Whether you need to boost the sales of a product, which isn’t as popular as you’d like, or if you want to introduce new goods to your customers, you need to find a way to spread the word about it. The easiest way, in which you could accomplish that is through executing advertising campaigns. And although about 30 years ago this meant months-long planning and thinking of ways, in which you can fund your campaign and track the results, nowadays, with the digital era being present, it’s noticeably easier to run ads for your products.
Digital Advertising proposes many benefits to today’s business owners. First and foremosт, it allows you to be flexible when it comes to budgeting. Digital ads often have a quite low point of entry when it comes to funding your campaigns. This makes it easier for you to execute A/B testing, to adjust your budget as you go and according to the performance of your ads. Furthermore, digital advertising gives you the opportunity to track the results in real time and determine whether or not your efforts are contributing toward your overall campaign goal.
There are multiple platforms, on which you can advertise your products digitally. However, two of them are getting increasingly popular throughout the last few years. We’re talking about Facebook ads and Google ads. While they have some similarities, there are certain specifics of each of the platforms, to which you need to pay attention, when deciding on the right platform for your campaign. So get yourself a cup of coffee and read on, because we’re going to list out the pros and cons of each of the two – Facebook Ads and Google AdWords.
How Can Google Ads Help You Grow Your Business?
Google AdWords is the biggest ppc (pay-per-click) advertising platform to this date. The name “pay-per-click” comes from the payment calculation method of this platform, through which the price of an ad is determined. The practical side of things looks like this:
When consumers click on a Google ad, the marketer needs to pay a certain amount of money for each click.
Generally, Google ads are often referred to as the paid search. To execute paid search campaigns is not too complicated. There are two types of ads, which you can display on Google:
- The Search Network
Essentially, these ads focus on keyword usage and are mainly text-based. In order to show your Google ads to the right audience, you need to bid on keywords or phrases (according to your goal), which are entered in the search engine by users. Once you determine which are the most appropriate words to include in your ads, all that’s left to do is hope that those texts are going to pop up amongst the results of consumers queries. So, in other words, marketers are trying to acquire new customers based on the words and phrases consumers type in the Google search engine.
- The Display Network
Although Google ads as a whole is focused mainly on text and keywords, this space enables advertisers to use a more visual approach to their ads. Here they can use banners and other visual elements such as pictures or GIFs. The display ads appear on websites, which have appropriate information connected to the topic of the specific ad. This is determined through a set of interests and other variables, which you choose based on the goals of your campaign as well as on your target audience. For example, if you create a display ad, which sells oven cleaning detergent, you might want to optimize it, so that it is displayed on a cooking blog or a recipe website.
According to wordstream.com, Google processes more than 3.5 billion search queries every single day. You can easily get an idea of how many people are using this platform on a daily basis. Therefore, if you decide to use Google AdWords, you have the chance to display your message in front of a huge audience. Bigger audience equals wider reach, which is one of the tipping points that push many advertisers into using the platform. Furthermore, with Google’s ever improving technological features, we can easily predict that the number of users is only going to continue to grow.
Your efforts will determine how much you pay for Google ads.
Google favours high quality, engaging ads, which have a higher chance to interest their consumers. Similarly to other popular platforms on the internet, Google wants to keep its users active and inside of the platform for as long as possible (after all, that is the main mean through which those kinds of platforms generate income – by proving there are a lot of active users and broadcasting ads, for which the marketers pay). Therefore, if your ads are relevant and optimized in accordance to the requirements of Google and to the objective of your campaign, chances are they will cost you less. On the other hand, if your creatives are poorly executed, you will need to prepare a slightly bigger budget.
Generally speaking, there are certain keywords and phrases which may be a bit pricier compared to others. For example, some of the most expensive keywords on Google AdWords are: “business services” with $58.64 CPC (cost per click); “bail bonds” with $58.48 CPC and “casino” with $55.48 CPC. So you can get an idea of how expensive it would be to use one of them (or, god forbid, more than one) in a single ad and get, lets say, 50 clicks on it (hint: if you used “business services” and got 50 clicks, you’ll need to write a check to Google for just over $2 930). That being said, don’t get discouraged by the price of some of those keywords, because here is when you should show your creativity and put effort into research. You need to figure out which are the words used by your clients when they search for your business, and then see what their CPC is. If you cannot afford to use them in your ads, then simply try using similar words. Don’t forget to keep track of what your competitors are doing.
