. And vice versa.

Spend

Cost is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing where to order ads on Facebook Ads or Google Ads. It is important to understand here:

cost per impressions or clicks;
cost of acquired client.

The cost of running ads on Facebook or Google can vary significantly. At the same time, it is difficult to say the exact cost. It all depends on the niche, competition, the number of products being promoted.

Roman, Middle PPC Specialist and PPC Team Lead of Penguin-team PPC Agency

If you have a small budget – up to $ 10 per day, then most likely advertising on Facebook is suitable for testing, since here you can start testing from $ 5.

While for Google Ads, this budget will not be enough to get results. Typically, the cost per click on Google search ranges from $ 0.5 to infinity. It is clear that this depends on the niche and the competition, but in most cases it takes much larger budgets to test ads on Google compared to Facebook.

Contact us, and we will help you calculate the projected budget and cost of setting up advertising in Google Ads and Facebook Ads!

Google Ads or Facebook: which one is more effective to use?

Nikolay, founder of Penguin-team PPC Agency

These platforms are often opposed to each other, but in reality, Facebook Ads and Google Ads are complementary. These are tools that solve different problems in different conditions.

Harnessing the power of both paid search and social media is an effective advertising strategy. However, it is important to consider the strengths of each respective platform. You need to understand how to best leverage each platform for maximum ROI and business growth.

At our PPC agency, we believe that a blended approach is the right choice because it can take advantage of the unique features of both platforms. And if necessary, you can redirect the budget and adjust the strategy.

It doesn’t have to be Google or Facebook, it should be Google and Facebook.

Tanya, Middle PPC specialist of Penguin-team PPC Agency

Facebook can be seen as a source of additional traffic. But here you should rely on the advertising budget, competitors and the presence / level of the company’s business page.

At a minimum, I would recommend setting up retargeting for website visitors to create an additional point of contact with a potential customer. As a maximum, work with interest-based audiences and test different types of campaigns and creatives.

How to choose between Facebook & Google Ads

But if for some reason you still want to choose and order online advertising on only one platform, answer the questions:

Who is my audience and where is my audience? Study the audience and targeting possibilities of both platforms, highlight the one where you can segment the desired category of “yours” from all users. Where there will be more intersections – there you should go.
What is my goal? What do you want to achieve: brand awareness, leads, sales, website traffic… Choose the platform that can help you achieve this goal better.
What’s my budget? The goal is to maximize your return on advertising investment (ROAS). In Google Ads, you will need to look at keyword competition and keyword price. If the keywords you are targeting have a high cost per click (CPC) and you have a small budget, this may not be the best place to invest.
Where can I get more leads for a lower cost-per-action (CPA)? This will be a very rough estimate. You need to know the average cost per click in your niche, possible click-through rate (CTR), budget. Based on this, you will understand the approximate number of clicks and how many of them can be converted (taking into account the average conversion rate for the niche).

Natalia, Middle PPC Specialist of Penguin-team PPC Agency

You never know in advance which source will show the best result, so if the client’s budget allows, you can test several sources, and then redistribute the budget depending on the result.

But there are points that should be considered in advance. If the client’s budget is small and the product is cheap, then it is better to start with Facebook, since there the daily budget is less needed and the inexpensive product sells better. You can reach the required profitability. But if the client has services, for example, plumbing, then it is better to start with advertising on Google, since the user, if his pipe suddenly bursts, will most likely go to look for plumbing on Google, and not on Facebook.

Roman, Middle PPC Specialist and PPC Team Lead of Penguin-team PPC Agency

When evaluating a product and service, you need to understand what kind of product you want to advertise. For Facebook, wow products often come in, especially with a low cost of up to $ 50-70. These types of products are very often purchased by users the first time they interact with a website.

At the same time, Google needs to look at the cost of a click and already proceed from it.

Due to the higher CPC, low cost products are not suitable for Google. Especially if it is a “mono” product business or landing page with one product and the user has nothing more to see. The situation is the same with services.

You need to understand that at Facebook we work with an affinity audience. That is, users may not be interested in the product at the moment. At Google, on the contrary, we work with users who are interested in the product at the moment. Therefore, it is better to advertise services, for example, for a round-the-clock tow truck through Google.

But again, each case is different. This does not mean that we do not advertise wow products or products worth $ 50-70 through Google or express services on FB.

As marketers like to say: we’ll have to test.

Tanya, Middle PPC specialist of Penguin-team PPC Agency:

If a product or brand is already known in the market and there is a stable demand for it, a more rational solution would be to invest in promotion in Google Ads. If the product is not too familiar to a wide audience, then it makes sense to use advertising in social networks (especially if the budget is limited). Usually, it allows you to attract cheaper traffic (but not always – it all depends on the competition and the choice of geotargeting).

Nikolay, founder of Penguin-team PPC Agency

For ecommerce it is better to order advertising on Google. If you’re trying to promote an event, a SaaS product, or are in the info business in general, Facebook is your best bet. You can get your message across to a wide audience of people who are generally interested in what you are promoting.

What else is important to know

A couple more recommendations in the end.

Historical data

To form a strategy, it will be useful to look at historical data if you have already ordered advertising on Google or Facebook. What has worked in the past, what has not worked, and what remains to be learned can serve as a guide.

If you have never ordered paid search or targeted advertising setup before, do a competitor analysis. What kind of ads are they running? Where? What creatives are they using? What offers? This information about competitors can give you insight into the strategies they are using and inspire you.

What does it take to run ads?

If you are just getting started with Facebook Ads, you need to pay attention to your business page. How well is your Facebook business page? Do you post frequently? How about communication with followers? Do you have an alive page at all? If the page is weak, it is important to revive it first, post information regularly, start getting more activity from audience, and provide fast and effective communication. Otherwise, the system may think that you are just spreading spam.

There are also basic technical stuff for preparing advertising on this social network. The most important thing is to set the Facebook pixel.

The next step is to build an audience and find new people, and the best way to do this is through similar audiences.

And only then can you move forward.

Facebook is not a plug and play ad option. There is a lot of preparatory work to be done.

Launching on Google is easier. In theory, a person can set up ads in a matter of minutes. But fast does not mean effective. As a rule, quick setup is the absence or minimal control over the situation. Google still wants to make money and is not interested in what you might get wrong.

Still, before launching on Google, you need to prepare a website, predict demand, ensure the availability of goods, upgrade the sales department and a bunch of other things.

Both platforms make it relatively easy to get started. What you do next is the hardest part.

Want to advertise on Google or Facebook? Leave a request ⤵