An important metric, which you’ll have to pay attention to is the CTR (click through rate) of your ads. This metric stands for the number of clicks per number of impressions (impressions are the number of times your ad was displayed, without necessarily being clicked, however impressions are not to be seen as an indicator of how many people saw your ads – that is reach). If you have a high CTR, that usually means that your ads are relevant and appealing to the search engine users.
Although at its beginning in the 2000s, Google AdWords were more or less limited to basic principles, nowadays, advertisers have a wide variety of features, through which to improve their ads performance and to make them more appealing for the consumers. You can now add customers’ reviews, all kinds of extensions, some of which allow you to chat with your customers directly on the results page, and a ton of other cool stuff to your ads. You just need to conduct a quick research on what are the most appropriate features and add ons for your business’s goals and implement them in your ads. Furthermore, Google is growing and improving every day, so you should keep track of the constant changes and trends when it comes to Google Adwords.
What Are The Benefits Of Facebook Ads?
It doesn’t come as a surprise that Facebook Ads are quite different from Google ads, and the first major difference, which we can outline is the fact that advertising on Facebook focuses more on the characteristics of your audience. According to statista.com, there are more than 2.740 billion active monthly users on Facebook right now. Although Facebook is amongst the most preferred social media platforms when it comes to marketing your business, we can see that the organic reach declines over the years. Therefore, leaving business owners, who want to achieve their marketing goals, dependent on the Facebook Ads Manager. The good news is that once again you have the chance to display your ads in front of a big audience. However, the thing, which makes Facebook a unique advertising platform, is the fact that you can get extremely detailed when it comes to targeting your audience.
If you know how to use the Ads Manager on Facebook you could spread your message exactly to the people who want to hear it and to those who are more likely to become your customers. You can select the people to whom you want to show your ads based on their marital status, their interests, their location, their age, their language, their gender and so much more.
For example, you can create a “saved” audience on Facebook, composed of women, aged between 18-35, who are married and have children, and who are interested in baseball, but do not like football. Now, that’s detailed targeting at it’s finest, which will help you acquire more and the right leads for your business. However, the more detailed the targeting is, the smaller the audience becomes because it has to meet all the suggested criteria.
Furthermore, we shall not forget to mention one of the most useful Facebook features and that is look-a-like audiences. You can create an audience of people, who are very similar to your existing customers and promote your products to them. All you need to do is upload information about your current clients (such as phone numbers or emails) on Facebook and choose the option to create a look-a-like audience (**Mind that in order to collect and use such data from your customers, you need to have their explicit agreement). Facebook’s algorithm will then collect information from users profiles and third party tools (which often use cookies and also gather information about the interests of Facebook’s users) and compare it to the data you have uploaded. Once it has discovered enough users, who are similar to your customers, your audience will be created. This is a unique opportunity to reach more people who’ll enjoy your products and to acquire new customers.
It is safe to say that when done right, ads on Facebook can significantly help your business achieve its goals. There are several objectives, which can be accomplished by investing some of your budget into running ads on Facebook. Some of them are spreading brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, generating leads, and more. This feature of Facebook Ads Manager ensures that no matter what your overall goal is, you will find a solution for your ad campaign.
If you choose to execute Facebook ad campaigns, you will have over a dozen different placement options. One of the benefits of the platform is the fact that if your business has an Instagram account, then you’ll be able to place your ads both on Facebook and Instagram (while only using Facebook Ads Manager).
Some of the placement options allow you to:
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- Display your ads in the feeds
This includes placements such as: Facebook Newsfeed, Instagram feed, Facebook Marketplace, Facebook video feeds, Facebook Right Column, Instagram Explore and Messenger Inbox. - Display your ads in the Facebook groups feed
The Groups feed is a mobile tab that shows a personalized feed of activity across all of your groups. - Display your ads in the stories
This option allows you to place your creatives in Facebook stories, Instagram stories and Messenger stories. - Display your ads in-stream
If you choose this placement your ads will be used to quickly capture people’s attention while they are watching videos. - Display your ads in the search results
Similarly to Google AdWords, this option allows you to place your ads during relevant searches on Facebook. - Display your ads in Messenger
This placement allows you to show your ads within the messages your potential customers have had (usually this is the last visible “message” on your list) - Display your ads in articles
Your ads will be displayed in Instant Articles within the mobile app. - Display your ads in Apps
If you go with this option, your ads will be placed in Audience Network native, banner and interstitial and Audience Network rewarded videos.
- Display your ads in the feeds
Keep in mind that you can edit the locations of your ads before or after the campaign has started. Therefore, it’s a good idea to figure out which of those placements are likely to be seen by your target audience. Once you have the answer, it shouldn’t be hard to select the right locations for your ads to be placed.
Furthermore, the thing that is tilting the scales for many businesses who advertise on Facebook is the incredibly high ROI (return on investment) that you get from the social network’s ad platform. Although Facebook offers a huge variety of features and targeting options to the advertisers, the cost of the ads can be impressively low. We shouldn’t fail to say that the price here also depends on certain factors such as overall campaign objective and scope as well as competition. However, you can run Facebook ads for as little as 1 pound a day. Thus, Facebook Ads Manager is not only a great platform when it comes to testing new strategies or running your first ever ad, but also proposes a chance for very high ROI. Furthermore, as wordstream.com put it:
Combined with the remarkable potential returns offered by the platform, Facebook Ads is one of the best-value online advertising solutions available today.
Which Option Is Better For Your Business?
Although there are major differences between the two platforms, both of them offer incredible opportunities to marketing specialists around the globe. However, each of them has its own strength so it’s hard to determine whether you should use Google AdWords or Facebook Ads for your campaigns.
If we take a look at some case studies, it becomes obvious that both of the platforms successfully help businesses achieve their goals. For example, when it comes to the effectiveness of Facebook ads we can look at how Pandora increased their reach with 93% (reaching 3 million people) by executing an ad campaign with the goal of raising awareness about the brand’s spring collection. Furthermore, the jewelry company measured two times higher brand awareness and 17% higher return on ad spend (when using the brand awareness objective on Facebook).
Once we look at some of the Google AdWords success stories, we can see that there are some impressive campaign outcomes as well. Take WIT Fitness’s efforts as an example. The fitness company wanted to increase sales during Black Friday, Christmas and the month of January, by targeting interested consumers and using heavily searched-for terms. They used shopping ads, dynamic remarketing ads (to target customers who abandoned their cart) as well as some of the features of the platform, such as “Similar Audiences”. As a result of their efforts, WIT Fitness managed to increase their sales from Google Ads by 135%. Furthermore, they got 50% overall growth in online sales as well as 11% increased conversion rate.
It’s clear to see that no matter which platform you decide to use, if you have a strong campaign and high quality ads, you will see the desired results. However, it is our belief that you should definitely consider implementing a combined approach and run ads on both of the platforms. From our experience, we’ve learned that Facebook ads are a great tool for creating brand awareness, broadening your reach and engaging with your customers. On the other hand, Google AdWords is better when it comes to direct sales. That is so, because when people search for products in Google, they most probably have already decided that they want to acquire those goods. Once a consumer sees an ad on Facebook, however, it takes a bit longer for the user to make the decision to buy the item. Therefore, it can be argued that they complement each other. By using both of them in your marketing strategy you will only broaden your chance for success, because you’ll be able to raise awareness about your brand and sell your products directly at the same time. In order to execute a combined advertising campaign, which runs on both of the platforms, you should acquaint yourself with the specifics of each and prepare your creatives accordingly. It’s a good idea to keep your overall campaign message the same on both platforms, because it can contribute to increasing your ROI and growing your business further.
If you want to achieve your business’s goals by advertising on Facebook or Google, but you have no idea where to start from, get in touch with us!
Interval is always here for you when you need marketing advice. We will go through planning each step of your campaign together and we’ll follow through with the creation and implementation of the ads as well as the analysis of their performance. Furthermore, we are ready to help you with all other aspects of your business’s marketing strategy as well, so don’t hesitate to contact us for a free consultation!
